The Most Epic Fantasy and Sci-Fi Website

Adult Swim Doesn’t Fire Dan Harmon For His Old “Offensive” Sketch But Releases Statement Instead


Last weekend, Hollywood was shocked to find Marvel director James Gunn fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for offensive and inappropriate tweets made fourteen years back. A few days after, Rick and Morty's Dan Harmon found himself in a similar situation, receiving backlash after a distasteful comedy sketch that the creative had produced in 2009 managed to resurface online.

Since then the Rick and Morty co-creator deleted his account on Twitter, and now Adult Swim, the network that airs Harmon's brassy animated sci-fi comedy series, has come up with a statement regarding the controversy.

Though the network decided not to fire Harmon the same way Disney did with Gunn, TV Line reports that Adult Swim has washed its hands of Harmon's sketch, saying that the offensive old video has "no place" at the network.

"At Adult Swim, we seek out and encourage creative freedom and look to push the envelope in many ways, particularly around comedy," the network wrote in the statement. "The offensive content of Dan's 2009 video that recently surfaced demonstrates poor judgment and does not reflect the type of content we seek out. Dan recognized his mistake at the time and has apologized. He understands there is no place for this type of content here at Adult Swim."

Adult Swim seems to be handling the controversy much better than Disney has. Sure Harmon has made mistakes before, but we all do, and the creative has long since tried to change and make amends. It would have been terrible for the network to cut ties with one of their best creatives.

Disney, on the other hand, may have gone too far, letting go of a talented filmmaker like James Gunn just because of a smear campaign bringing up offensive tweets from fourteen years in the past – tweets that he's long since apologized for before the tweets resurfaced online.

What do you think of both Gunn and Harmon's controversy? Should Gunn have been fired? Should Harmon have been allowed to stay?

Feel free to use the comment section below.

Read: Robert Zemeckis Says There Won't Be A Back To The Future IV

For more articles like this, take a look at our Fandoms page.