Season 4 of the animated, black-humored Rick and Morty is experiencing delays in getting to the writers’ room, according to Ryan Ridley. The co-writer and ex-producer of the show expressed his frustration in an interview with Detroit Cast:
“I’m just shocked that it’s taking – we got done writing season 3 in November of last year and here we are 11 months later. And then I know how long the show takes to write, let alone animate, so it’s just like, I’d be surprised if there was a fourth season on the air any sooner than 2019 – in late 2019.”
Pointing his finger at the show’s co-creators, he quoted Morty: “It’s crazy, Get your shit together, you guys. Get it all together and put it in a backpack.“
Dan Harmon, the former writer, and creator of Community, is known for taking his time with the creative process. Addressing delays with the previous season of Rick and Morty, he told Time Magazine, “Things that took you five minutes to do in season one take 15 minutes to do all of a sudden. All of that adds up to three times longer to do the entire season.”
Creative difficulties and delays led to season 3 comprising of just 10 episodes rather than the originally-planned 14.
Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s late-night programming block, are still yet to announce a 4th season will be made, although Dan Harmon has already dismissed the idea of stopping at 3 seasons:
“I think that they would have to drag Justin [Roiland] and I kicking and screaming away from Rick and Morty,” he told Time Magazine. “The only thing that would make us walk away would be a sense that we were somehow screwing it up and ruining something that would then have its legacy marred.”
“If we got to a point where we thought the show absolutely stunk because of our insistence on continuing to make it, I’d hope that we would be wise enough to stop making it.”
This willingness to call it quits at the right time could set Rick and Morty apart from other popular shows. In the modern entertainment industry, series are regularly driven into the ground by poor storytelling, caused by prolonged and pressure-driven production runs. It is unusual for Adult Swim to give Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland so much space.
Perhaps then, Rick and Morty’s 4th season will be creatively better for its delays. Though let’s hope Ryan Ridley’s “late 2019” prediction was an exaggeration.
