'Rick and Morty' Season 4, Episode 6: New Clip Released, and It's All About Christmas

Adult Swim released a new Rick and Morty clip on Saturday, just one day before the show's midseason premiere. The new clip is set at Christmas time, and finds Rick having an awkward moment with a strange creature named Goomby. It may hint at where Season 4, Episode 6 of the series will pick up.

Rick and Morty went on hiatus back in December, with an episode that had Christmas as a backdrop to the story. Five months later, it looks like the series might double down on yuletide cheer, this time putting Christmas front-and-center in the episode. The minute-long clip shows Rick and Goomby arriving at the Smith family house via sleigh, laden with gifts, apparently on Christmas Eve. When Rick makes to go inside, Goomby nearly follows, and the two share an awkward encounter.

The Christmas-theme of this clip may hint at the first big meta-joke of this episode. If Rick and Morty picks up on Christmas after a five-month hiatus in real life, it might not be an accident, but instead the series' way of teasing fans who so often complain about its long breaks between seasons. Fans waited for nearly two years between seasons 2 and 3, and over two years between seasons 3 and 4.

From here on out, however, that is expected to change. After the massive success Season 3, Adult Swim gave Rick and Morty a massive renewal deal, guaranteeing at least 70 more episodes of the series. Back in 2018, co-creator Justin Roiland explained that this will allow them to work on the show continuously, hopefully eliminating the long breaks between seasons where writers, voice actors and animators were not sure if they would be returning.

"We want the episodes to stay good, but we do also want to try to turn them around a little quicker now that we have this big order, I think it gives us the ability to be faster," he told Polygon at the time. "We're not going to do these long breaks, these chasms in between seasons anymore. We're going to schedule vacation time and just keep the machine going. It's going to be really cool."

While the release schedule may stabilize, the show's fan-service is expected to taper off. A review of the first half of Rick and Morty Season 4 by The Take makes the case that the series is now signaling to fans that convoluted fan theories will not be entertained going forward, or at least, they won't make up the majority of the series' substance. This might be sad news for those hoping to see what Evil Morty is up to in the next few weeks.

We will all just have to tune in to see for ourselves. Rick and Morty Season 4, Episode 6, "Never Ricking Morty," premieres on Sunday, May 3 at 11:30 p.m. ET on Adult Swim.