Robotic Ricks, meta-rants, and, oh yeah, a freakin' lightsaber?
What's next for Rick and Morty in season 7?
In the penultimate episode of "Rick and Morty" Season 6, there's a bit of a change in the
multiverse's meanest scientist.
After a typical shouting match at the start of the episode when Morty accepts a sword
from the Knights of the Sun, Rick announces that he's going to be
"I'm gonna be like, 22% more agreeable with you for like, maybe one episode or one adventure."
Morty is understandably wary of this unusual spurt of kindness from his grandpa, and he
repeatedly asks what the catch is.
Rick assures him that there is no catch, but in the next episode, we discover that's a lie.
The Rick present in "A Rick in King Mortur's Mort" is actually a robot created by the real
Rick, who has been toiling away in one of his secret basement labs trying to track down Rick Prime.
He assures Morty that the robot was only present for the one episode, and that it was Morty
calling him "boring" that pushed him to make the change.
C-137 looks about as rough as he ever has when Morty discovers him in the basement,
as the physical and emotional toll of hunting his nemesis has clearly worn him down.
The tragic part is, the whole family seems far better off with the robot Rick.
His 22% increase in love and kindness has a profound impact on everyone's overall happiness,
which makes it all the more upsetting when we learn that it was just one of Rick's self-serving tricks.
The "Rick and Morty" Season 6 finale sees the return of one of the show's most prominent
side characters, U.S. President Curtis.
Usually stuck somewhere between malicious villain and incompetent fool, Curtis appears
this time to avert global destruction when Morty drops his new lightsaber at a "perfectly
vertical" angle — it goes straight through the floor and keeps on going, heading right
for the Earth's core.
Curtis helps stop the lightsaber, but it soon becomes apparent that he wanted it for himself
all along.
"Rick and Morty" has parodied just about every major sci-fi franchise known to man, and it's
taken plenty of digs at "Star Wars" over the years, but the finale spends a surprising
amount of time on the spoof.
Through Morty and the president, the writers actually discuss the nuances of the ever-passionate
"Star Wars" fandom.
It's more thoughtful than most of the show's parodies, and it reestablishes the president
as a supremely silly character.
"Disney ruined it!
You think I want 30 low-rent tv series with bad CGI?
They film everything on that one big green screen."
"Like you've got better ideas!"
Intercut with the whole lightsaber fiasco are some scenes of Rick doing experiments
in his lab.
It's been a while since the Season 6 premiere, so you'd be forgiven for not recognizing what
he's doing.
The device he analyzes is one of the attack drones present on Rick Prime's space station,
which Rick and Morty visited in the Season 6 opener.
Apparently, Rick acquired one of the robots to run tests on, though it's not entirely
clear what information he gleans from this.
We also see Rick analyzing the dancing Rick from Rick Prime's space station, who's revealed
in the post-credits scene of "Solaricks" to in fact be the man himself.
Whether or not Rick C-137 knows this is unclear, but his scientific analysis of the man's bouncing
butt bears fruit.
Through all of this, Rick almost appears to be running on autopilot.
He clearly hasn't shaved or bathed in quite some time, and it seems that his revenge quest
is once again consuming him.
Unfortunately, the answers he finds aren't as simple as he'd like them to be.
Using all the data collected from Rick Prime's space station hideout, Rick C-137 is able
to pinpoint where the villain is.
Unfortunately, his computer starts highlighting numerous other possible locations.The confusing
thing here is what Rick says later.
When he shows Morty the multiverse scans revealing Rick Prime's many locations, Morty asks if
he's seeing every place the villain could be.
"I wish, Morty.
It's all the places he is."
"Ah, jeez."
"Welcome to my darkness."
Does this mean that Rick Prime has a bunch of clones across the multiverse?
Or that he uses some kind of time travel?
Or perhaps that he stays on the move and jumps around so frequently that it's impossible
to ever pin down his true location?
We don't find out for sure, and it's likely that Rick C-137 himself doesn't actually know.
As he tells Morty, he's spent most of his life hunting the guy, and he's hardly any
closer to victory.
By the end of "Rick and Morty" Season 6, the hunt for Rick Prime is front and center.
For five seasons, Rick C-137 hardly even mentioned his vendetta against the evil doppelgänger.
But after getting so close to the culprit in the Season 6 opener, Rick is back on the
case in full force.
And this time, he's taking Morty with him.
In an effort to mend fences with his grandson after the whole robot reveal, Rick invites
Morty into his lab and shows him what he's dug up on Rick Prime.
He quickly becomes manic and grimly foreshadows what may happen as they hunt the villain together.
"Hunting him destroyed me, Morty, but now we're going to do it together.
You and me."
"Oh, uh…"
"It's going to take over your life, Morty."
Despite Rick bringing Morty in on his revenge quest at the end of Season 6, the two characters
still seem somewhat at odds.
All the goodwill built up by robo-Rick's kindness is erased when the twist of his true nature
is revealed, and Morty once again feels tricked and manipulated by his grandpa.
At the end of Season 5, he demanded that Rick start treating him more like an equal, and
for a while, that seemed to be going well.
But now, things appear to be regressing.
However, while Rick may be reverting to his old ways, things aren't back to the way they
originally were.
Morty has become more of an equal party in their adventures over the last two seasons,
and that power has made it harder for Rick to manipulate him.
Rick bringing him into the hunt for Rick Prime will be a test for their relationship, and
it should be interesting to see how their dynamic plays out as they pursue the villain.
By the end of "Rick and Morty" Season 6, the Smith family looks a good deal different than
it did at the start of the show.
After a truly wild ride over the past few years, Jerry has reached a kind of equilibrium.
He's still not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's regained some respect in the eyes
of his family and is far less pitiful than he once was.
Of course, the biggest change in the Smith family dynamic is the consistent presence
of Space Beth, who's become a kind of cool aunt to Morty and Summer.
She's also introduced a… curious element to Beth and Jerry's relationship.
Ethics of sleeping with your clone aside, the relationship between the three adults
appears to have had benefits for them all.
With the balance among the rest of the family at what might be an all-time high, Rick becomes
the outcast.
His decision to replace himself with a robot seems selfish and manipulative, but it might
actually suggest a greater degree of self-loathing.
Rick sees that his family is happier, and he doesn't feel like he can be a part of that
new, happy normal.
Instead of trying to get on board with the whole happy family thing, he hides away in
the basement and sends a robot out in his place, isolating himself from the people he's
grown closest to.
"Look man, I'm sorry I've been such a dick in the past that you think I'm doing a thing here.
I'm honestly just trying to do better by you."
"Are you a robot?"
"Morty!"
It's no secret that Rick C-137 isn't a good person.
The flashbacks we get at the end of "Rick and Morty" Season 5 don't redeem him, but
they do provide a lot of context for why he is the way he is.
We see how his life was torn apart by Rick Prime, how he dedicated his life to exacting
revenge, and how decades of failure and subsequent violence transformed Rick C-137 into a cold
husk of his former self.
At the start of "Rick and Morty," C-137 might be at his lowest point.
But as the series moves forward, he gets some of his mojo back.
Unfortunately, Rick takes some backwards steps in the Season 6 finale.
The way Rick looks and talks in his underground lab evokes his darkest moments from the early
years of the show.
It's clear that Rick Prime's resurgence has sent him on a spiral, and this time, there's
no telling where it will lead him.
Though Rick Prime's shadow looms large over "Rick and Morty" Season 6, we still don't
know much about the guy.
That's probably because Rick C-137 doesn't know that much.
But who actually is Rick Prime, and what does he want?
It's implied that he was one of the first Ricks, if not the first, to develop multiversal travel.
His name would seem to back that up.
It's also clear that he's incredibly calculated and psychotic, even beyond the levels of normal Ricks.
But why did he leave his family in the first place?
Does his role as Morty's actual grandfather have something to do with him being "the Mortiest Morty?"
And what's his overall plan, if he even has one?
One character who fans may have expected to see at the end of "Rick and Morty" Season
6 is Evil Morty, the schemer who makes a dramatic escape in the Season 5 finale.
He's the reason Morty learns about Rick's tragic backstory, and the reason his portal
gun is disabled.
At the end of Season 5, Evil Morty transcends the Central Finite Curve and ventures into
a new beginning.
Wherever he goes, it must be far away indeed, as there's no sign of him anywhere in Season 6.
To be fair, that makes complete sense.
Evil Morty's only ambition was to get away from Ricks, so why would he come back after
completing that goal?
It's entirely possible that his story is now over, and that we'll never see him in the
show again.
With Rick Prime becoming the show's main antagonist, there's less room for Evil Morty anyway.
Still, it would be fun to see him pop up again in the future, even just for a cameo.
As has become standard, Mr. Poopybutthole makes an appearance in the post-credits scene
of the "Rick and Morty" Season 6 finale.
In the time since we last saw him, the little yellow guy has gotten swole, though apparently
not swole enough for serious squatting.
Mr. Poopybutthole just can't catch a break, it seems.
Since he's often shown watching the series just like we are, he's probably in some far-off dimension.
However, that doesn't mean that he couldn't be brought back into the main story at some point.
In fact, knowing "Rick and Morty," you can probably count on it.
"Rick and Morty" is going to be around for a few more years at least.
Reportedly, the team behind the show are already at work on Season 7 and Season 8.
There's also a Season 9 in the pipeline, showrunner Scott Marder told Newsweek,
The Season 6 finale gives us a pretty good idea of what the next season may entail.
In the final scene of the episode, Rick flies into one of his classic fourth-wall-breaking
rants, declaring that the show's next installment will be all about Rick Prime.
"Rick and Morty Season 7: Hunting my nemesis.
Maybe trying to stay healthy while doing it, juggling plates, not every episode, Morty.
It could be all happening in the background, who knows?"
It's the same brand of noncommittal fan teasing that the show has become known for, but it
also paints a pretty clear portrait of what the big-picture story threads of Season 7
will be.
We'll probably still get mostly one-off episodes, like Rick says, but he and Morty will also
be working together to hunt Rick Prime.
With luck, we'll learn a bit more about him, our own Rick and Morty, and the larger multiverse
along the way.