Rick And Morty Season 5 - What We Know So Far
New episodes can never seem to come quickly enough for fans of the Adult Swim animated series Rick and Morty, who have found themselves in a familiar position: waiting, with no firm idea of when their wait will end. At the moment, they (who are we kidding: we) are waiting for the final five episodes of season 4, which aired its front five between November and December of last year before going on hiatus.
Rick and Morty has an even more intensive production process than many animated shows, which we'll get to in a moment — but at times, during these long Rick-less and Morty-free stretches in between airings, it can seem like its producers simply enjoy keeping fans endlessly pining for more episodes. In May 2018, long after its third season had completed, Rick and Morty received a whopping 70-episode renewal from Adult Swim, so we know that there are truckloads of new adventures on the way — but for the time being, we don't even know exactly when season 4 will resume (perhaps because Rick and Summer are currently stuck fighting off waves of android Mortys in a Pringles commercial).
Unfortunately, that means that we know even less about the status of Rick and Morty season 5 — but, using the information we do have on hand, we can make some educated guesses about when we can expect to see it, who will be involved, and when we might know more. If you're as anxious for more Rick and Morty as we are, you might want to bookmark this page, because we'll be updating it with any and all new info whenever it becomes available.
When will Rick and Morty season 5 be released?
Since that big, fat renewal has allowed Rick and Morty creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon to toil nearly exclusively on the series, we can say with reasonable certainty that the waits between seasons will no longer be as interminable as they were early in the series' run. Assuming that the fifth season's production schedule doesn't end up looking much different from that of season 4, we can field a pretty decent guess as to when we might see its premiere.
The first substantial trailer for season 4 debuted at San Diego Comic Con 2019, which took place in July; that season then began airing in November, and we expect that those last five episodes will start to drop sometime in the vicinity of March or April of this year. We know that Roiland, Harmon, and company are already hard at work on season 5, and likely have been for some time.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly last year, Roiland confirmed that they would by "rolling right into the next batch" once work on season 4 was completed, with Harmon elaborating, "There were so many things that had to be settled before we even started season 4, and it's really safe to say [that] we're literally writing season 5 while finishing season 4 just to force ourselves to commit to a certain schedule."
Considering that, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that the fifth season's first episodes could drop in November or December 2020, just like the first batch of season 4 episodes did last year. If we happen to get a season 5 trailer at this year's SDCC, we'll be even more convinced that this will be the case.
How many episodes will there be in Rick and Morty season 5?
So far, every season of Rick and Morty has clocked in at ten episodes, and we don't expect that season 5 will be any different. If this sounds like a bit of a paltry total, you can blame it on one of the things you probably love most about the show: its complete willingness to indulge in bizarre, hilarious, ultimately irrelevant asides.
Take it from Nathan Litz, animation director at Bardel Entertainment, which animates the series. "You just don't get the full feeling of how much effort goes into every episode by watching the 22 minutes fly by on the TV," Litz explained in a recent interview with Vulture. "I can't even think of a direct [comparison] because every other show is concerned with keeping it as conservative as possible, in terms of character count, locations, and so on. Whereas [on Rick and Morty], they love to send someone off to some other universe, and give them three seconds with 15 different scenes, different background angles, different characters... it's about making it the biggest spectacle that it can be — which takes an awful lot of work to bring to life."
We've got to admit that this makes a great deal of sense, and while we'd love for each season of Rick and Morty to offer up 22 episodes (which was the standard count for your average series seemingly forever), or even 13 (which has become more the norm in recent years), the series will almost certainly be sticking to the ten-episode count for the foreseeable future.
Who will be in the cast of Rick and Morty season 5?
Assuming that no major characters bite the dust during the back half of season 4, we can safely assume that the entire main cast will be returning for season 5. This includes: Spencer Grammer (Tell Me a Story) as Summer; Chris Parnell (Archer) as Jerry; Sarah Chalke (Paradise PD) as Beth; and Roiland as both of the titular characters.
We can probably also expect to see some of the series' regular supporting cast back in action, such as Kari Wahlgren (who voices Morty's crush Jessica, and has also handled a plethora of minor characters); veteran voice actor Maurice LaMarche (who has voiced a ton of one-shot characters including, notably, Rick's doomed creation Abradolph Lincler); Tom Kenny, who has provided the voice of such memorable characters as Squanchy and Vindicators member One Million Ants; and Harmon, who has voiced Rick's best buddy Birdperson and many others.
Each season of Rick and Morty typically features a ton of celebrity guest stars in one-shot appearances, as well; these have included the likes of David Cross, Alfred Molina, Keegan-Michael Key and his partner in crime Jordan Peele, Patton Oswalt, Stephen Colbert, Nathan Fillion, Danny Trejo, Christian Slater, Keith David, Paul Giamatti, and Sam Neill, to name just a few. We would expect no less from season 5, as it seems as if Harmon and Roiland's goal is to eventually cast everyone in Hollywood.
What will be the plot of Rick and Morty season 5?
As of this writing, no plot details have been divulged for the fifth season of Rick and Morty, and we'll have to see how the events of the back half of season 4 play out before we can even hazard a guess. Harmon recently played at cluing us in, though, with an Instagram post in which he captioned a picture of himself sitting in front of a table filled with Post-It notes: "The amount of season 5 ideas [writer] Rob Schrab can come up with in a day is just awe inspiring from a certain distance at which I should have stayed."
Among the more scintillating season 5 ideas Schrab is alleged to have come up with: "Planet of no Stop signs," "Woman made of fish," "Jerry makes a log cabin with hair," "Rick discovers the 11th Commandment," "Jerry gets into a Twitter feud and wins... now, someone is trying to kill him," "Artificial person with real leg," "Planet powered by chips and salsa," and our personal favorite, "Voltron but with vegetables."
We'll just have to wait to see if any of these nuggets of brilliance make their way into the fifth season of Rick and Morty. Until then, keep it here for all the breaking news that's fit to report.