This ‘Rick and Morty’ Season 8 Teaser Satirizes the Justin Roiland Recast

It’s easy to insult Rick and Morty co-creator and former star Justin Roiland by calling him the show’s real-life Jerry, but it’s also a little unfair — Jerry Smith isn’t an alleged pedo, no matter who believes he’s “beekeeping age.”

There’s something very telling about the fact that, almost immediately after Adult Swim removed Roiland from the Rick and Morty universe amidst mounting accusations of physical and sexual abuse against him, the show saw an immediate uptick in quality as it knocked into 12th gear, in the “Two Brothers” sense. Following a comparatively uninspiring couple of seasons that made some fans feel that Rick and Morty was running out of juice, the reinvigorated Adult Swim series came roaring back to life in Season Seven with Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden replacing Roiland in the title roles as fans celebrated the grand return to form. Now, as Rick and Morty inches toward its 100-year goal with Season Eight around the corner, Dan Harmon and his team are finally ready to start joking about the most controversial but ultimately fruitful recast in adult animation history.

In a Rick and Morty Season Eight teaser released this week, fans learned that Roiland isn’t the only useless asshole who can find himself suddenly and hilariously replaceable: 

As of yet, there’s still not a premiere date set for Rick and Morty Season Eight, though we do know that the show will return sometime in 2025. Back in October, Harmon revealed that he and the Rick and Morty writers’ room had just finished their “first pass” of Season 10, as he prefers to plan out the show’s famously complex and carefully laid out plot lines many years in advance — though it does feel like this scene wasn’t yet in the chamber by the time the network booted Roiland back in January 2023.

It’s hard to read this teaser as anything besides a playful, tasteful side-eye about the show’s deadbeat ex-creator, who reportedly spent his last few seasons on Rick and Morty recording voice lines from his home studio and contributing nothing to the writing process. If anyone from the real-life Rick and Morty lore is a Jerry, it has to be Roiland — though they’re both responsible for the very existence of many of the show’s main characters, Jerry and Justin have since proven themselves to be pathetic, self-centered and, ultimately, disposable.

I shudder to think what horrors would be present in a Justin Roiland daycare — the Roilandboree would probably make “Rickdependence Spray” look like a PBS program.