‘Rick and Morty’ Fans Are Upset That Season Seven Is All ‘Rick,’ No ‘And Morty’
With last night’s reflective episode “Air Force Wong” in the books, Rick and Morty Season Seven is 30 percent complete. Meanwhile, many Rick and Morty fans wonder if Adult Swim and Dan Harmon forgot about the latter 50 percent of the show’s title.
Thus far, Rick and Morty Season Seven has been a much more contained and character-focused entry into the Rick and Morty canon compared to previous seasons — and, unsurprisingly, the character in focus is Rick, the mortal deity whose massive power and mental blocks make the rest of the high-concept sci-fi rigamarole both possible and compelling. In the first three episodes respectively, Rick and Morty has examined Rick’s relationship with his friends, his son-in-law and himself (by way of Christina Hendricks and Susan Sarandon, of course.) But the one important Rick relationship that has seen unsettlingly little exploration is Rick’s partnership with his grandson — you know, the kid with his name on the title card?
The reliably rabid online fandom for Rick and Morty have taken note of Morty’s conspicuous absence from the major story arcs of the first few episodes of Season Seven. On Twitter and in the show’s subreddit, the fans who once forced McDonald’s to resurrect a certain dipping sauce are voicing their vexation with the show that they’ve simply renamed Rick.
“It has been 3 episodes and Rick has not gone on any adventures with Morty,” reads the top comment of the post-episode discussion thread of “Air Force Wong” in the Rick and Morty subreddit. “I do not know if this is a new formula they are trying out, but I think at this point of the series you should have Rick and Morty have an episode together within the first 3 episodes of a season.”
Others have posted similar complaints since the conclusion of last night’s episode — one fan posted a cropped image of the title card that only shows “Rick” with the caption, “Loving this direction.” Many commenters have conjectured that Morty’s minuscule role in the first few episodes of the season are due to Harmon and his writers having no faith in Harry Belden, the voice actor chosen to replace Justin Roiland in the role of Morty, though that would beg the question of why they would even cast Belden in the first place if they didn’t think he could pull of the impersonation.
Not all fans share this sentiment, even if it seems to be the dominant narrative on the internet’s largest Rick and Morty fan forum. One user sarcastically quipped about how the complaints about Morty’s screen time and performance overshadowed actual discussion about “Air Force Wong,” writing, “The community: I like it better when the child predator was here. It’s a good episode.”
Whether or not the outcry among fans over the new and invisible Morty stems from the hordes of Roiland defenders who have been decrying the new voices since before they were even unveiled, it certainly seems that, within the next few episodes, Morty will be a much more involved participant. This Sunday’s episode title reads “That’s Amorte” with “Unmortricken” airing the following week.
With presumably Morty-heavy episodes on the horizon, the complainers of the Rick and Morty fandom will have to move on to a new reason why Rick and Morty hasn’t been good in half a decade. It’s only a matter of time before we start seeing nostalgia posts wondering why we haven’t had a second episode devoted to the Giant Incest Baby.
