Yes, indeed. Behind the “deterioration” of Rick and Morty, there is one single culprit: the lack of improvisation. To fully understand this story, we need to take a few steps back to the very first episode of the first season. A sequence in which Rick Sanchez introduced his grandson to two-dimensional cable TV.
On that occasion, the two protagonists commented that many of the clips they were watching had an “almost improvised tone.” It was a joke that winked at reality: many of Rick and Morty’s dialogues and jokes, at least initially, were truly improvised… but things seem to have changed definitively. At the beginning of one of the most beloved animated series ever, the two protagonists were both voiced by the series’ co-creator Justin Roiland. In 2023, allegations of domestic violence removed Roiland from production, so the roles of Rick and Morty went to Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden, respectively.
The decision to assign the dubbing to two actors not directly involved in the script inevitably changed the flavor of the series. In recent seasons, the series has been less improvised than one might think. Remaining faithful to the original tone of the series was impossible. This is an element that has literally propelled the show to the top of many people’s preferences. “I think that by the time the scripts get to us, they’ve already been reworked several times,” Cardoni said in an interview with CinemaBlend, stating that despite everything, the element of improvisation is still there. “The writers do a really amazing job and put them in a place where they think they really work for the series, and moments of improvisation are often included.”
Cardoni also confessed to allowing himself “a certain amount of creative freedom in placing burps, and you know, certain stutters, screams, and things like that. Improvisation is about finding the motivation behind the words, but the writers actually provide the basic material. So there’s not much improvisation in the end.” In short, something has changed for the worse, and unfortunately, many have noticed. Furthermore, Belden stated that the two “don’t record together, so we’re not influencing each other, as I think many might think.”
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