When Adult Swim ordered an additional 70 episodes of Rick and Morty, the show's future looked bright. However, the series was embroiled in controversy this past January, prompting fans to wonder whether it could reach a premature end.
As we're sure you'll remember, co-creator and lead voice star Justin Roiland was charged with domestic violence, and while those charges were later dismissed, the damage had already been done.
Between revealing exposés about his conduct behind the scenes and the fact a series of very offensive comments from the past resurfaced, it was clear Adult Swim wasn't going to bring Roiland back into the fold after firing him from the show.
We've since learned that "sound-alikes" will be used to bring Rick, Morty, and the rest of Roiland's characters to life in the show, though there's currently no word on who will be enlisted to play any of them.
Talking to the Los Angeles Times, Rick and Morty executive producer Steve Levy opened up on what the series has been through since Roiland's dismissal.
"We had a rug pulled from underneath us," he acknowledges. "The only people we could lean on were each other. It would have been very easy to just say, 'I'm done and I don’t want to do anything with this show anymore.' But our crew said, 'No, we’re not going to let one person drag down all of our hard work.'"
"This show is created by this team - this family of incredibly hardworking people, and we are going to push through and show the world that we aren’t going to miss a beat. The work that we’re doing across the board has only gotten better. When the new season comes out, we’ll focus on how amazing it all turned out."
"We hope the fans will realize that this is the same old show," Levy concluded, "maybe even better!"
It doesn't sound like Roiland will be missed, that's for sure, and the producer clearly has no concerns about a dip in quality without him there to lend his voice to the show's leads. If even a fraction of what we've heard about the actor's behaviour is any indication, then his absence will likely come as a relief to the creative team!
Rick and Morty is expected to return to Adult Swim later this year.