Adult Swim debuts the Rick and Morty season 4 trailer and announces a release date for the series’ long-awaited return. The animated series chronicling the hilarious and often surprisingly poignant adventures of a misanthropic mad scientist and his put-upon grandson is set to return this fall with a 10-episode season.
Mr. Poopybutthole promised us it would be a long wait for season 4, and he’s certainly been true to his word. It’s been just over two years since the finale of season 3, which saw Rick begrudgingly accept Jerry back as a member of the family, or as he put it in his inimitable manner, “No amount of genius can stop your dumb, mediocre, vacuous roots from digging into everything and everyone around you and draining them of any ability to fend you off.” Now, fans have a new look at the upcoming Rick and Morty season 4 along with an official date of when it will return.
The trailer was posted by Adult Swim, giving us the first look at the return of “The smartest Rick and Mortiest Morty.” It knowingly promises “half the season you deserve,” in reference to how long fans have had to wait for it, along with references to the likes of Akira and Doctor Strange in the type typical of the show that are so blatant they’re lampshaded rather than any attempt being made to hide them. Also seen is the return of characters such as Mr. Poopybutthole, Gearhead and Mr. Meeseeks, numerous new weird and wonderful alien creatures, and what seems to be some kind of fantasy world that will doubtless satirize the genre’s surging popularity.
For a while, the future of the show was uncertain, as quite some time went by without any word of the show’s status, and it wasn’t until seven months after the end of season 3 that Adult Swim announced the renewal, which, rather than a specific number of seasons, consisted of an order for 70 episodes. Given that season 1 has 11 episodes and seasons 2, 3 and 4 consist of 10, basic math would suggest that the upcoming season 4 could be the first of seven new seasons of adventures across the multiverse. Having such leeway in the commission means that season 5 was in the process of being written even before seasons 4’s air date had been finalized, which series creator Dan Harmon explained as a preventative measure against the “ridiculous” gap between seasons 3 and 4 being repeated.
The trailer promises that the quality of the show hasn’t dipped in its long absence, and that it has retained everything audiences love about it, such as Rick’s snarky zingers, the sadistic sense of humor, gratuitous violence and seemingly boundless sci-fi imagination. Although it’s disappointing only five episodes will play in the season’s first block, that does take us well into December when many shows start to go on hiatus for the holidays anyway, and hopefully we’ll only have to wait until January to watch the second half of Rick and Morty season 4.
Next: Rick & Morty Theory: Evil Morty Is A Rick
Source: Adult Swim
