Rick and Morty Producer Talks the Difficulties in Growing Rick as a Character

Rick And Morty’s fifth season saw the grandfather and grandson team understanding one another that much more, realizing that they worked far better as a team than separate from one another, and in a recent interview, the showrunner of the series went into detail about the difficulties that arise from attempting to grow the character of the Smith family’s resident scientist. While Rick’s character has seen progression over the seasons of the Adult Swim series, it’s clear that Sanchez still has a long way to go before he can defeat his depression and inner demons.

The focus on the fifth season has focused a lot on the idea of loss and the connections that can be made within one’s life, with Morty dealing with his heart being broken by Planetina and Rick attempting to bring back one of his best friends in Bird Person while also struggling with the tragic events of his past. With the grand finale of the fifth season seeing the Citadel collapsing, which was once the society that housed numerous alternate reality versions of Rick and Morty, the universe of the Smith family has changed fundamentally while also giving fans a much better idea of the events that took place in Sanchez’s past which led to the current events of the unstoppable series.

Showrunner and Executive Producer Scott Marder recently discussed many different aspects of the series while joining the podcast, Interdimensional RSS: The Unofficial Rick And Morty Podcast, diving deep into how difficult it is to grow Rick’s character over the years while still keeping his core personality in check:

“It’s a constant push and pull on an episode by episode basis. Something that goes right in line with that is just the fact that he’s effectively a god in so many ways. So many ways it’s like he could easily get us out of this jam, how do we figure out a way to get around that we never really want to gimp him in like a lame way. In the same way we don’t want to gimp him in a Superman way, we also don’t want to gimp him in an emotional way.

It’s important to us to keep Rick, Rick, so we’re always trying to play that game cause A, the show has got a long life ahead of it so you don’t suddenly want to make him Mr. Rogers, and not make him this unrecognizable character that we love. We all love what makes Rick, Rick, as well. From our eyes, the longer he spends time with the family and he isn’t just this lone rogue Rick floating around the world, through osmosis he’s becoming a little bit more human but we think he sheds that whenever he can.”

What do you think of the progression we’ve seen in Rick’s character so far? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Adult Swim.