Dan Harmon, co-creator of Rick and Morty (alongside Justin Roiland), managed to dodge a barrage of questions about the Season 3 release date during a recent reddit AMA. Surprisingly, Harmon claimed not to know the premiere date himself. However, he did provide a lot of interesting insight into new episodes (here’s our rundown of the Li’l Bits) and reacted to the tradition of fan theorizing that’s sprung up around the Adult Swim hit.
While Harmon didn’t provide a specific release date for Rick and Morty Season 3, he did say, “we are going as fast as we can my brother.” That Harmon didn’t take the opportunity to announce a release date delay gives hope that episode 1 will indeed hit its promised 2016 premiere target. Pressed again on the Season 3 release date, Harmon claimed not to know himself, writing, “ I'm not authorized (nor would I really be able) to give you an airdate for season 3.”
However, he did take the opportunity to address the constant plot theorizing that has consumed fans over the past year:
“Stuff like ‘I think Rick is actually Goldenfold in disguise’ or ‘all of Rick and Morty's episodes are a simulation’ or ‘when Rick falls asleep in episode 2, the rest of the series until episode 8 is a dream, then he wakes up for two episodes and then Season 2 is all the label of a milk carton in his fridge, which he drinks out of, and then Season 3 is a dream again.’ I don't really have favorites of those, they all strike me as fun, I want people to enjoy the show with 100% of their giant brains, but a big part of me, when I hear about that stuff, always thinks, ‘wait, are you saying that if we were big enough dicks to screw around with you that much, you'd like the show?’ But I don't think those folks are thinking about it from that angle, I think they're just blissfully analytical and love decoding stuff and I salute them but I haven't seen a ‘theory’ that I truly love.”
Can we call Ticket Theory debunked yet? Harmon addressed another fan theory obliquely, once again addressing the contents of Rick’s flask. It’s been widely theorized that Rick may drink some sort of cognitive enhancer, perhaps even the mega seed juice that poisoned Morty in the Rick and Morty pilot. His answer is less flippant than their treatment of the question at Comic-Con. In fact, it’s surprisingly heartfelt:
“I tend to assume vodka and I know it seems unlikely that Rick wouldn't use sci-fi tech to somehow augment whatever he drinks but I think in rick's mind part of the ‘addiction’ to the flask of good old fashioned booze is that it anchors his identity, and I think he knows that if he augmented the booze or the flask, then why not just whip up a very rudimentary nanobiotic alcohol dispenser in his body or inject himself with a plasma component that just amounts to always having a certain blood alcohol level, and I think the reason he doesn't do that is because he's a little afraid he'll lose sight of who he is.”
While we may not know much about the plotlines of Rick and Morty Season 3, or even a release date, it’s always great to see the level of thought put into the characters at every stage of the process. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be watching episode 1 of Rick and Morty Season 3 in just a few weeks.
