Rick and Morty’s New Episodes Surprise Fans With Major Streaming Change (And It’s Great)

Rick and Morty Season 8 is now streaming on platforms like HBO Max and Hulu, and it turns out that Adult Swim was hard at work behind the scenes on getting the new episodes to streaming faster than ever before. When Adult Swim announced Rick and Morty Season 8’s release date, it also surprisingly confirmed its streaming launch date at the same time. This was a major reveal in its own right, but was even more notable as it was clear that fans would not have to wait several months after the season’s broadcast run this time around, as with seasons past.

Rick and Morty Season 8 had one of the fastest streaming premieres on HBO Max compared to prior seasons. Usually, fans would have to wait half a year after the final episode of the season aired on Adult Swim before it would be available for streaming, but those at Adult Swim have revealed, with special messages on LinkedIn (as spotted by @RegularTweetsUK on X), that they actually worked with HBO Max to shorten its streaming release window to just 30 days instead.

Adult Swim Worked With HBO Max to Stream Rick and Morty Season 8 Faster

As revealed through LinkedIn posts from both VP Head of Production for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim Heather Laird and Patty Everett, who led the marketing strategy for the company, Adult Swim worked to shorten the streaming release window for Rick and Morty Season 8 from five months to just 30 days from its linear broadcast premiere. They attribute the success of the new Rick and Morty episodes on the platform to this new shortened window, and it’s hard to deny, as the show really has been dominating HBO Max’s Top TV Shows list since it debuted.

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It’s a major shift for Rick and Morty’s streaming availability as it now more closely aligns with Warner Bros.’ overall release strategy with HBO Max. Many of Adult Swim’s newest shows are available for streaming with HBO Max the day after their initial premieres (including the upcoming premiere of Smiling Friends Season 3 later this fall), but Rick and Morty was one of the few projects that had been established long before HBO Max existed that Adult Swim is supporting in this way. With this change, the animated series will be able to better meet that streaming demand.

What Does This Mean for Rick and Morty’s Future?

It’s not yet clear whether this new 30-day window before streaming will be in place for Rick and Morty‘s future seasons, but it would be a welcome change. Part of what makes Rick and Morty so fun is all of the conversation around the newest episodes, but linear television habits are changing dramatically. More viewers are keeping up via streaming platforms these days, and that’s especially true for adult animation. As these audiences shift, these classic shows need to change their tactics, too.

This shorter release window might not be fast enough for even those fans who are hoping to see the new episodes as they premiere with Adult Swim each week, but this now means that they will only have to wait a month after the final episode releases to see it for themselves. With new Rick and Morty seasons continuing their hot streak of airing all of their episodes within a single span of a few months (without a huge break during the season, as was the case in some seasons past), it’s encouraging to see these newer seasons make a speedier streaming debut.

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