If you’re a big fan of Rick and Morty’s cartoon adventures, we have some good news for you. The outrageous comedy duo won’t be disappearing from our television screens any time soon. We might only have seen the fourth season on our screens a little earlier on in 2020, but there’s no doubt that both Rick and Morty will be back to delight us for a fifth season. In fact, there’s no doubt that they’ll be back to delight us for a sixth season, and perhaps many seasons beyond that. That’s because the show’s producers have recently confirmed that they’ve already begun pre-production of the hit show’s seventh season.
Dan Harmon – the show’s co-creator and the person chiefly responsible for the ongoing success of the cartoon series, which has gone from having a cult following to being popular all around in the world in recent years – recently confirmed that he’s been able to continue working on scripts and concepts throughout this year’s pandemic. He now has enough material to keep the show going for many more years and doesn’t anticipate its home network canceling it any time in the foreseeable future. Based on the time that’s elapsed between previous seasons of the show, with four seasons airing in a little over six years, it seems reasonable to expect a five-year window for the next three seasons to be completed and screened. If future seasons are of the same length as the ones we’ve seen in the past, that means a minimum of seventy more episodes for Rick and Morty.
There’s no way that Harmon is going to give away any significant future plotlines this far in advance, but he has shared one tiny piece of information that’s already got fans of the show excited for season five. One of the most popular characters from the show’s fourth season was Space Beth, who’s become a big topic of conversation in fan forums on the internet. During the 2020 Adult Swim Festival (which happened online for obvious reasons), Harmon confirmed that he has big things planned for Beth’s future and that “Space Beth” wasn’t intended to be a one-time appearance for the character. Only the people working on the show will know what that means from a practical point of view, and we’ve learned not to make predictions about the future direction of this show, so we’ll have to sit back and wait for that tale to play out in future episodes.
The ongoing popularity of the Adult Swim cartoon – which wasn’t initially intended to fun for any longer than a single season – continues to fly in the face of critics who have written the show off on numerous occasions. As the fourth season aired earlier this year, the British newspaper “The Independent” voiced its opinion that the show had jumped the shark. Its reviewer spoke of the show’s ‘sinister snark’ and claimed that the show promoted ideas rooted in ‘toxic masculinity’ – seemingly without any appreciation of the fact that much of the show’s content is rooted in either satire or sarcasm. Another opinion column written a year earlier says that Rick and Morty appeals only to Millennials, but that isn’t the case either. Statistics taken from television viewing figures tell us that it’s not just Millennials watching – and there’s another way to prove that, too.
In recent years, we’ve seen a developing trend for entertainment properties that become popular as either television shows, movies, or video games, to find their way onto online slots websites like Kong Casino as licensed games. There are several online slots based on Game of Thrones, for example, which continue to bring in money despite the lukewarm-at-best reception to the final season of the show on television. Rick and Morty is another example of television shows that have gone on to be online slots, and the success of the first Rick and Morty online slots game has been significant enough for a sequel to be created. Both of the online slots are made by a company called Blueprint, and the latest one will be released at the end of November. The demographic of people who spend time at online slots websites and play games like this tells us that it can’t just be Millennials who are engaged with the show – there has to be a big number of Generation X, Generation Z, and others playing, too.
As exciting as it is to know that the long-term future of the popular show has been secured for many years to come, there’s still one very important piece of information that we’re missing. Although Harmon spoke enthusiastically about the show’s future during the Adult Swim event, he stopped short of giving us a premiere date for the hotly-anticipated fifth season. Fans have been clamoring for that information ever since the final episode of season four ended, but it looks like they’re going to have to wait a little longer before they get a solid answer. We know that Harmon and his team have been able to work on post-production and editing at home, so we’re not expecting any significant delays, but it would be nice to know how long that wait might be. Based on previous form, we’re guessing it will be somewhere around the beginning of March 2021 – but don’t hold us to that!
It’s not for us to say that Rick and Morty is the best adult-orientated cartoon of all time. We think that South Park, Family Guy, and even a few episodes of the Simpsons might have something to say about that. It has, however, proved once again that cartoons aren’t just for children and that the narrative of a cartoon can often be far smarter than anything you’re likely to find in live-action television. We’re delighted to find out that the show’s future is in safe hands and has been safeguarded for years to come, and we look forward to many more years of entertainment from the off-the-wall pairing. To Dan Harmon and his whole team, we make only one request:- “Show us what you got!”
