With the eighth season of Rick and Morty concluding, co-creator Dan Harmon finds himself in an unfamiliar position: less stressed about the show’s future. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter at San Diego Comic-Con, Harmon explained that the production is now so far ahead of schedule that he struggles to keep track of its progress.
He recounted being asked to do a table read for an episode, to which he replied, “Maybe I should punch that script up,” only to be informed by an executive producer that the episode had already aired. “I’ve become my own Chevy Chase now,” he joked.
This efficiency marks a significant departure for Harmon, who has been open about his past perfectionism and struggles with finalizing episodes. “It’s very new, very alien,” he admitted. “I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat going, ‘How do I destroy everything? How do I slow it down?’”
Under the leadership of showrunner Scott Marder, the team has already begun voice recording for season nine and started writing for season ten. “There’s episodes of season 10 that I’m already so excited about,” Harmon said. He noted the one drawback to this long lead time is the inability to address current events. “We’re not going to have hot-topic stuff. We stay timeless.”
Harmon also touched on a viral moment from the current season involving cameos from filmmakers James Gunn and Zack Snyder, sharing that Snyder was keen to return. “Zack Snyder wants to be a regular,” Harmon quipped. “All of his sequences will be dreams. He’ll always exist in a Snyder cut of every episode.”
Addressing fan observations that season eight leaned more towards standalone adventures than serialized plotlines, Harmon detailed his creative philosophy. He explained his preference for “modular one-off” episodes, which he believes are more challenging to create. In his view, serialization “is a glorious, wonderful thing that happens automatically to a show that people love,” and therefore needs less direct focus from him.
Harmon credits the show’s younger writers with maintaining the complex overarching narrative. He noted their role is to be “strong advocates for fantastic and canonical mythical episodes” and to track the intricate lore, such as “which Rick is from which dimension.” This division of labor, he explained, allows him to concentrate on crafting self-contained stories, comparing his goal to making a classic, modular show like ALF.
