Dan Harmon didn't think Rick And Morty could continue without Justin Roiland

“That assumption, you know, was problematic to begin with because the idea that anyone that you’re working with, for, alongside, or over can’t be fired is the beginning of a problem,” he says on the “Obsessed” podcast, explaining that that’s how a group ends up with a power dynamic that can be taken advantage of by bad actors. “But I did assume… I mean, he’s doing the voices and really, creatively, he was the heart of the show.” Of course, Harmon was also a key element in the show’s success, but he says that it was always Roiland’s “vision.” When the accusations toward Roiland started coming to light, Harmon recalls thinking, “Okay, I guess we’re packing it in.” 

However, “a bunch of people found me where I was—it was a bar, I don’t wanna blow people’s minds or rearrange their perceptions of me, [but] I was in a bar—and, like, 20 people from Rick And Morty found me where I was. It was like they were talking a different language. They were like, ‘Well, so, we gonna keep doing the show?’ I’m like, what?” Says Harmon, it was one writer in particular who said: “Why does this get to be his decision? What does this have to do with the show and the fans and the characters? Now it all crumbles down, like a temple around Samson—should that be up to him?” Harmon ultimately said he had to be the adult in the room and make the decision for everyone on the show to keep their jobs, even if Harmon at the time thought replacing Roiland with another voice was not a good thing. “This is about professionalism and family and accountability, and, like, being the grown up in the room,” he remembers of the bar conversation. “This is what grown-ups do. They try to figure things out.”