After many months of uncertainty, amid tense negotiations and an anticipation stoked by one of pop culture’s most demanding fan bases, Rick and Morty has at last been renewed by Adult Swim for a staggering 70 episodes, guaranteeing the hit animated show many more seasons to play its nihilistic sci-fi satire. It’s exceptionally good news—not least for Dan Harmon, whose career has been characterized by an ever present certainty that it’s all going to blow up at any moment. (See: Community.) Harmon has spent a lot of the time in between the end of Rick and Morty’s third season and today’s renewal fielding abuse from those fans online, many of them not so subtly blaming him for the delay. Meanwhile, he and co-creator Justin Roiland were holding out for a deal that would finally give them everything they need to focus the whole of their energies on making Rick and Morty as good as possible, for as long as possible. Today, that deal is done. GQ spoke with Harmon to see how he’s coping with, for once, getting exactly what he wanted. (And for the full story of the weeks leading up to Rick and Morty’s renewal—and its joyous aftermath—check out GQ's June issue, on newsstands May 22.)

GQ: How are you feeling?

Dan Harmon: I’m feeling great. Had to make up my mind that this wasn’t a guarantee, for the sake of my own emotional well-being. But now the deal is closed and it’s official, so I can finally actually breathe and be as excited as I’ve wanted to be. I’m ecstatic. Rick and Morty is definitely the most freeing, most fun thing I’ve ever worked on. It’s had the biggest impact. I love everything I make—and hate it, I guess—but I have a very special relationship with Rick and Morty, and getting a 70-episode pickup means that I can actually really focus on it, and loving it won’t be taking away from anything else. I can let Rick and Morty take away from everything.

Would you say you got everything you wanted in this deal?

Yeah, absolutely. It was a lot of back and forth, but [co-creator] Justin [Roiland] and I just needed enough episodes and the right kind of deal structure that would give us permission to do what we want to do, which is truly focus on the show. We got all that, and we’re both very excited.

Does that mean you’re going to be focusing solely on Rick and Morty from now on and not taking on any other projects?

It probably won’t immediately be 100 percent Rick and Morty. There’s other projects that will need to be supervised and tended to, whether that means wrapping them up or minimizing my involvement in them. But yes—the deal that we arrived at is certainly one that justifies us focusing on the show exclusively. We’ll be able to do other things, but the catch-as-catch-can, hand-to-mouth, wondering-what-my-future-holds days can finally draw to a close. I mean, 70 episodes is a lot of Rick and Morty to focus on. At the end of doing that, I’m not gonna feel like Oh, damn it, I should have been focusing on my landscaping business.

Do you think that kind of job security will change your working process—remove some of the stress, make it more of a regular, nine-to-five existence?

I think it makes that possible, yeah. Because it’s always been the kind of show that lets you obsess about it as much as you want. And I think that over the seasons we’ve done, the emerging lesson has been that I could be a little more like Justin—and vice versa—in terms of how we work together. We’ve both observed that. Like, how much is overthinking, how much is under-thinking, when is the right time to turn in a draft, how much are you helping the show by saying “It’s not perfect yet,” and how much are you hurting it, when you could just be collaborating and letting the thing move forward with animators and fixing it along the way, stuff like that.