Our first look at Ricky and Morty Season 3 has arrived, albeit in very rough form. During the show’s Comic-Con 2016 panel, showrunners Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland offered up a taste of the show’s third season with an animatic clip, showing off a sequence in very rough form. Even without full color or textures, the humor comes across swimmingly, as we see what appears to be an altered Rick trying to escape a laboratory and coming across a swarm of lab rats. As one does, he builds a suit out of the body of a rat and proceeds to slice and dice any and all rodents he comes across in gleefully violent fashion.

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Image via Cartoon Network

I’ll be interested to see what this sequence looks like when it’s finished. As evidenced by the Purge episode from Season 2, Rick and Morty doesn’t shy away from getting downright gross with its graphics, but this is a lot. When I spoke with Harmon and Roiland about the show last month, I asked if they’ve had run-ins with censors for the show, and Harmon explained that they have a good relationship with Standards and Practices as long as they’re dealing with alien violence:

"I don’t even look at the S&P (Standards & Practices) notes for Rick and Morty anymore because they get the show and the stuff they have to change is usually relatively cosmetic. Either we’re going to have to bleep a word or you know an example would be: if this creature’s gonna get his brain blown out on camera can his brains not be the color of real brains, can they be pink? Well pink is the right color, can they be green or something? Can this creature’s diarrhea be purple?"

Roiland went on to point out the double standard when it comes to sex vs. violence:

"The shit and the sex stuff. That tends to be the thing they put their foot down on. Violence seems to be less and less an issue. Obviously gratuitous violence can be a problem but the sex stuff is real touchy. I think that’s just our country. It’s just the way things are. It’s stupid."

Again, I’m curious to see what this sequence looks like when it’s fully animated, but I’m looking forward to Rick and Morty Season 3 all the same. It really soared in Season 2 and I’d count it as one of the best shows on television at the moment.

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Image via Cartoon Network
rick-and-morty-season-2-image
Image via Cartoon Network