‘Ricky and Morty’ Hiatus, Explained

Rick and Morty devastated fans this fall by taking an unexpected mid-season hiatus. After Season 6, Episode 6, “Juricksic Mort” aired on Sunday, Oct. 10, Adult Swim announced that the show would not be back until Sunday, Nov. 20. However, this has spawned a hopeful new fan theory that could be the silver lining fans need.

After “Juricksic Mort” premiered last month, the official Rick and Morty Twitter account posted a screenshot from the episode with the caption: “See you in six weeks.” Fans were heartbroken as they realized this meant the show was taking its first mid-season break in years. The series took two breaks during Season 1 and another during Season 4, but after Season 5 aired back-to-back, many had hoped the schedule would be more straightforward. On the other hand, the hiatus has given some fans hope that Season 6 will be longer than the usual 10 episodes.

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Adult Swim placed a huge order for 70 episodes of Rick and Morty back in 2017, and since then the writers and showrunners have occasionally discussed changing the length of the seasons. This may be the time, since neither the creative team nor the network have explicitly stated how long this season will be, although last month they did announce a total of 11 episode titles.

Either way, Season 6, Episode 6 was a big one because it worked in some of Rick’s dreaded “canonical storytelling.” While most of the episode was a self-contained tale of dinosaurs returning to earth, it touched on the ongoing trouble with portal travel several times. Rick’s iconic portal gun has not been working since the Season 5 finale, when “Evil Morty” created a space-time rift that disrupted the technology all Ricks use to travel between dimensions – or to teleport in general.

Early in the episode, Rick made one of his meta statements complaining that fixing portal travel was a “creative process” and it was disrupted by constant questions. Later in the episode, the hyper-intelligent dinosaurs gave Rick a new-and-improved “portal pistol,” which he destroyed out of spite. In the end, Rick rescued the dinosaurs, in a sense, and out of spite, they repaired the rift without asking him. While this made portal travel possible again, Rick resented having the task taken away from him.

Rick and Morty may be on hiatus, but when it returns Rick will be back to full strength with his portal gun in working order. That also means he will probably have to deal with an interdimensional villain Morty left behind in “Cronenberg world” sooner or later. The show will be back on Sunday, Nov. 20 at 11 p.m. ET on Adult Swim.