'Rick and Morty' Trolled Fans With This Throwaway Line Last Night

Much has been said about the cause for Rick and Morty Season 3 delays, and amidst rumors and accusations of infighting, it’s become apparent that rabid fan enthusiasm is majorly stressing out co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland. Maybe that’s why they straight-up trolled fans in the new promo for the “Pickle Rick” episode of Season 3 that aired after the end of “Rickmancing the Stone”.

Episode 2 brought Rick, Morty, and Summer to a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the vein of Mad Max. Next week’s episode is the much-teased Pickle Rick adventure that will see Rick transformed into a pickle. In the latest “On the next Rick and Morty” promo, we get some new footage from the episode in which Morty asks all the same questions on our minds.

“I’m just trying to figure out why you would do this,” Morty wonders to Pickle Rick. When Morty stammers out further questions like “Do pickles live forever, or … ?” to try make sense of it all, Rick cuts him off: “Stop digging for hidden layers and just be impressed.”

It’s as if Harmon and Roiland used Rick to speak directly to fans, who are constantly drumming up new theories to explain Rick’s backstory and hunting for deeper meaning in Rick and Morty’s largely nonsensical universe. Perhaps Rick and Morty was always intended to be a more casual watch than its zealous fans have made it out to be.

In the promo clip, Rick also gives Morty another reductive response so typical of Rick and Morty: “The reason anyone would do this if they could — which they can’t — would be because they could — which they can’t.” So … the only reason Rick turned himself into a pickle was to prove that he could? That would definitely add to the whole “existence is meaningless” vibe that Rick and Morty has going for it.

Whether or not we’ll get an actual reason for Pickle Rick’s existence remains to be seen, but we’ll know more on Sunday, August 6 at 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Adult Swim.