Rick and Morty fans are no stranger to long waits, but our first real intel on Season 4’s premiere isn’t good news. One writer claims little-to-no work has been done on any new episodes just yet, which could leave Rick and Morty high and dry until 2019, if not 2020.

Bear in mind that one writer isn’t necessarily the arbiter of production, though any animation fan knows that the process can take significant time. Development has been relatively quiet on the front of Rick and Morty Season 4 (give or take a deadmau5 appearance), and writer Ryan Ridley updated The Detroit Cast to say “no one’s working on the show” right now. Inverse transcribed the relevant details (h/t UPROXX), which see Ridley projecting a late 2019 premiere – if that – for the fourth season:

As far as I know no one’s working on the show and I’m certainly not, so I don’t know what’s going on. I haven’t heard anything. And yeah, they really take their time. I never understood why everybody — all parties, Dan [Harmon], Justin [Roiland], and Adult Swim — didn’t get their s— together and make the show fast. I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m sure they all have their reasons. […] I highly doubt there won’t be [a season four], I’m just shocked that it’s taking — we got done writing season 3 in November of [2016] and here we are 11 months later. And then I know how long the show takes to write, let alone animate, so it’s just like, I’d be surprised if there was a fourth season on the air any sooner than 2019 — in late 2019.

Last we heard, co-creator Dan Harmon was hoping to up Season 4’s episode order from ten to fourteen:

I’m still learning how to do the show efficiently while catering to the perfectionist in all of us. I would like to think I’ve learned enough from my mistakes in season 3 that we could definitely do 14 now … I want to prove it with the first 10 of season 4 — prove it to ourselves, to production, to the network — that it’s so easy that we’ll earn additional episodes.

At the very least, 2018 is set to bring us a series of Oni Press one-shot comics with some fan-favorite characters, while McDonald’s will at some point rekindle fandom wars with another bout of Szechuan sauce promotion. We’ll see if Dan Harmon or Justin Roiland comment on the fourth season plan anytime soon, so stay tuned.

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