For a while there, it felt as if we had passed by the jumping off point for Rick and Morty’s cultural relevancy, but after a pretty well-received fifth season of the series aired in 2021, it seemed that at least some of the fandom’s gripes had been assuaged. Now, the Adult Swim stalwart is returning for season six, with a new trailer giving us our first glimpse of the frenetic sci-fi action to come. Suffice to say, heads will roll as they always tend to do when Rick Sanchez is around.
This is actually the fastest turnaround between seasons in the history of the oft-delayed series, with the premiere of season 6 arriving on Adult Swim on Sept. 4, 2022, just a day shy of one year from the date season 5’s finale, “Rickmurai Jack,” aired in 2021. That episode saw some closure for the menacing “Evil Morty” storyline, as the duly elected leader of the Citadel of Ricks revealed his master plan to collapse the “Central Finite Curve,” thrusting our own Rick and Morty into a wider multiverse in which Rick would no longer be guaranteed to be the smartest being alive. It’s unknown if or when we’ll see Evil Morty again, but he certainly doesn’t show up in the almost entirely context-free trailer below. Rather, this footage seems designed to simply bombard the viewer with action and gags, whether it’s Summer being compelled to “do a Die Hard,” or the return of irritating next door neighbor Gene. Very little plot can be sussed out here, beyond the return of Space Beth, who returned previously in season 5’s “Mortyplicity.”
The sped-up rate of production would seemingly signal that series creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon are running smoothly as they continue to fulfill the still-bonkers 70 episode order that Adult Swim unveiled for Rick and Morty back in 2018. At the current, 10-episode per season pace that show has been on, that order would theoretically take Rick and Morty through season 10, and maybe beyond. Which is to say, the upcoming season 6 might be only the halfway point of the duo’s adventures.
Check out the first Rick and Morty season 6 trailer below.