In the secrets of Rick & Morty: Dan Harmon’s recipe to maintain madness
After more than 70 episodes to reinvent the laws of the series “Mindfuck”, Rick & Morty come back for an ever more barred season 8. But how can we continue to surprise when you have already exploded everything? Dan Harmon and his team reveal the secrets of a series that fits controlled chaos.
“This is one of my favorite seasons. One of the most successful, I think! It’s quite crazy that after all these years, we are still so surprised when you open a script. I don’t know how the authors do to get to that …” Sarah Chalke Double Beth for 12 years. And she will still be the impediment to go in circles in season 8 of Rick & Mortywhich has just started (on max in France). An ever more barred new chapter, but a little less introspective than the previous one, as the showrunner confirms to us Scott MARDER :: “We do not ignore the central elements that nourish the long -term series. But this year is certainly more oriented on fun. Season 7 has been very intense in my opinion, and season 8 has the effect of great breathing.”
After 70 episodes of intergalactic absurd, metaphysical chaos, clones and killers, continuing to surprise the feat. How to renew the unexpected? “Dan Harmon likes to pretend that TV was broken … that is to say that we can offer any idea, even the craziest, and it can turn into an episode”try to explain Marder. No rules, no boxes: the series continues to redefine, flirting permanently with its own limits.
“We are currently preparing season 10, and everything is still written very easily, everything comes naturally, without forcing. There is the same fluidity as there are several seasons, and that is cool.”
Dan Harmonthe iconic creator who had already done strongly with Community In the 2010s, went further by explaining that she had sought from the start to torpedo the tropisms of US TV, without ever being afraid of ridicule: “We decided to do too much from the start! And this is now part of the DNA of the show.” Result ? No artificial suspense, no great revelation kept under the elbow for long seasons.
“Will Eve be killed in Killing Eve? Are we going to find who killed Laura Palmer? Will Mulder find his sister in X-Files? We chose to avoid this process. From the first seasons, we put everything on the table, without wondering if an element could upset the story. It helps us never to be trapped by our own narration.
This refusal of the shackles also involves a flexible, moving, almost organic production, which does not obey any rigid roadmap. No frame scribbled on a black panel or post-it hung on a wall. “Our scripts are like works of clay”resumes MARDER. “We can reshape them to the urge, as the production progresses. An episode can be completely different at the end of what we had imagined at the start.” Total flexibility. “We always rewrite things depending on the current, depending on the moment.” Intense operation, which intrinsically imposes, in return, an overload of work: “At each stage, we can have things to take up. But it’s worth working like that.”
But then where do all these ideas come from? Brittle the myth of the lonely genius that invents profusely, Dan Harmon does not have a small secret notebook full of revolutionary concepts at the bottom of his pocket, which he takes everywhere with him: “The best, I believe is to make ideas with the authors in a meeting. Because today, with Reddit and the networks, the public is increasingly difficult to impress.” So rather than looking for the good idea that will explode the internet, the team favors collective emulsion.
“If you think you can amaze everyone with a completely crazy and never seen idea, you are wrong! An end to the Star Wars sauce? Someone has already thought about it! There are even people who have written fanfictions on it. So arriving with a bright idea ready in his pocket, is, in my opinion, the best way to plant. Getting the simple good idea.
Perfect example of this assumed creative madness: the episode Matrix which opens season 8 today (on max). A total delirium, born of a postulate as absurd as it is great: Rick punishes children in his own way … and ends up forgetting them in a simulation! Classic. But the twist is Summer, stuck so long in this digital oven that she comes out mentally transformed – with the mind of an adult who has lived a whole parallel life. “Someone launched this idea indoors, and we embroidered around”entrust the two main screenwriters of Rick & Morty. “We absolutely had to be done, but honestly, we didn’t know exactly where we were going …” It is precisely this freedom, this letting go, which allowed the episode of mutating towards something else, going so far as to explore war and its trauma – via the intrigue of Morty – an old realistic animation fantasy that the team has kept in a corner of its head for a while.
If Dan Harmon Can allow itself to apprehend the rest of its animated series with this releasing rebelliousness, it is also because it was renewed in the very long term by Warner Bros. Season 8 begins, season 9 is already under production, season 10 is in writing, and the seasons 11 and 12 are in the starting blocks. The creator does not need to seek the concept that kills to relaunch interest or audiences. And he admits that it is absolutely not what he is looking for: “I do not know if I would be able to renew myself and again … But now that we have explored the mythology of Rick, we can go further! We have told all the stories that really define the character and his universe. So we can go beyond these achievements and do things less centered on the big quests or revelations, and more about what happens to the characters.“Even if it should go against the desires of the fanbase and networks, which take more pleasure in fantasizing the contours of Rick’s mythology:
“Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the series for some, because I know that the public is not so much in the post-reception. But for me, that’s where I find a new energy. I prefer to ask myself what I feel and I start to explore the feelings of the characters from this angle. Then, I mix it with a tin pistol and a diarrhea radius and hop …
Season 8 of Rick & Morty in 10 episodes will continue until July 27, 2025 on Max with one episode per week
