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Adult Swim is teasing a secret YouTube video that will premiere on April 1 at midnight, and if history is any indication, it could be Rick and Morty related.
The network sent out emails that link to a YouTube video that’s currently set to private, but it’s supposed to go live at midnight. While there’s no way to know what this video might be, Adult Swim has premiered an episode of Rick and Morty as an April Fool’s Day surprise in the past, and with a new season coming soon, it seems like a possibility.
Of course, anyone who’s spent some time on the internet knows that April Fools Day is notorious for internet pranks — some of which end up being pretty poorly conceived. However, Adults Swim has been notorious for its April 1 gags dating all the way back to 2004.
But what’s probably most interesting to Rick and Morty fans is that in 2017, ahead of the show’s third season, Adult Swim debuted the season’s first episode as a special surprise and continued to air it until the end of the day. Over the course of the day, the surprise episode was watched by over 11 million people, according to Adult Swim. The rest of the season then aired four months later starting on July 30.
With that in mind, it’s certainly not out of the question that Adult Swim could do the same thing this year with the season 5 premiere. Thanks to the trailer that was dropped on Tuesday, we know that season 5 is set to debut on June 20 — giving this pretty similar timing to 2017’s surprise release. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for Adult Swim to just drop one episode early to get fans excited.
Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that this is actually related to Rick and Morty at all. Since 2017, only two of the network’s April Fool’s Day jokes have been related to Rick and Morty.
When Polygon reached out, Cartoon Network declined to comment on what exactly the Adult Swim YouTube link was for. So this is your fair warning, if you tune into the video, it could be Rick and Morty, or it could be something entirely different. In case you do want to give it a shot here’s the YouTube link again ... no promises.
Update: At 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, Adult Swim ... did not release a new episode of Rick and Morty. Instead, the Network’s April Fool’s Day joke this year is that it’s temporarily turning into Adult Swim Junior, a kid’s network with baby version of all your favorite current and former Adult Swim characters.
The trailer for Adult Swim Junior includes a show called The Venture Nephews, with a baby Brock and baby Rusty Venture, as well as brief glimpses of characters from The Boondocks, Aqua Teen hunger Force, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
Of course, no Adult Swim joke would be complete without an appearance from everyone’s favorite mad scientist and his grandson, who got their own entire short called Rick and Morty Babies.
