Everything we know about Rick and Morty Season 6

The Morty Smith variant known as Evil Morty blasted his way out of the Central Finite Curve in September 2021’s Rick and Morty Season 5 finale, leaving us all to wonder what hijinks Rick Sanchez C-137 and his grandson will get up to next now that their greatest villain is presumably out of the picture. Less than a year later, Adult Swim has confirmed a premiere date for Season 6 — and it’s a lot sooner than the huge gaps of time between previous seasons. Could Evil Morty possibly return? How many versions of Beth Smith are there nowadays? When will new episodes begin airing? Here’s all that and everything else we know so far about the upcoming season.

When is the Rick and Morty Season 6 release date?

Mark your calendars because Adult Swim announced on July 27, 2022 that Rick and Morty Season 6 would “premiere globally and across the multiverse” on Sunday, September 4, 2022 at 11 p.m. Eastern. That’s almost a year to the day since Season 5 wrapped up and notably the first time a season will begin in September.

Back in May 2018, Adult Swim ordered 70 more Rick and Morty episodes, and since then, the pace of production has become much more streamlined. During November 2021’s Adult Swim festival, the network confirmed that Season 6 was on track for release sometime during 2022, and it’ll make good on that promise.

This is more or less matching the pace of production with the last few seasons.

The first half of Season 4 aired from November to December 2019. Then, the second half aired in May 2020. It was just over a full year until Season 5 ran throughout summer 2021. Then it was on a month-long hiatus before the two-part Season 5 finale in September 2021. That means there was about a year break between the Season 4 finale and the Season 5 premiere — which is exactly what’s happening yet again. From hereon out, it seems likely that there’ll be a year gap between every season.

We previously predicted that Season 6 would begin airing by fall 2022, which is 100 percent accurate. The real question now is what sort of airing schedule we’ll get. Season 5 ran almost continuously before taking a month-long break ahead of the two-part season finale, whereas Season 4 was split neatly in two with almost six months between. Co-showrunner Justin Roiland has previously theorized to Inverse that Adult Swim could drop a new episode each month to “make it a big event.”

Is there a Rick and Morty Season 6 teaser photo?

Yes! Both Morty and Rick are “ripped and ready” in the first image from Season 6, as teased on Twitter. The two are seen wearing crop top versions of their regular shirts to show off their impossibly cut abs. There’s not much to make of this. For all we know, it could be from a random scene that’ll be inserted into the new opening credits montage. It could also be a throwaway joke in a cold open unrelated to the plot of an episode. Or hey, maybe them getting jacked is the plot of an entire episode? (For what it’s worth, we’ve seen them both naked before and they have no muscles to speak of, so this is definitely a new development)

In any case, Rick and Morty has been only a bit preoccupied with extreme fitness over the years for some of its characters. The Season 1 episode “Something Ricked This Way Comes” famously ends with Rick and Summer using steroids to bulk up so they can beat up the Devil and some bullies. Morty also got a burly Hulk-looking arm in Season 4’s “Rickmancing the Stone.” These changes were temporary, however.

This particular image definitely evokes a hilarious bit from the Season 4 mid-season premiere "Never Ricking Morty," in which Jesus Christ himself shows up inside the Story Train to save Rick. Like the conductor of the Story Train, Jesus is also fit AF — so fit in fact that a NSFW term used to describe Jesus’ abs spiked on Google after the episode.

Clearly, Rick and Morty have been doing Jesus’ ab routine, right?

Is there a Rick and Morty Season 6 trailer?

There is no trailer just yet, but the good news is that we should expect one very soon now that we have a premiere date set in stone. Historically, they’ve been released between one and three months before the season premiere. Based on that, the timing of the Season 6 trailer is pretty obvious:

Adult Swim Fest is happening in Philadelphia from August 5-7, and there’s a Rick and Morty panel that begins on August 6 at 1 p.m. Eastern. “All new Rick and Morty Season 6 is upon us,” the event description reads. “Join the cast and crew of Rick and Morty as they discuss the highly anticipated new season and get an exclusive first look.”

Now “exclusive first looks” typically involve a brief scene from the show, but our guess is that the panel will include the full Season 6 trailer and maybe the opening scene from the premiere or even the full episode. Each season’s promotional schedule has varied wildly, so there’s really no telling exactly what Adult Swim has planned.

President of Adult Swim and Cartoon Network Michael Ouweleen, however, did tease something interesting: “As we prepare to launch this soon-to-be iconic season, we will be giving fans a unique way to be part of the fun — so keep your eyes peeled.” Hopefully, it’s some fun social media campaign and not an NFT-related thing.

How far along is Rick and Morty Season 6 production?

If we’ve got a premiere date, then that probably means that most of Season 6 is in the bag, but there’s always a chance that the production team is still working on some episodes from late in Season 6.

The writers’ room wrapped writing on Season 7 as of August 2021, per a tweet from Cody Ziglar. “We all stared into the abyss & saw the face of God & It was a Gundam,” he wrote. “God is a Gundam & does the Naruto run. Unprecedented.” That sounds a bit ... silly ... so this may have been a bit of a troll. Did they really finish writing Season 7? In any case, it sounds like the writing on Season 6 has long been finished.

“I often get confused right now between Season 5 and Season 6,” Dan Harmon said during PaleyFest NY in October 2020. “Immediately after this panel, I’ll be reviewing an animatic for a late Season 5 episode. Yet, we are very late in the season … writing Season 6, looking at finales for both seasons, and then also refining the finale of one and the premiere of another.”

Things are a bit confusing here, mainly because Harmon and fellow co-creator and showrunner Justin Roiland are involved at every stage of the process. If they were reviewing an animatic, then that late Season 5 episode hadn’t even entered the animation process yet, which can take several months.

At the same time, the writing team was actively scripting the Season 6 finale while refining the Season 6 premiere. More than six months later, series writer Alex Rubens wrote in a February 2021 tweet that the team had started writing Season 7. And an August 2021 tweet from Cody Ziglar revealed that writing was done on Season 7. Writing an entire season therefore seemingly takes about six months.

Who are the Rick and Morty Season 6 writers?

In May 2020, Dan Harmon noted in an Instagram post that Community alum Alex Rubens had joined the Rick and Morty writing team for Season 6. And then Rubens took the chance in February 2021 to spotlight his fellow writers over Twitter.

Therefore, we’ve already got a pretty comprehensive look at the Season 6 writers’ room:

• Alex Rubens
• Heather Campbell
• Grace Freud
• Albro Lundy IV
• Nick Rutherford
• Rob Schrab
• James Siciliano
• Alex Song-Xia
• Cody Ziglar

What is the Rick and Morty Season 6 story?

The very chaotic but totally official summary thus far for Season 6 is as follows:

It’s Season 6 and Rick and Morty are back! Pick up where we left them, worse for wear and down on their luck. Will they manage to bounce back for more adventures? Or will they get swept up in an ocean of piss! Who knows?! Piss! Family! Intrigue! A bunch of dinosaurs! More piss! Another can't miss season of your favorite show.

Uh, so it sounds like there’ll be a lot of piss and dinosaurs, but other than that, who knows. Here’s what happened last season:

Spoilers follow for Rick and Morty Season 5.

Particularly the last two episodes in Season 5 established some hugely significant plot developments that could forever change the show moving forward, but let’s first reflect on some important things from earlier in the season.

The Beth Variant known as “Space Beth” from the Season 4 finale still exists somewhere out there in the show’s main timeline, but she didn’t appear in Season 5 at all. Planetina, Morty’s girlfriend with powers akin to Captain Planet’s, is also still around following an early Season 5 episode that explores their romance. We might see both of these characters again, along with Naruto, the giant incest baby made from Morty and Summer’s DNA. Birdperson has also now fully returned from the dead, so expect him to pop up every now and then.

Most importantly, however, in the Season 5 finale, Evil Morty sacrificed the Citadel and most of the Mortys and Ricks aboard to shoot himself out of the Central Finite Curve and into the wider multiverse. We learned in this episode that Rick C-137 (the main Rick of the series) helped design the Citadel and built a wall around a section of the multiverse that separated all realities where Rick was the smartest man from the rest. Evil Morty essentially broke free from the subsection of the multiverse in which Ricks are the dominant beings in existence.

The destruction of the Citadel also means that Rick’s supply of portal fluid could be gone. At the very end of the Season 5 finale, he tosses an empty portal gun to the ground while they fly away aboard a section of the Citadel. Portal tech might not work at all anymore. It’s also possible that the Central Finite Curve itself has been destroyed. Early Season 6 will have to reckon with some of these questions rather quickly.

Will there be a Rick and Morty Season 7?

Rick and Morty will definitely extend a few seasons beyond Season 6. Time Warner Broadcasting and Adult Swim ordered 70 more Rick and Morty episodes in May 2018. All 10 episodes of Season 4 are included in that order, along with the 10 episodes from Season 5. Starting with Season 6, we’re looking at at least 50 more episodes in the series. It seems safe to assume that it’ll be 10-episode seasons for the foreseeable future, so this current order could encompass everything through Season 10.