Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon addressed the Season 3 release date delay (and the surrounding reporting) on Twitter. While Rick and Morty Season 3 was originally expected to premiere in 2016, there continues to be no set premiere date.
On Monday IndieWire reported on Harmon’s explanation at the Sundance Film Festival, which placed the blame on himself and co-creator Justin Roiland. “Rick and Morty keeps taking longer and longer to write and I don’t know why,” Harmon said. He later said, separate from addressing the delay, “We have fights all the time and then we have fights about why we’re having fights.”
In our own write-up little interpretation was offered, since, like the rest of the internet, we were reading excerpts, rather than hearing the tone of Harmon’s explanation. But despite the dire tenor of something like “we have fights all the time,” it seemed evident that Harmon meant productive writers room tussles, rather than any personality clashes tearing apart the Rick and Morty team. Anyone who has heard from Harmon before would recognize in his words the mordant humor and bluntness coloring his words. He is almost always earnest, but there’s a joking, almost gallows humor aspect to his outlook that tinges even optimistic outbursts (he describes himself as a “self-destructively honest guy”).
It now seems that didn’t come across in the widespread reporting of Harmon’s explanation for the Season 3 delay.
Reacting to widespread concern over the “fights” between him and Roiland, Harmon provided a lengthy clarification that decouples arguments over jokes from the root cause of the Rick and Morty Season 3 delay:
While Harmon addressed IndieWire specifically, I can’t help but feel culpable for reporting Harmon’s words without properly shading them with what I think was intended. It’s hard to read quotes as anything but coldly literal and even harder to explain how words that sound one way were likely meant another. Still, I wish I had tried. Sorry Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland!
