Inside the implosion of Justin Roiland’s animation empire

More recently, multiple sources say that Roiland, other than voice work, has not had any meaningful creative presence on any of the series that bear his name. In fact, many of his former colleagues say they haven’t heard from him in years, and when they have, it’s been unpleasant. They note, too, that he hasn’t been on speaking terms with his Rick and Morty co-creator, Dan Harmon, for multiple seasons, and a substantial number of staffers on that show as well as Solar Opposites and Koala Man have never actually met Roiland, even over Zoom.

At some point during the third season of Rick and Morty, multiple sources say Roiland simply stopped showing up — and when he did turn up in the Burbank offices, he’d typically avoid the writers room.

Huh, that's a twist I didn't see coming. When the bouts of news first showed up, the prevailing sentiment about Rick and Morty seemed to be that the show would now change drastically without his writing. The interdimensional TV show episodes being products of him showing up to a recording booth, drinking, and improv'ing the entire premise of the clips in the final episode, were seen as a prime example of his input.

I guess the reality is after a point he just didn't have much to do with the shows people enjoyed anyway, they will likely continue in the same vein without him, the main difference being a slightly different voice for all the characters. Ironically it was the one thing he thought would make him invincible:

On the former, which he co-created, he had, until mid-January, voiced one of the show’s leads. “He knew the power of being the voices,” says a source, noting how Roiland had revealed early on that he believed securing key voice roles would safeguard him from being fired one day.

Somehow I'm not remotely surprised to see Justin Roiland in hot water. You have to be at least moderately unhinged to come up with animations like Doc & Mharti and House of Cosbys, and I think that anybody lacking inhibitions to the point where they'd not only create but release some of the cartoons that Roiland produced for Channel 101 is displaying many red flags.

What did surprise me was what little creative direction he had with Rick & Morty from Season 3 onwards. I always thought he and Dan Harmon had a symbiotic relationship where Roiland had the truly messed-up creative ideas that would have chased your average viewer away, while Harmon had the ability to ground these ideas and make them at least a little more network-friendly. I mean Adult Swim are a pretty liberal network when it comes to what shows they'll broadcast, but R&M could have very easily become another unfunny shock-value cartoon like Mr. Pickles had it not been for Harmon's involvement.

Then again, Season 3 was a major tone shift from the first two seasons, but I always thought this was because of the significant cliffhanger that Season 2 ended on and how R&M handles continuity a lot better than many other shows. Now, I haven't watched Seasons 4 or 5 yet, but I do occasionally browse the subreddit and I cannot recall anything coming remotely close to the early season catchphrases and moments that the community would latch on to. That could also be due to the show having a highly obnoxious fandom that has been ridiculued with various memes and copypasta to the point where even fans have decided to knock off their vocal support.

I don't see Roiland's firing negatively affecting the show, unlike when Sony fired Community's showrunner and butchered the series so badly with a disastrous fourth season that they had no choice but to bring Harmon back. He had some (obviously NSFW) choice words to describe Season 4...