‘Rick and Morty’ Co-Creator Explains Why Season 3 Is Cut Short

Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon is known for his perfectionist approach to showrunning after the success of both Community and the Adult Swim animated series, but that’s served to hurt his shows.

Though being announced to run for 14 episodes this year, Rick and Morty‘s long-awaited third season will end after this Sunday’s 10th. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Harmon explained why he blames himself for the season wrapping earlier than originally planned.

“I’m still learning how to do the show efficiently while catering to the perfectionist in all of us,” said Harmon. “I would like to think I’ve learned enough from my mistakes in season 3 that we could definitely do 14 now, but then I have to say, ‘Yeah but you’re the guy who says we can do 14 who turned out to be wrong so we’re not listening to you now.’”

Harmon understands that he has to be able to prove he can run the show successfully before mounting lofty expectations, and that he’s wading into uncharted territory for himself.

“The nice healthy way to approach this is I want to prove it with the first 10 of season 4 — prove it to ourselves, to production, to the network — that it’s so easy that we’ll earn additional episodes,” Harmon said. “Because I never got this far [working on NBC’s] Community. I fell apart in season 3 of Community and got fired in season 4. Now I’m about to do season 4 of Rick and Morty and want to prove that I’ve grown.”

How To Be A Perfectionist

Harmon understands the lofty expectations of fans when it comes to Rick and Morty — even when some of them are ridiculous. But with a show as popular as this animated series, he strives to continue maintaining a perfect record.

“We don’t believe in the concept of ‘this one’s allowed to be shitty.’ With Community, Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan, who worked on Scrubs for 8 years, said, ‘Look, man, you’re stressing yourself out a lot … stop killing yourself, let one of these be a standard house number.’

“We did that a couple times on Community and the thing that should wake me up is they’re some great episodes where I kind of went, ‘Okay fine this isn’t that important of an episode,’ and end up doing something fun that feels like proper TV,” said Harmon.

That has actually worked out in the show’s favor from time to time, forcing creativity under specific parameters and a deadline, resulting in some fan-favorite episodes in the series.

“My obsessiveness is an enemy that needs to be fought. On Rick and Morty we haven’t really gotten there,” Harmon said. “The closest we got was The Purge episode because we hit a brick wall trying to do the finale.”

Planning The Purge

“Because we couldn’t figure out the finale I was allowed to just crap out this Purge Planet idea because it was a way to solve the scheduling emergency,” Harmon said. “Let’s just do a one-off and move it up on the schedule and let the finale be a cliffhanger instead of a two-parter.”

His comments offer some insight into the making of “The Wedding Squanchers” and “Look Who’s Purging Now,” both of which are highly regarded among fans of the show.

“And that Purge episode is fun and great,” Harmon said. “I can feel it’s ‘good enough’ quality. I think the audience would vote unanimously for the idea of 14 episodes instead of 10 on the condition that 4 of them would be [Purge Planet level] episodes.”

But that kind of pressure doesn’t always translate, and at the end of the day Harmon wants to deliver satisfying episodes for fans who obsess over the show.

He’s working toward living up to the expectations, and that’s more than enough.