Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon still wants ‘100 years’ of the show

Adult Swim celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and Cartoon Network’s hub for adult animation is looking to build on its success with an eclectic mix of new shows like My Two Cars, Get Jiro!, and SuperMutant Magic Academy. But Cartoon Network president Michael Ouweleen told Polygon in an interview at Annecy Festival that a key part of his strategy is supporting long-running shows like Rick and Morty, which is currently airing its ninth season.

“Those guys keep it fresh,” Ouweleen said. “They’re not repeating themselves. If you’re in my job, you think of it as a portfolio play and you want a variety of tones, a variety of people making things, and when the creators get too tired to keep going, you say, ‘OK, I’m not going to force you to make a cartoon.’ That seems like a mean thing to do. You say, ‘Take a break. What’s next?’”

While Ouweleen said he’s always looking to work with up-and-coming creators, Adult Swim has a history of what he calls “serial creation,” where showrunners work with the network on multiple projects. My Two Cars comes from Joe Pera and Dan Licata, who first worked with Adult Swim on Joe Pera Talks With You in 2018. Genndy Tartakovsky has made numerous shows for Adult Swim, including Primal, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, and the upcoming Heist Brothers. But some of Cartoon Network’s relationships with its new creators start even earlier.

“We benefit from people that grew up watching us wanting to come work with us,” Ouweleen said. “Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey were huge fans of Toonami, and when you get to talk to those guys, it’s kind of like you helped raise them. There’s nothing more gratifying, and I am weirdly tearing up now. How I see my job is we’re building community across generations of animation.”

Rick and Morty is getting its first spinoff, President Curtis, in July, and executive producer Monica Mitchell said during an Annecy panel that Rick and Morty season 12 is currently in the works. Showrunner Dan Harmon told the panel he’s in no rush to end things, comparing his series to The Simpsons or South Park.

“The design of Rick and Morty, because it’s animated, is to be eternal,” Harmon said. “There are shows like Seinfeld that know when to quit. They took a bow. They finished. I don’t think we get rewarded for that mentality in the 22-minute comedy animation medium. I think our job is to get dragged off kicking and screaming. If Michael fires us, he’ll give us a heads-up so we’ll be able to make it our last season. Until then, I think our job is 100 years of Rick and Morty. The show must go on until we all get replaced with AI.”