Adult Swim has cut ties with Justin Roiland after the Rick & Morty co-creator was charged with domestic violence stemming from an incident with his ex on or around Jan. 19, 2020.
“Adult Swim has ended its association with Justin Roiland,” the network, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement.
Roiland co-created Rick & Morty with Dan Harmon (who has faced some troubling allegations himself), and he also voices the two main characters on the show in addition to many other characters. The show is expected to continue without Roiland, however, and new voice actors will be cast as the title characters.
Season 6 of Rick & Morty concluded last month, and to date, 61 episodes of the series have aired on Adult Swim, which renewed the show in 2018 for 70 additional episodes with the goal of producing at least 100 episodes — an oft-cited “magic number” for syndication within the industry.
Filed by an unnamed Jane Doe who was dating Roiland at the time, the complaint charged him with one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury, and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, and/or deceit. Roiland pleaded not guilty back in 2020, and though a trial date has not yet been set, he’ll be back in an Orange County courtroom on April 27 for another pre-trial hearing.
Roiland also co-created Hulu’s animated comedy Solar Opposites, which was recently renewed for Season 5, and he’s also an EP on another animated comedy at Hulu — Koala Man. Though Disney-owned Hulu has yet to issue a statement of its own, I would imagine it’s only a matter of time before that streamer cuts ties with Roiland as well. Stay tuned.
Update Jan. 25: Hulu has now cut ties with Roiland as well. “We have ended our association with Justin Roiland” reads a statement from 20th Television Animation and Hulu Originals, though both Solar Opposites and Koala Man will continue on without his involvement.
