If you haven’t heard, it’s a tough year to be at San Diego Comic-Con, but this might be a particularly tough Comic-Con year for rick and morty. For most TV shows and movies, the WGA and SAG strikes for fair contracts have left studios unable to fill their panels with the writers and actors who typically promote the shows under their contract. This, generally, resulted in a reduced convention. Many panels have been canceled altogether, but for those that aren’t, including rick and morty‘s 10th Anniversary Panel – there’s been a lot of talk (and, perhaps, more often no talk) about strikes.
For rick and morty, however, it’s not just the strikes they’re dealing with, but also the continued fallout from the departure of series co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland. Roiland was fired by Adult Swim earlier this year after allegations of domestic violence and sexual misconduct surfaced earlier. It was the other Elephant in the panel room today, as Executive Producer Steve Levy, Producer Suzanne Belk, Supervising Director Jacob Hair, and Lead Character Designer Elisa Phillips took the stage to share concept art for one of the show’s Emmy-nominated episodes, tease what they might about an upcoming season, and briefly touch on the Rick and Morty voice overhaul.
Rick and Morty season 7 will recast Justin Roiland
Eponym rick and morty the protagonists (Rick and Morty) were previously voiced by series co-creator Roiland. Because he was fired, fans on the panel were especially curious to know what the future of these beloved characters will literally look like. A fan — cosplay as The boys character The Deep – asked about the process of re-voicing the show’s protagonists, specifically asking if the new voice actors would be “soundalikes” or if they would be an entirely new take on the characters.
“It’s sounds. The characters are the same characters. No change,” Levy said, clearly and without hesitation. Commenting on the status of the process, he said, “We are getting closer to the end of our redesign process.”
Overall, Levy was sure to point out that he felt good about the changes. “I mean it’s going to be awesome. I’m really impressed with everything that’s going on, including all the work on Season 7. Really, that’s the thing I don’t want to be upstaged. The show is as good as it’s ever been.
When is season 7 of Rick and Morty?
When is next season? Sooner than you think, but not soon enough for Adult Swim to let anyone on stage tell us. “I think the best I can say is pretty soon,” Levy said, before adding that episodes for all of season 7 are “in the box,” with parts of seasons 8 and 9 also written. (rick and morty has been renewed through Season 10.)
That being said, since the Rick and Morty voice overhaul process is, as mentioned above, not yet complete, we’ll probably have to wait a bit longer for new episodes. More generally, Levy spoke of the seventh season as having a mix of unique episodes and “more Rick-focused canonical-type episodes that fans really love”.
Squanchy (and other fan favorites) will return
When the show returns, it will bring back beloved characters. When a fan took to the mic to ask if Rick’s recurring cat character and friend Squanchy would be back, Levy confirmed that Squanchy and Rick’s “entire gang of friends” would be back in the Season 7 premiere. That includes Birdperson, Gene, and Mr. Poopybutthole. “There’s definitely a lot to look forward to this season, and I promise you Squanchy will be Squanchy again,” Levy said.
(If you were wondering, there don’t appear to be any concrete plans to bring Naruto Smith, aka Giant Incest Baby, back, and an impromptu mob investigation into the matter proved inconclusive.)
The Rick and Morty anime is almost here
The latest surprise Adult Swim had in store for rick and morty fans at SDCC was a first glimpse of the upcoming Rick and Morty: the anime, which was announced last year. The psychedelic and sometimes dreamy visuals of the 10-episode anime series were helmed by director Takashi Sano, who previously worked on the tower of god anime and directed two anime shorts, set in the rick and morty universe: “Rick and Morty vs. Genocider” and “Summer Meets God (Rick Meets Evil)”. The anime will adapt themes and events from the main series, but it is an original, standalone series. In a pre-recorded video message played to the fans in attendance, Sano said, “What I’ve tried to accomplish in these 10 episodes is to take all my favorite parts of rick and morty and compress them to express their essence, then add a unique Japanese touch.