Season eight of Rick and Morty just dropped its first true banger of an episode: “The Rick, the Mort & the Ugly,” which revives a setting fans of the Adult Swim series might’ve thought would never return. While the Citadel of Ricks was destroyed at the end of season five, and all portal travelers were zapped back to their universes of origin in season six, there’s still unfinished business for all the Ricks and Mortys who were clones rather than variants. That came to the fore in a big way this week.

io9 got a chance to ask voice actors Ian Cardoni (Rick) and Harry Belden (Morty) about all the different vocal nuances they got to dig into for “The Rick, the Mort & the Ugly.” We also talked to showrunner-executive producer Scott Marder and executive producer Dan Harmon about why they wanted to return to the Citadel storyline.

“The episode is like 98% Rick and Morty,” Belden estimated. “I don’t think we’re like literally every single voice in the episode—it’s kind of like [season seven episode] ‘Unmortricken’ where it’s mostly us. But that one was probably the hardest episode to record for me, just in the sheer volume of what we’re doing.”

Belden and Cardoni joined Rick and Morty ahead of season seven after Justin Roiland’s departure, and season eight really cements their ownership of the show’s title characters.

“[Episode three was] one of the first ones we did too, probably because it was so involved and we needed to get it done as quickly as possible, because we’re going to go do rewrites and re-records and stuff for it,” Belden said. “But yeah, I had an absolute blast doing that one. I can’t wait to hear it for everyone to see and hear all the variations that we put on the characters and the situations that they’re put into. It was so much fun.”

Added Cardoni, “You’ve got some really funny stammers in that episode, Harry, and some moments that I think you’ve really made your own that just watching it, renewed this sort of joy as a fan watching it for the first time. So great work on that.”

Fans will definitely have fun with one particular Rick that Cardoni gives life to in episode three: a drawling villain that riffs on a certain corrupt political leader from The Dukes of Hazzard. He looks like him, he talks like him, and his scheme goes haywire like Boss Hogg’s always did—in this context, ensuring the Citadel’s nascent return meets another explosive end.

“I’m just really excited for the world to meet Boss Hogg Rick,” Cardoni said. “I think that’s a really fun new iteration and, you know, where we might normally give 20 takes for a line, Boss Hogg was something we revisited, tried a couple different voices out, maybe gave 50 per line. Just to try to really get it into a fun new place. And what a wonderful sandbox we’ve been given to play in this multiverse and in return to this Citadel where there are so many different iterations of these characters for us to play in. But yeah, it’s a fun, happy challenge to start with the Rick voice and then see how different variants could play in.”

We asked if he got any sort of particular direction for Boss Hogg Rick—and if so, what was it? 

“They were open to what I had sort of been working on, on my own, but it was definitely a collaboration in terms of coming up with what would eventually ended up in the final version,” Cardoni said. “And it was a collaboration with the writers who had a particular sound in mind, but then also there were a couple deliveries that I think were maybe surprising or fresh takes that they were happy with, and have made it into the cut. So again, there was a great collaboration on that particular episode and it gave me an opportunity to really explore the range of Rick that I think people crave, fans crave, but just seeing all these different kinds of versions and the emotional life between our regular Rick that we see, and then these characters that have been living on the edge of the frontier.”

Marder and Harmon can’t recall exactly when they decided they wanted to return to the Citadel, but the notion has seemingly been percolating for some time.

“We probably felt like we had a cool, juicy story in terms of the scientist that was sort of responsible for it all,” Marder said. “Is he moving on in his own life or is he keeping an eye on these experiments because of his guilt that led to all of them?” 

Added Harmon, “I think the original pitch might have been … let’s do a spiritual successor to the Citadel episode, but because the Citadel is blown up, it’s like, among the dregs.” 

It’s temping to picture the Rick and Morty writers’ room with a huge white board collecting potential Rick and Morty variants. As it turns out, the process is more organic than simply checking off a list of funny ideas.

“In terms of the Odd Job Rick and the Boss Hogg Rick and stuff like that, I think they just kind of come up naturally,” Marder explained. “Either they’ll come up in the room and they’ll be a natural part of the story, or the writer will come in and bring fun people into their first draft. Because this show’s never locked. I think episodes oftentimes feel so totally complex when they make it to [Adult Swim] because of the rewrite machine—we’re just constantly layering these episodes like a croissant so that the end result feels really nice and layered.”

At the very end of “The Rick, the Mort & the Ugly,” there’s a brief moment where “our” versions of Rick and Morty reappear after having been absent the entire episode. They’re ostensibly there to tie up a silly little framing bit about Morty losing his fidget spinner on an asteroid once populated by cloned Mortys, but there’s a moment where Rick admits he was wrong about something, and points out how he’s evolved enough to admit that now. Morty agrees he’s changed. It’s a quick little exchange that’s kind of brushed off, but it’s more important than viewers might realize.

“I love that moment. I love those moments. To me, they register as jokes, but not because we’re kidding when we say them. I think that that’s what’s funny about a friendship, especially between guys maybe … [The show is] moving past this hierarchical relationship where Rick is beating up on Morty and both of them are complaining,” Harmon said.

“It’s like, ‘What is a friendship?’ And the answer is kind of funny. It hits our mind as funny. If they made another Cheech and Chong movie—to me, I think one of the funniest things that could happen would be for them to stop for a moment and go, like, ‘That was really cool of you. Thank you.’ ‘No problem man, I just noticed, like, you get kind of tightly wound sometimes.’ Make them actually connect with each other for a moment. I think that’s hysterically funny and fulfilling. Yes, we can expect to see more because I find it funny and it’s keeping me alive. [Laughs].”

New Rick and Morty episodes arrive Sundays on Adult Swim.

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