‘Rick and Morty’ Fans Debate Whether They Actually Want the Show to Last A Hundred Years
“A hundred years Rick and Morty” has long been the rallying cry of the show’s fandom, but, on average, an animated comedy can’t go longer than a couple decades before everyone wishes it would finally die.
On May 25th, Rick and Morty Season 8 will premiere on Adult Swim, more than 11 years after what became the channel’s biggest hit premiered one snowy evening in December, 2013. In the time since the show first launched, the Rick and Morty writing staff and its notoriously rabid online fandom have transformed the series from a nerd-beloved comedy show to a cultural force capable of forcing McDonald’s to change its menu, as the brave fast food workers who survived the Szechuan Sauce calamity of 2018 can attest.
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In recent years, Rick and Morty has gone through ups and downs in both tone and quality, and the fandom has grown significantly more tame, both trends that the disgraced former Rick and Morty star and creator Justin Roiland helped to intensify throughout his infamous flame-out from the show. While Rick and Morty Season 7 was a welcome course-correction and a proper return to form, some fans in the Rick and Morty subreddit wonder how long the show can keep going on like this before the titular duo become as tired and worn-out as the Simpsons family they once turned into splattery yellow roadkill.
In a viral thread titled, “Should Rick and Morty aim to be an ‘infinite show’ like Family Guy, or a finite, traditional story like BoJack Horseman?” Rick and Morty fans expressed their strong feelings about the show's future with all the most appropriate all-caps quotes lifted straight from the pilot.
“RICK AND MORTY FOREVER AND FOREVER A HUNDRED YEARS,” the top comment reads.
“It will go on as long as there is money in it, even if it becomes completely pointless. Like Simpsons or Family guy,” a pessimistic Rick and Morty fan said of the show's potential endlessness, “Bojack Horseman was simply too niche to pull it off. But those are the rules of the entertainment market. Why should they be different here.”
On the other side of the spectrum, one Redditor opined, “I think they should end it soon honestly, I love this show and rewatch it a lot but we all know what happens when an amazing show is dragged out for to long.”
Now, there are some obvious differences between Rick and Morty and the oft-mentioned long-running comedy shows that overstay their welcome, such as Family Guy and The Simpsons. For one, Rick and Morty does not take place in a floating timeline like the other two shows, as it leans towards episodic storytelling rather than isolated storylines where the universe reverts to factory setting after each end credits. Rick and Morty characters develop and change as the seasons go on, and, although their ages stay the same, the relationships between them are always growing more complex.
Rick and Morty also has actual storylines that change the universe as they go along, unlike Family Guy and The Simpsons. But while Rick and Morty may contain multi-season story arcs with beginnings and endings, that doesn't necessarily mean that the show itself is approaching a planned conclusion. In fact, Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon has gone on record saying that he isn't steering Rick and Morty towards any particular ending, telling The Wrap in 2022, “As far as the longevity of the show, to me, it just feels infinite."
“I think a good TV show is one that lasts 1000 episodes,” Harmon continued, "You don’t design a paper airplane to land at a certain spot a certain distance for you. A good paper airplane is the one that stays in the air forever, and that’s impossible but you fold it in a way that that’s the goal.”
Eleven years into its run, Rick and Morty is only at 71 episodes, so, if anything, Rick's prediction from the pilot is too conservative – 100 years won't be nearly enough time to hit Harmon's benchmark of 1000 episodes, not unless Rick and Morty are willing to mess with time again.
