When Adult Swim announced plans to produce an additional 70 episodes of Rick and Morty, it became clear the show had an exciting future on the network. However, the series was embroiled in controversy this past January, prompting fans to wonder whether it could reach a premature end.
As we're sure you all remember, co-creator and lead voice star Justin Roiland was charged with domestic violence. While those charges were later dismissed, the damage had already been done both to him and, to a lesser extent, the series itself.
Between revealing exposés about his conduct behind the scenes and the fact a series of very offensive comments from the past resurfaced, it was clear Adult Swim wasn't going to ever consider bringing Roiland back into the fold, even after the legal case against him was dropped.
We've since learned that "sound-alikes" will be used to bring Rick, Morty, and the rest of Roiland's characters to life in the show, though there's still no update on who will be enlisted to play any of them (perhaps due to the SAG-AFTRA strike).
Talking to the Los Angeles Times (via SFFGazette.com), Rick and Morty executive producer Steve Levy opened up on what the series has been through since Roiland's dismissal.
"We had a rug pulled from underneath us," he admits. "The only people we could lean on were each other. It would have been very easy to just say, 'I'm done and I don’t want to do anything with this show anymore.' But our crew said, 'No, we’re not going to let one person drag down all of our hard work.'"
"This show is created by this team - this family of incredibly hardworking people, and we are going to push through and show the world that we aren’t going to miss a beat. The work that we’re doing across the board has only gotten better. When the new season comes out, we’ll focus on how amazing it all turned out."
"We hope the fans will realize that this is the same old show," Levy concluded, "maybe even better!"
It doesn't seem like Roiland will be missed, that's for sure, and the producer obviously has no concerns about a dip in quality without him there to lend his voice to the show's leads. If even a fraction of what we've heard about the actor's behaviour is any indication, then his absence will likely come as a relief to the creative team!
Rick and Morty is currently expected to return to Adult Swim later this year.