Rick and Morty season 8 review: "Largely plays it too safe after years of crossing boundaries"

After seven seasons, a couple of video games, a stack of comics, an official D&D tie-in set, and an actual series of events that culminated in people going wild in the real-life physical fast food restaurant McDonald's over revived sauce, the animated series Rick and Morty likely needs no introduction. And season 8, which premieres May 25 on Adult Swim, is more Rick and Morty for better or worse.

That's not to say the new season is in any way bad. Having seen four episodes of Rick and Morty season 8 – "Summer of All Fears," "The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly," "The Last Temptation of Jerry," and "Cryo Mort a Rickver" – the folks making the show are still putting out great work from the writing to the voice actors to the animation. But it also falls into a trap that Rick and Morty's previous success has set for itself.

The show is largely a sci-fi adventure featuring grandpa Rick Sanchez and grandson Morty Smith getting mixed up in all sorts of alien, multidimensional shenanigans that frequently play with and subvert expectations. After years of subverting expectations, however, the new expectation… is that Rick and Morty will subvert expectations. And it does, but that's still technically meeting expectations. It's certainly a pickle, but not quite a Pickle Rick.

Expect the unexpected

Again, the four episodes are emblematic of the major beats that Rick and Morty has consistently hit over the years. The premiere is a high-concept goof taken to its logical (for some definitions of "logical") extremes, one episode plays with the serial narrative threads that Rick and Morty has established over the years in a tongue-in-cheek way, there's the Jerry-centric episode, and one more traditionally about Rick and Morty getting into the thick of it together.

It's all fine! Good, even, with the season premiere the best of the bunch, but for the most part it was hard to shake the feeling that while previous seasons have swung for the fences, what I've seen of season 8 is happy to settle for a triple or double instead. It feels like there's a comfortable rhythm that's been settled into when frankly the more uncomfortable Rick and Morty is, the more exciting it becomes.

Benefit of the doubt and all, maybe the other six episodes of the season skew more wet and wild. There's every reason to believe that reviewers might be offered up what passes for "standard" episodes rather than anything truly experimental and unusual. Maybe my heart has been hardened over the years or my mores shifted and changed, my sense of scale and boundaries broken, but Rick and Morty season 8 doesn't push the envelope for me; it's instead inclined to play around within.

Vocal derange

While I can quibble about the structure and writing of this season, there is one unequivocal bright spot in the various performances from Rick and Morty's voice actors. Chris Parnell and Sarah Chalke as the voice of Jerry and Beth do some of their best work in what I've seen of this season, and Spencer Grammer as Summer puts on a masterclass in the season 8 premiere for reasons I won't spoil. Historically, Grammer regularly delivers what I'd argue are some of the show's best reads simply by virtue of being able to quickly and effectively switch between contexts, but she really makes a meal out of what she's given here.

All of this goes doubly for Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden, who provide the voices of Rick and Morty, respectively. The two actors joined the rest of the cast of the long-running animated series as of last season after co-creator Justin Roiland was dropped by Adult Swim in early 2023. If season 7 was the two of them finding their vocal footing in a new environment, Rick and Morty season 8 is the both of them settling in comfortably to deliver the right amount of cheerful playfulness, over-the-top rage, and well-earned trauma-tinged lines. It's classic Rick and Morty, which itself is a triumph.

And, look, Rick and Morty season 8 simply being more Rick and Morty isn't fundamentally a bad thing – people like and want more Rick and Morty, there is a reason it has made it to eight seasons in the first place. As a franchise, it is inarguably successful, and season 8 is almost surely going to continue that streak. I will happily watch as much Rick and Morty as Adult Swim cares to continue making, but the excitement I've had in previous seasons to see what kind of tomfoolery this eclectic cast of characters gets into next is no longer what it was.

Rick and Morty season 8 is set to premiere on May 25, 2025, on Adult Swim. For more, check out our guide to all of the year's most exciting upcoming TV shows.