Adult animated television series “Rick and Morty” is back with its new season at the Adult Swim channel on July 26. Show creators, Dan Harmon, and Justin Roiland are now reportedly under pressure to top the previous season’s success.
It is more difficult for Roiland on Season 2 as he is voicing several characters while overseeing the animation and coordinating the work of the writing staff together with Harmon. Another hurdle that they faced for the upcoming season was the limited number of staff working for the series.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Roiland said they could have finished more episodes if they have enough people, but Harmon joked that what they really need is to clone Roiland.
The new season will start with the final episode of Season 1 when Rick froze time so that Morty’s parents will not discover that their house was destroyed while they were partying. The house had also been teleported temporarily to a planet full of rampaging monsters that looked like male reproductive organs.
Harmon believes that they did their best to create the best episodes, but he thinks the efforts that had been exerted to write those do not automatically mean satisfying their audience. Nevertheless, the producers said they expanded the universe of “Rick and Morty” for the next season to the point that some of its episodes will include 200 character designs.
The upcoming season of “Rick and Morty” brought up a debate among its fans, most of them younger guys, according to iDigital Times. In Season 1, “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind” was considered one of the best episodes as it revealed that Evil Morty was the real mastermind in the series. Fanboys want to find out if Evil Morty will come back for the next season or not.
The “Rick and Morty” ComicCon 2015 panel provided an insight about the upcoming Season 2. Harmon explained that the main goal of the creators for Season 2 is to build on the momentum of the previous season. He added that they are avoiding to go back to previous episodes of Season 1. However, Roiland is hopeful that Evil Morty of the “Close Rick-Counters of The Rick Kind” episode will have his own moment but not in “Rick and Morty” Season 2.
According to iDigital Times, the creators’ answer would mean Evil Morty will not come back in the upcoming new season of “Rick and Morty.” However, there is still some hope left for the fans because Roiland said that they should stay tune for each episode of Season 2 to find out.
According to Adult Swim, “Rick and Morty” Season 1 was streamed on their network’s website by 8.9 million viewers last year including delayed DVR viewing. In addition, the last episode of the previous season’s viewership doubled compared to its first episode. Most of those who are following the show are viewers ages 35 years old and below.
The show’s success did not come easy according to Mike Lazzo, Adult Swim’s longtime head of programming, as they never tried coming out with a series about a family that will be shown during the late-night block. Moreover, the Time Warner-owned channel showed “Rick and Morty” Season 1 in the hours after midnight so it is a challenge to attract young viewers to stay tuned.
Although, it was a huge hurdle for the network, the whole team of the show were able to overcome it smartly. It even became a milestone for Adult Swim as “Rick and Morty” was their first original half-hour series, since most of their shows only run for 15 minutes.
In addition to the achievements of Season 1, “Rick and Morty” also received praises from different critics. For instance, Metacritic, a site where a weighted average is being given based upon different online and print reviews of critics, gave the previous season a score of 85 that is equivalent to universal acclaim. David Weigand of the San Francisco Chronicle even complimented the show’s animation director for having a wacky, colorful, and fresh graphics that perfectly match the script.