'Rick And Morty' Season 3 Release Date Drama Is Getting Downright Existential

This article will not reveal a release date for Rick and Morty Season 3. We’ve had indications both concrete and conspiratorial, but the simple fact is that you can’t intuit this information from any tea leaves. The Rick and Morty Season 3 release date will be revealed when Adult Swim reveals it. You’ll know minutes after. Anything else, even seemingly concrete indicators like off-the-cuff remarks by Rick and Morty co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, is just idle chatter to while away our days until something official happens. Everyone likes reading it (or at least clicking on it and getting mad) and it gives me a frequent excuse to write about one of the best shows around: Rick and Morty.

Recently Dan Harmon spoke at the Sundance Film Festival and commented on both the release date delay and the struggles they’ve gone through in the writing process. He’s since been besieged on Twitter by people demanding the release date (the pro-Trump mouth-breathers arguing with him are a whole other megillah). “Keep telling me to release season 3. It accomplishes nothing, It makes you seem 15 and dumb which is fine. See ya soon!” he responded.

This would be the place where it’d be appropriate to editorialize. Perhaps I could point out that, just like with George R.R. Martin and The Winds of Winter, Harmon and Roiland owe you nothing — no update, no show, nothing. Creative work takes the time it takes. And wouldn’t you rather they get it right?

But there’s no need for that, because Harmon vociferously defends himself. In a recent Twitter spat Harmon got downright existential owning a typically obnoxious fan. Since this one butthead is representative of hundreds more, I won’t be embedding the actual tweets or targeting this individual, but he lights the fire with a common gripe: “When's that thing you're getting paid for coming out? You know, Rick and morty season 3?”

For readability, I’ve combined the multiple tweets that comprise Harmon’s reply:

“The interesting thing to me is that THAT guy finds the time to tweet sub-Nickelodeon standup to 11 followers in spite of having at LEAST - and this is not exaggeration - at least 15 fewer jobs than me. If you have up to 4 jobs. And it kind of begs the question, my soon to be forgotten stranger: is it possible that the reason you perceive time and work and value differently than me is because… you aren’t me?... and assuming you and I are different, is it possible, given your… approval of my work, that we don’t want me to be you? For instance: you’re about to express the idea that this level of attention indicates that you… accomplished something. And I encourage to really bite into that thought and chew it many times. So that you get to the important center, which is: even your own specialness needed to be provided by someone else. Gots to block, lots of love.”

Let’s get this out of the way first: this is mean. But it also follows a pattern that should be familiar to anyone who spends much time on Twitter. By design, Twitter allows dozens, hundreds or thousands of people to attack a single person at once. But any clap back is necessarily directed at one member of the mob (or, at most, a handful). In response to a rhetorical onslaught, Harmon or any other Twitter user has only a laser for one-at-a-time targeting. The temptation is always to make your one shot as devastating as possible.

If we look past how thoroughly a rich, witty, smart, fairly famous person is sledge hammering a single rando, Harmon’s response bears some interesting fruit. The core of Harmon’s argument is a realignment of how we look at popular art. Rick and Morty isn’t some product on an assembly line. Instead it’s a collective creation of many temperaments and individual approaches.

“Is it possible that the reason you perceive time and work and value differently than me is because… you aren’t me?” Harmon asks. If it weren’t surrounded by thorough insults, this question would stand alone as an empathic doorway. Harmon is asking this person to understand that the development of Rick and Morty proceeds as it must, because of the people who are creating it. Rick and Morty episodes aren’t just a commodified output, they’re a collection of human thoughts, emotions and ideals. Insisting that the Rick and Morty production team change or work harder to meet your demands is insisting that they change the exact individual essences that define why you love Rick and Morty in the first place!

Here’s the Rick and Morty Season 3 release date: eventually. And it shouldn’t be any other way.