Rick and Morty Season 7 made a big shift in the overall canon of the series in the middle of its run, and the co-creator behind it all opened up about why that episode aired in the middle of the season rather than the finale! As Rick and Morty fans had noticed with the past few seasons of the series, as the Adult Swim animated original continued to add more lore to the overall series’ canon, it decided to do so with big season finales that offered up some major status quo shifts for the next season to pick up on.ย
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But that wasn’t the case with Season 7 of the series. Rick and Morty had a huge shift right in the middle of the season with the release of “Unmortricken,” and what ended up being a surprise was the fact that the finale, while big in its own right, wasn’t as huge of an event as the fifth episode. Speaking to Variety, Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon explained why “Unmorticken” ended up airing so early in the season and why “Fear No Mort” ended up as the finale.ย
Rick and Morty: Why “Unmortricken” Wasn’t the Finale
“Obviously, there was probably at some point the possibility of saving our big mythology episode with Rick Prime [Episode 5, “Unmortricken”] for the finale,” Harmon began before explaining that it ended up airing so early because of when it was pitched in the process. “But it was more a matter of when that episode was pitched, with ย younger writers saying, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed throughout all of this readjustment behind the scenes, but we haven’t thrown the loyal fan this promised red meat in a while.’”
“It was very easy for me to lose track of when’s the last time we serviced the one-armed man of it all,” Harmon continued. “That’s why that very tremendous episode ended up smack in the middle of the season. As far as the ‘fear hole’ being a big finale, at the price of extreme disruption of our process, but I think that wiser people than me always knew that this would make a good finale this episode.”
Rick and Mortyย Season 8 isย now in the works for a release in 2025.ย Rick and Morty: The Animeย will release with Adult Swim and Max later this year.ย