Justin Roiland will be leaving Rick and Morty as felony charges against the voice actor and co-creator became public this past month. Rick and Morty will go on, but Adult Swim will no longer associate itself with Roiland. He was charged with one count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, or deceit in Orange County. The incident occurred in 2020 with an unnamed Jane Doe that Roiland was dating. He pleaded not guilty and hearings are still ongoing. Roiland’s attorney expects the case to be dismissed, but Adult Swim cut ties with Roiland anyway.

Rick and Morty is going to go through some big changes since Roiland voiced both Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith, as well as every iteration of their characters throughout the multiverse. Rick and Morty will have to be recast, and the infamously meta television show will likely have to explain why its two main characters sound different all of a sudden. Co-creator Dan Harmon will remain the sole showrunner now that Roiland has been dropped. Rick and Morty will stay in capable hands as the show has added many more creatives to its staff over the years.

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Rick and Morty Will Go On

     Adult Swim

Rick and Morty will remain on the air, despite the massive changes. The show is Adult Swim’s most popular title and one of the most famous animated shows on television. Rick and Morty is in the middle of fulfilling a huge 70-episode order. Even though it’s only in its sixth season, the show is locked in through Season 10. But as Rick and Morty’s crew starts to work on their seventh season, they’ll have to find a way to replace the voices of the show’s titular characters. No doubt it will certainly be a jarring change, as it has been with animated shows in the past.

In fact, this has happened before on Adult Swim. Some older millennials will remember the late-night Hanna-Barbera parody Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The show didn’t lose its title character, but another character (Phil Ken Sebben) had to be replaced when voice actor Stephen Colbert left to star in his own show, The Colbert Report. The next season, the character was voiced by someone different and the show promptly failed, getting canceled by the end of that season. Many fans thought Colbert’s character had been the comedic heart of the show.

But Rick and Morty is a more self-aware program. When Harvey Birdman lost Stephen Colbert, they replaced his character with a twin and tried to write it off like it had been a joke. The audience didn’t take this lightly, and many people saw it as a mistake. Rick and Morty knows its viewers won’t be satisfied with a simple bait and switch. They know a good portion of their audience will go into Season 7 aware of this huge shake-up, and those that find out by watching the show will look for an explanation both on and off the screen.

How to Replace Justin Roiland

     Warner Bros. Television

Rick and Morty will have to replace Justin Roiland. It’s as simple as that. It means recasting both Rick and Morty, and it likely means there will be some changes to their process in the writer’s room. Roiland helped run the show and also contributed to some of the show’s more improvisational moments. You can see his style of comedy most clearly in his show Solar Opposites. But a greater portion of Rick and Morty has been written by staff writers than it has by its creators in recent years. Even the “Pickle Rick” episode was famously written by guest writer Jessica Gao. So now that Justin Roiland has been removed, there will be more room for these talented writers to express themselves. Any change in tone Rick and Morty experiences will be a pivot that needed to come to the show eventually. The crew will just have to focus their skill on preserving the spirit of the show and separating it from any of Roiland’s ill will.

The show’s “new age” writers are more than capable of whipping a new Rick and Morty into shape. Rob Schrab is an old friend and collaborator of Dan Harmon’s who has recently been brought on as a writer. Anne Lane helped write and produce Tuca & Bertie which, if you haven’t seen it, you should really check it out. Nick Rutherford, aside from working on several other Adult Swim shows, has written for Saturday Night Live and Axe Cop. Scott Marder has written for both BoJack Horseman and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Siobhan Thompson regularly improvises comedy and narrative on Dimension 20. To put it simply, there is more than enough talent in that writer’s room to not only keep the soul of the show intact but to write their way around this big change.

The voices will be the most… audible difference to the show. Who they cast to replace Roiland will have to fill a few different roles. Sure, they’ll have to be a talented actor, but they will also have to really connect with Rick and Morty at its heart. Will they get one person who can do two voices? Will they find two different actors who sound similar to Roiland? Or will they just get Maurice LaMarche to do it? Whoever they choose will have to be good, and they’ll have to fit into whatever explanation the writers come up with for the change. It’s not going to be easy. But these are some of the best artists on television, and they’re ready for this challenge.