Sometime during the fifth season of "Adventure Time", Ward abruptly stepped down from running the show, explaining it was negatively affecting his "quality of life". In the October 2, 2014 edition of the "Rolling Stone" magazine, Ward stated "I quit because it was driving me nuts". However, he continued to work as one of the show's writers and storyboard artists until the end of season six, and still served as an executive producer up until the series finale. In an interview with Indiewire prior to the debut of season seven, head writer Kent Osborne noted that Ward had stopped writing episode outlines at the beginning of season 7 but still looked over them and provided input.