Rick and Morty season eight arrives May 25, and while io9 got an advance peek at four early episodes, one fan-favorite character didn’t appear in them: Space Beth, the badass clone of Rick’s daughter, Beth. However, Adult Swim’s trailer revealed Space Beth will definitely be back—and in io9’s recent interview with Rick and Morty cast and crew, we learned just how important she will be.
And to backtrack quickly before it gets too confusing—Space Beth might actually be Rick’s real daughter, and “our” Beth might in fact be the duplicate. It’s a question that’s hung over the characters since Space Beth first appeared back in the season four finale. And it plays into one of Rick and Morty‘s recurring fascinations.
“For me, it’s always been like, ‘Well, who are you?’ It’s a nature versus nurture thing,” Rick and Morty executive producer Dan Harmon told io9 when we asked about the show’s affection for clones. “Notably, we don’t know if it’s Space Beth or domestic Beth that is the clone. I like the Schrödinger’s cat [idea]—things that explore uncertainty as an empirical concept, which is what the Schrödinger’s cat model is. It’s this idea that a thing can be neither true or untrue, or it’s one of two things, and you’ll never know which it is.”
He continued. “That’s a little forced with the Beths, but that’s what clone-related stuff—and multiversal [stuff]which is essentially a clone of you—is for me. The question of like, who are you? What makes you? Is it a bunch of hormones? Is it your pancreas? Is your brain a pilot in a Voltron that you’re steering around? Is it because your parents were mean to you? Nathan Fielder is exploring that on this season of The Rehearsalwhich is amazing to watch because he’s got my number there. It’s just like ‘What if you control every detail, and what is it that makes this thing this thing?’”
Showrunner and executive producer Scott Marder jumped in to tease how important that will be in the upcoming episodes, especially after the events of season seven. “Season eight, in its biggest arc, is Rick having the sort of—now that Rick Prime’s out of the way, he’s got a more or less deal with the ramifications of that mess he’s made with the Beths the most. Now that he’s got nowhere that’s authentically pulling him away, he’s really got to make sense of that mess.”
For Rick and Morty star Sarah Chalke, the addition of Space Beth has been an exciting challenge. “I love voicing Space Beth. I was so pumped when Space Beth became kind of a part of the family and it wasn’t just a one-off episode,” she said.
“It’s really fun. When we do an episode with both Beths, we’ll record Beth first in its entirety, and then do Space Beth, so if they’re in a scene together we’re not going back and forth,” she said. “And I’ll do Space Beth second so that my voice is more raspy—and if it’s not doing that on its own, I’ll try and drop down a little bit so it’s in the deeper register, because she has more of an edge.”
“I just try to walk that line [of] them feeling like they’re the same person but completely different characters, because they have a different view of the world and of each other, and of Rick and of Jerry. One of my favorite things about being on the show has been trying to figure out that dynamic and how to make them unique from each other.”
Rick and Morty season eight begins May 25 on Adult Swim.
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