Rick and Morty Writer Speaks Out on Season 3 Backlash
One Rick and Morty writer is speaking out on some of the backlash over changes in the writer's room back in the third season of the series! As the Adult Swim original animated series is getting ready to return later this year with Season 6, fans have been spending the current time looking back on everything that's come so far. It's been getting better with each season, and the third season provided a major turning point behind the series. Not only did this season have many of the series' most memorable episodes (sometimes infamously), but there were also some changes behind the scenes.
There was a greater effort to expand the Rick and Morty's third season writer's room with more female writers, and it led to a notable backlash from some fans of the series. It led to all sorts of criticism from both within and outside of the series' fandom, and ultimately is something that, compounded with other elements, left a mark on the series going forward. Series writer Sara Carbiener opened up about the response to the changes in the writer's room for Rick and Morty Season 3, and notes that now the response has been to the work itself rather than the campaign outside of it.
Speaking with ScreenRant about the response to the third season, Carbiener stated, "It's been nice. I think that the change of opinion seems to have happened amongst a vocal minority of people who were — and maybe I'm misremembering — who were upset about some of the new writers on the show for various reasons." Continuing further, Carbiener stated, "So it always felt like some of the backlash was just about changes that were being made to who was working on the show on the creative side. It didn't really feel like the show was earning that so much as decisions the show made about who to put in the writers' room...I think that once time passed and once that very, very vocal minority got over it and moved on to other things to be angry about..."
Carbiener also noted how the response to the third season has changed as those vocal about the writer's room changes moved on, "It's just kind of nice to get to see the show stand on its own because yeah, from my perspective, any sort of disappointment, it never felt like it was about the work...I don't think they can stay frustrated because women have continued to work on the show, so if that was gonna be a sticking point, I think they kind of had to be like, 'Alright, we're just gonna have to let that go.'...But if there were other things making people upset about season 3, I don't remember those, so I can't speak to that."
The third season was infamous for not only this response, but for episodes such as "Pickle Rick." The episode itself went on to be an award winning entry for the series, but it became one of the main episodes pointed to as flawed. The third season premiere also led to the Szechuan Sauce fiasco, so it's just a perfect storm of things that really changed how the series was looked at going forward. But what did you think of Rick and Morty Season 3? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments!