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'Rick and Morty' season 3 release date news: Creators tease season 3 could premiere before year end

"Rick and Morty" season 3's premiere will reportedly air before the year ends | Rick and Morty/Facebook

Fans who have grown to love Rick in "Rick and Morty" took it badly when season 2 ended with the former being locked away in an intergalactic jail. With season 3 seemingly too far away, they wondered if Rick would ever get to be with his family again or if he would be locked up forever.

It didn't help that one of the characters in the show, Mr. Poopybutthole, hinted that fans might have to wait "a year and a half ... or longer" for them to find out the fates of the characters who wormed their way into viewers' hearts.

A purported March 2017 premiere for season 3 seemed rather far for a cartoon series whose second season ended in October 2015. Nevertheless, at the Magic City Comic Con, the show's creators, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, might have just provided a soothing balm for fans who are still reeling from season 2's devastating finale.

Cinema Blend shared the inside scoop from the "Rick and Morty" panel at the convention and said that the show will be returning to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim much sooner than March 2017.

"I think Season 3 is—we're targeting around the end of this year ... You guys do realize we're at the beginning of this year?" he teased.

So it definitely looks like fans are looking at less than a full calendar year before the fantastic duo of this smart, yet darkly humorous show, returns for a follow-up season.

Another good that has come out of this waiting game, according to Inquistr, is the news that that "Rick and Morty" season 3 would run four episodes longer than seasons 1 and 2 did. Thus, fans should be expecting fourteen episodes for the third season.

What's more, Harmon told Den of Geek in an exclusive interview that they would be adding new writers to work on season 3.

"There was a craving for a gender balance in the writers' room that we had never had, but I'm also very proud of the fact that we didn't compromise ourselves following that craving," he said in the interview. "We just looked harder ... the show was popping up on the radar of a lot of great female writers. ..."

Expect "Rick and Morty" season 3 to be back bigger, funnier, and earlier than expected.