The Big Picture
- Rick and Morty‘s seventh season is premiering soon, and the new opening sequence teases more adventures for the duo.
- The opening sequence retains the traditional montage but includes new footage of Summer deadlifting Rick, encounters with zombies, and giant-headed Rick and Morty snowboarding on their tongues.
- The intro avoids mentioning Justin Roiland’s name, allowing the show to distance itself from his misconduct. Stay tuned for the premiere on October 15.
Rick and Morty‘s seventh season is premiering in less than a month, and we now have a first look at its intro. The new opening sequence promises more adventures for the duo — and omits a credit for the show’s fired co-creator, Justin Roiland. Adult Swim has revealed the opening sequence, which retains the traditional opener (a Twilight Zone-like montage of objects and symbols floating in space, followed by Rick and Morty fleeing frog-like creatures on a desolate planet) and closer (the family attempting to outrun a Cthulhu-like monster), but includes new footage in between them.
That footage includes Summer deadlifting Rick, an encounter with zombies, the return of Beth’s spacefaring duplicate Space Beth, a giant-headed Rick and Morty snowboarding on their own enormous tongues, and normally-doughy Jerry performing some Jean-Claude Van Damme-esque splits. Previous seasons have included a mix of footage from the upcoming season and random strangeness in the credits, so it’s too soon to say what, if any, future plot points this intro is teasing. Also notable is what the opening does not include — the “Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon” credit on the title card, which allows the show to avoid mentioning the disgraced Roiland.
What Happened to Justin Roiland?
One of the co-creators of Rick and Morty, and the voice actor for both title characters, Roiland was charged with domestic violence in January. In the wake of the charges, he was fired by Adult Swim; both Rick and Morty will be voiced by new voice actors in the upcoming season. He was also fired by Hulu from his other animated series, Solar Opposites and Koala Man. In the former, he was replaced by Dan Stevens in a manner that Collider’s Bethany Edwards says “demonstrated how to handle some serious allegations against one of its key players: smoothly, and without unnecessary delay.” Although the charges against Roiland were dismissed, new revelations about his questionable conduct continue to surface.
Premiering in 2013, Rick and Morty centers around the time and space-hopping adventures of mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his grandson, Morty Smith; as the series has progressed, it has also increasingly focused on the rest of the Smith family, including Rick’s daughter Beth (Sarah Chalke), her husband Jerry (Chris Parnell), and daughter Summer (Spencer Grammer). A massive hit for Adult Swim, the series was renewed after its third season for a massive order of seventy additional episodes, taking it to at least ten seasons. Last season left off with Rick swearing to track down his alternate-universe counterpart Rick Prime, who was responsible for the deaths of Rick’s wife and daughter in his original home universe — a plot thread that will carry over into the upcoming season.
Season 7 of Rick and Morty premieres October 15 on Adult Swim. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and watch the new opening sequence below.