‘Rick and Morty’ Showrunner Scott Marder Reflects on Season Eight and Where Rick Is Going without Vengeance to Motivate Him

In Season Seven of Rick and Morty, Rick Sanchez finally got what he wanted — or what he thought he wanted — when he murdered his wife’s killer, Rick Prime. The story of Rick (our Rick) seeking revenge against Rick Prime began before the events of Season One, Episode One and lasted for seven seasons. So, heading into this year’s Season Eight, many fans wondered exactly what Rick was wondering: What now?

While still having plenty of connective tissue to Rick and Morty’s grand mythos, Season Eight didn’t have the big, canon-heavy episodes that usually pop up a few times a season. Instead, it seemed to have more of a theme than an arc, with Rick figuring out who he is without revenge to motivate him and maybe even allowing himself to move on from his dead wife and explore a new relationship. It’s what showrunner Scott Marder described as a “light arc” in an interview with IndieWire going into the season.

Now that Season Eight has concluded, I spoke with Marder via Zoom to understand how that “light arc” serves Rick’s overall story. Will less canon-heavy seasons be the norm moving forward? Or is some new, complex story still developing in the background? Plus, what exactly does he know about the whereabouts of Evil Morty?

Before getting to Season Eight, I wanted to ask you about Season Seven. Specifically, why was the decision made to kill Rick Prime then as opposed to, say, a series finale?

It was certainly important to us to do it in the middle of the season, because our fans look at the show under a magnifying glass and they’re aware of our chess moves. So, we were like, “We can’t keep giving them a Star Wars-y big, epic finale.” I don’t want to train them to expect that. 

But we had a lot of back-and-forth on killing Rick Prime. There were some parties that were like, “How cool would it be to have two big bads that are helixing in the universe?” But (series creator) Dan Harmon made a compelling point, which was, “Evil Morty’s our guy. I know Rick Prime is really tantalizing, and he’s weaved in so effortlessly. He’s always been there. He’s this guy we can track back to day one, but why don’t we use him to just boost Evil Morty even higher? Evil Morty doesn’t have a lot of screen time yet in the show, and he’s so widely loved and there’s so much interest. Let’s make a move or two that just shows how shrewd he is and really put him on the pedestal that people already put him on. They won’t see it coming that Rick neutralizes this guy here. So, he does it, and Evil Morty leaves with the plans for the Omega Device that gives Evil Morty the nuclear weapon — that gives him everything.” 

It felt like it made things a little simpler for us moving forward, and it made our bad guy even more suped-up.

Given that, what were the thoughts about the arc this season? I read that you saw this season as having a “light arc.”

I would say, like most seasons, we could have great intentions, but it’s ultimately what’s bringing Harmon joy on any given day. So, I have to be pretty free-flowing and not locked into a backbone that I might want for a season, because we don’t break our episodes in the order that you see them. Even if I want to talk about an episode on a given day, Harmon may come in giggling about something completely different, and I have to be loose enough to put my idea on a shelf and talk about this one and see if we can nurture it into an episode. 

I talk about working with him as being like a Ghostbuster, and he’s like my proton pack that I’m trying to fire him on a story. Our story is a ghost, and he’s the craziest, funniest guy ever. If I can get him to latch onto that story, it becomes the greatest episode ever. So, my job as a Ghostbuster is to just try to wield Harmon and get him to flow toward something.

Anyway, I’d say light arcs are a result of the fact that I can’t fully control the flow of a season. I know this show can’t handle bigger arcs because we don’t break them in a sequential way that would allow me to do that. I feel like I’m getting away with something if we’re able to build in a light arc that he can handle. 

The online fandom of Rick and Morty is very canon-focused, but at most, a season might have two or three episodes dedicated to canon.

For real. If you look at the show under a real jeweler’s loop, the canon is few and far between. That said, there’s been a nice evolution, and a lot of it is my time here and Harmon allowing me to hold on to great people. The staff that we have now — we’re writing Season 11 — are the best of the best of all the people that I started with at the beginning of my time here. We’ve had great retention, and all these people can write the show great now. And now that Harmon feels that, he feels less of a burden to be the sole bearer of canon, because he felt like it was too much pressure. He knew every fan wanted it, and he knew he couldn’t make every fan happy, so he didn’t want to engage in it. 

When I started in Season Four, he was like, “I don’t want to do canon.” His favorite type of an episode is a standalone. If our show could be like Star Trek and Rick and Morty are just coming in on a mission-of-the-week, he’d prefer that, but I got to be a fan of the show before I got to work for it, and I’m like, “Harmon, I love those episodes, but I’d be disappointed in a season that was all that.” It took me proving myself in Seasons Four and Five for him to be like, “You could do a little bit of canon here.”

By the end of writing Season Five, I was like, “Dude, if we get out of this season without people having gotten a taste of Evil Morty, they’re going to lose their goddamn minds.” He was so happy with the work we were doing in Five, he was like, “Let’s go nuts.” So then we did that big one with Rick’s backstory, and he really let us lose. We went for it, it went over well with him and it didn’t kill him. After that, he asked me, “What would your ideal season be?” I said, “Not one-and-dones. A couple one-and-dones, a couple that split my brain, a couple that are just silly.” That’s Rick and Morty. I love that Rick and Morty could be anything.

We don’t want to do huge canon every season because it’s a lot and it’s got a lot of gravity. I like being able to do some seasons that are lighter. Like with Season Eight, we found a nice vein that’s just the Beths. We have Gromflomites that get Space Beth going, and we see that she’s kind of unhappy. Then the treehouse episode shows that both Beths are kind of stuck in the mud. Then we’ve got this finale that organically lets Memory Rick go into Beth’s brain, and that leads to the Beths being pitted against each other. We found a cool thread that we felt like was enough canon.

There were a lot of people asking, “How did Rick get easier going in Season Eight?” My answer to that is that Rick got a little chiller because he was with BugAnne behind-the-scenes in Season Eight. We’ve wanted to give Rick a love interest for a long time, and we were like, “Who could live up to Diane?” We put a lot of pressure on it originally, but it ended up making sense to us that Rick would feel comfortable with BugAnne, someone that was like an old work friend. She was vetted, and she knew him at different stages of his life, so it was just easy. 

We didn’t want to put a lot of pressure on it. We had another thing or two where she may have popped up in the season, but we thought it was neat that she’s in one of the first episodes in the most subtle way, and we see that she shows a little bit of interest in him. Then, Rick is nurturing something that no one knows about. Also, Rick’s a little chiller because Rick killed his bad guy in Season Seven and Rick is trying to move on from it. He’s trying to figure out what’s next.

That’s also why he pulled Diane out of his head in the finale. He discovered that he’s never really going to move on if he’s got a lingering piece that’s never going to let him forget about her.

Was that a hard decision, letting Diane go in that way? Because it’s very sad. 

We felt like we found something that hit on two things. He is like, “This is heartbreaking, but at least Memory Rick gets to enjoy her.” The two of them will go off, and they’ll have each other and get a nice happy ending. Meanwhile, “I’m Rick Sanchez, I don’t deserve a happy ending.” Rick would think this is all, sadly, how it’s all supposed to go.

Was it a conscious choice not to include Evil Morty this season?

It was. Generally, we don’t want to owe him every season. We’ve got incredible plans for him, but we didn’t want to hustle into him. We felt like fans could breathe. I don’t mind them feeling the pattern of us hitting Evil Morty every other season. That’s okay. We ended up having things we were excited about, and I didn’t feel like we needed an Evil Morty one to take up a slot in a season that felt complete to me. But he will be coming, and people are going to be really thrilled with what we’ve got. We’ve got a full arc of something that’s so satisfying that people are going to be pumped.

This show has the highest-class problem in that we could be going on indefinitely. So, we need to keep figuring out, “What do we do?” If this series ended in 10 seasons, we could have given the most satisfying ending, but here we are with this amazing situation in that we could keep going. So, we’re talking about perhaps things that create a new saga moving forward since we’re in the early days of Season 11 right now. That’s not to say that one door is completely closing and another door is completely opening, but it’d be impossible for me to lie and tell you that I have a 30-year plan for Evil Morty.

If Season Eight had a light arc and Season Seven had a heavier one, what might Season Nine have?

Nine’s definitely got some big stuff coming. It’s perhaps our best, most complete season since I’ve been here. It’s weird being so far ahead and having something that’s so damn good. I hate how long I have to wait for everyone to see it because it’s going to knock people over.