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Rick and Morty is getting a whopping 70 more episodes

Rick and Morty is getting a whopping 70 more episodes

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The unprecedented order from Adult Swim means we’ll see the characters for years to come

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Image: Comedy Central

Since it debuted in 2013, Adult Swim’s show Rick and Morty has become a massive hit. Earlier today, Cartoon Network and series co-creator Justin Roiland announced that they’re making another 70 — that’s right, 70 — episodes.

The animated science fiction show is a staple of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim; it follows Rick, a brilliant-but-cynical alcoholic scientist and his impressionable grandson, Morty, as they embark on a variety of zany adventures across the multiverse.

Cartoon Network didn’t announce when the series would resume, and Roiland noted that he’s anticipating the deluge of tweets from the show’s fans, asking when season 4 will arrive. While there was just over a year between seasons 1 and 2, that hiatus extended for nearly two years between seasons 2 and 3 (with one episode released months earlier, on April 1st, 2017). At the end of season 3, one character broke the fourth wall, telling the audience that they’ll “see ya in season 4 in, like, a really long time.” (Still no word on when that return date will come.)

After the first 31 episodes from the first three seasons, these 70 episodes will bring the series to the ideal syndication length of 100 episodes. For fans of the show, it’s a relief knowing that there’ll be more to come. Since the third season ended in October, the show’s creators, Roiland and Dan Harmon have noted that negotiations for the next season had “gotten complicated.” Now we know why: 70 episodes is an enormous, unprecedented renewal order, the equivalent of seven more seasons of the show. If it continues at its current eighteen-months-per-season pace, that could keep Rick and Morty on the air for the next decade. It’ll still be behind other classic animated adult comedies in its lane: Futurama ran for seven seasons with 140 episodes, while The Simpsons has aired 637 episodes over the course of its 29-year run.

While the show has gained a huge amount of popularity in recent years, its fanbase has gained a reputation for being particularly toxic, so much so that the show’s creators have denounced their behavior, particularly after a truly bizarre stunt promotion from McDonald’s resulted in tantrums from raging fanboys.