No One Misses Justin Roiland

Adult Swim has released a trailer for the upcoming season of Rick and Morty. What makes season 7 different from the season is the absence of any involvement of Justin Roiland, one of the show’s creators. Earlier this year Roiland was brought up on domestic violence charges, which were later dismissed due to “insufficient evidence.” The announcement of these charges brought out droves of people sharing their stories of Roiland’s terrible behavior. Previous co-workers made claims of Roiland creating a toxic work environment at Rick and Morty. Some fans of the show shared troubling information that Roiland may have been grooming underage girls.

Amid the controversy, Roiland was dropped from his current television series—including the widely popular Rick and Morty. Some fans of the show (you know which ones) claimed Roiland’s absence from writing and voicing the lead characters would ruin the series. Meanwhile, the rest of us were predicting that Roiland leaving the show wouldn’t have much of an impact. Now that the trailer is out, we can see, and more importantly hear, how no one will even notice Roiland left.

Roiland who?

As co-creator of Rick and Morty, it is easy to think Roiland had a lot to do with the show. However, after his departure, many people pointed out the lack of his writing credits since about the fourth season. Many episodes people think of as definitive Rick and Morty, like “Pickle Rick,” were written by other people. It sounds like Roiland’s only involvement with new episodes over the most recent season had been doing the voice acting for Rick and Morty.

We can now hear how the new versions of the titular characters will sound. And guess what? They sound almost identical to Roiland. If people weren’t listening closely to spot the differences, they may not even have noticed the change. New fans, as well as those not following the news of Roiland’s removal, probably won’t notice the difference.

Adult Swim hasn’t revealed who has taken over Roiland’s voicing duties but they had said the goal was to get someone who sounded just like him. Well, they achieved their goal. As a casual fan of the show, I’m interested to see where it goes with zero involvement from Roiland. The series is contracted to have at least three more seasons with Adult Swim. So could it actually get better? Only time will tell. It seems like the moral of Roiland’s story is to not act like a terrible person. If you do, you could be out of a job at a successful business. Even if you are the one who created it.

(featured image: Adult Swim)