Hello Internet.
Welcome to Film Theory, the show that wishes there was a Night MatPat to split the workload
no more FNAF So Rick and Morty is about to return from
its midseason break.
But before it does, I figured it was a good time to take a look at the season's first
six episodes to check out where things might be headed next.
After ending season 5 by blowing a huge hole into the universe, Rick and Morty opened season
6 with an all new, all different mandate.
In our previous Rick and Morty theory, we looked specifically at the first episode of
the season to conclude that it was all about ways of handling grief.
Rick refuses to let go of his past trauma enough so that he's torturing himself and
everyone around him with it.
Meanwhile, the Jerry from Season one's Kronenberg Universe completely lets go of his past trauma
to a self-destructive degree, refusing to accept anyone into his life and severing all
ties with anyone from his past.
The true solution, however, is found somewhere in the middle.
Grief isn't solved by never moving on, but it's also not solved by completely moving
on.
It's a process of slow healing, acknowledging that that trauma is always going to be a part
of you and just learning to live with that.
We concluded that this episode was setting up a season-long theme of healing for Rick,
working on himself.
and boy howdy did we get that one right on the money!
I haven't been more right about a theory since…
ahh…
Mmm
In each of these first six episodes, we watch Rick actively going out of his way to do the
most un-Rick thing ever, helping the family members around him.
When Beth falls in love with a clone of herself in episode three, we see him doing something
we've never seen him do before in the Infinite Universes.
Give fatherly advice.
When Morty’s psyche is fragmented into a billion pieces by a video game, Rick spends
a lifetime trying to put those pieces back together, lowering his emotional walls to
try and help recover as much of Morty as he can.
Rick even decides to show Jerry some respect.
Jerry!!
And when a fortune cookie dooms Jerry to a fate worse than death, Rick even gives up
universal power just to save him.
And while he may have lost immortal power, he gained
a friend.
All of this without the crutch of inter-dimensional portal travel, despite Rick saying that he
was working on fixing it throughout the season.
But of course, nothing can last forever.
In the final episode, right before the midseason break, Rick restores portal travel and promises
to return to classic, wacky Rick and Morty adventures.
So now this begs the question with Rick and the Smiths well, on their way through the
healing process, what comes next?
Are we leaving behind the canon in lore established by the front half of the season and returning
to completely disconnected episodic adventures, like Rick says?
I don't think so.
And it's all because of one simple truth, healing leaves scars: physically, emotionally
and mentally.
And it's time our characters start dealing with those scars.
And of them, none is bigger than a certain inter-dimensional world hopper set up in the
season's very first episode.
That's right friends.
By analyzing the season's episodes so far and what they're saying about the show's characters.
I believe that we can predict exactly where Rick and Morty is headed for the rest of the
season.
And while yeah, we're going to see the return of some dimension hopping adventures across
space and time.
We're also going to be pulling on a story thread that's been lingering over our heads
for several seasons now.
Spoiler alert there's a Rick out there that's going to shatter the status quo of this universe
forever.
So open up your emergency fortune cookie loyal theorist, we're heading in.
Now, obviously Rick healing the bonds with his family was a huge part of these first
six episodes, but that wasn't all.
Another recurring theme that stood out across the first half of the season was dissatisfaction.
Everyone who got what they thought they wanted actually didn't end up all that happy about
it.
Marta, the leader of the Morty religion inside Morty's brain, manages to unite 92% of the
world to her cause, a monumental task.
But she's left unhappy with the reality that not everyone in this video game simulation
is going to be united as one.
The nocturnal Smith Night Family manages to overthrow the Day Smiths in a coup, thereby
allowing them to be in charge of their lives.
But then they hate the responsibility that comes with being active during the day, so
they voluntarily hand control back to the Day Smiths.
When hyper intelligent space dinosaurs show up on Earth to create a utopia for humanity,
humans just become bored with this life without struggle.
In every case, these characters are getting exactly what they wanted, but they're left
empty by it in some way or another.
So what does it mean?
if you're left unfulfilled after getting what you want, what even is the purpose of life?
Is there a purpose to life?
Well, that, my friends, brings us to a personal favorite of the Rick and Morty franchise:
Nihilism, the belief that nothing matters.
Now, this is really just boiling it down to the bare bones.
But nihilists often believe that there's no moral order, no actual fundamental purpose
to life or existence within the universe.
Again, nothing matters.
And it's this concept that almost perfectly embodies Rick Sanchez, a man who has seen
infinity and has thus lost the ability to care about finite things.
Nothing matters because all the outcomes are not only possible, they've already happened
out there somewhere.
He's seen how pointless it is to try and solve a problem.
So you could say that these characters getting what they want and then finding out it didn't
mean anything supports the view of nihilism.
It proves that Rick Sanchez is right.
But there are other ways to look at this philosophy.
There's a flipside here that views the pointless universe positively.
It's called optimistic nihilism.
If we truly live in a universe where nothing matters, well, that's just another way of
saying that everything matters equally.
Anything can matter as much as you decide it matters.
You could, for instance, decide that this channel matters more to you than anything
else in the universe, and then go and hit that subscribe button below the video.
Under optimistic nihilism that is a perfectly fair assessment.
And looking at the general ecosystem of YouTube… yeah, I’d say it's not that far off.
In the context of Rick and Morty: of all characters in the show, Morty is the one who most closely
represents this belief.
He laid this all out way back in season one.
Rick's healing arc through the first half of the season has shown him slowly coming
over to this exact idea.
He knows that scientifically nothing matters because he's seen the infinite multiverse.
But the people and events in his small corner of the multiverse can matter.
When Jerry gives Rick a friendship fortune cookie.
Sure.
Rick calls this out as a stupid gesture, but notice that he keeps the fortune.
He even goes so far as to look at it again before putting it in his pocket.
It's a small gesture that meant something.
With Beth constantly going through self-confidence issues, Rick decides to leave out a special
wine that helps her open up and discover herself with Space Beth.
And when a portion of Morty's psyche asks that Rick keep their video game world on so
they can continue to exist, Rick listens and chooses to follow
that request.
He has no reason to do this.
He got exactly what he wanted out of the game and has nothing to gain from being beholden
to a video game character.
And yet he keeps the game running because it's a nice thing to do.
It's a small action that has a big impact in the personal universe of someone else.
It's what all of these situations in season six have in common.
He has nothing to gain, but he's using his godlike powers to actually help his family.
Even back in episode one, Rick chooses to rescue the Smiths instead of continuing his
self-destructive pursuit of Rick Prime.
And this positive attitude is starting to leak into other parts of the show as well.
Throughout the last five seasons, Rick has gotten actively annoyed whenever the show
gets meta, calling attention to its own narrative in order to play with the concept of how narrative
works.
That's what the whole Story Train episode was about a satire on story structure in the
in universe consequences of long form storytelling.
He even has contempt for his own back story.
And really Rick's previous hatred for the idea of continuity is just an extension of
his nihilism.
If you believe that nothing matters well, canon and lore directly conflict with that
belief.
But now, after healing and embracing this more optimistic view of the world, Rick suddenly
cares about the potential stories that his series can explore.
For example, when he's asked about the rift left by last season's finale, he actively
defends its existence.
Normally that's the sort of thing that would drive him insane.
He’d despise the fact that it's there.
And yet when the space dinosaurs sew the rift shut Rick becomes furious about the apparent
loss of potential stories.
Continuity is slowly starting to matter to him because it anchors him, it grounds him,
it gives him something to actually care about.
Sure, in the grand scheme it might be meaningless, but to him it does have meaning.
But this sort of investment from characters as powerful as Rick can have some major consequences.
In episode six, we meet the Space Dinosaurs, super intelligent beings on par with Rick.
These dinosaurs travel the universe to help other species while doing sick ollies.
But wherever the dinosaurs go to help meteors follow, apparently a species of giant meteor
evolved to be their equal opposite, their ideological nemesis.
It's a force of absolute death and destruction versus an equal and opposite force of creation
and creativity.
The more good the dinosaurs do and the more successful they are, the more meteors are
born to destroy their progress.
And here's the thing.
If this is indeed a rule of the universe, enough so that it's happened several times
to the dinosaurs, this then also applies to Rick.
After all, he and the Space Dinos already see themselves as equals.
So it would follow that Rick also has himself an equal and opposite force, a force that's
been evolving alongside Rick in the opposite direction.
That's right, loyal theorist.
I believe that Rick Prime, the character that killed our Rick's family and started the entire
chain of events that would lead to the series, is not only our Rick's nemesis, but his universal
counterweight.
Kind of.
It's actually more accurate to say that our Rick is Rick Prime's meteor.
See, from what we can tell, Rick Prime is basically the Rickest Rick in all existence
and seems to be the embodiment of that pessimistic view of nihilism that our Rick used to follow.
Out of what little we've seen of him Rick Prime genuinely doesn't seem to care about
anything beyond spreading the good word of not caring about anything to his fellow Rick's.
He doesn't even seem to care about his family at all.
Basically, Rick Prime is like the Rick that we knew from previous seasons but amped up
to 11 without any of the character development, growth and healing that we've seen our Rick
going through.
He's the sort of guy that would hop to a new universe in a heartbeat, leaving all his loved
ones behind the second things get dicey.
So just like the space dinosaurs floated through the universe, helping out anyone they could.
Rick Prime goes from university universe, making things worse through the creation of
other pessimistic, nihilistic Ricks.
But in that process he literally created our Rick.
He killed his wife and daughter, which sets off the events of the series, including the
healing and character growth that we're watching our Rick go through right now.
And through this process, our Rick is taking his first steps to being Rick Prime's equal
opposite, a Rick that genuinely cares.
You know the status quo of this franchise?
The irreverent adventures where nothing of any consequence happens.
That is a thing of the past.
Represented in a lot of ways by Rick Prime.
Just think, we finally know what happened to our Rick's family; when it happened on
the timeline, where it happened in the multiverse, how it went down and who did it.
But we're still missing that one key piece of data,
Why?
Why did Rick Prime do this in the first place?
Explicitly all we get is a vague, offhanded explanation that Rick's don't typically refuse
the call to multiversal adventure, but we don't know why it's so important to Rick Prime
that other Rick's follow in his footsteps.
Maybe this is why.
Maybe he understands that an equally powerful but oppositely aligned Rick would one day
rise up to stop him.
And he wanted to make sure that that didn't happen.
Or maybe fate is just pulling him to create his equal opposite Rick.
I, for one, can't wait to find out.
But hey, we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you your daily allotment
of capitalism.
That's right, loyal theorists.
The holiday season is quickly approaching.
And you know that means we got ourselves some new Theory Wear that makes the perfect gift
for you or the Theorist in your life
this time around.
If you don't feel like wearing any gAmE tHeOrY GrEeN, we've got ourselves some Film Theory
merch to help you rep, the red.
First off, we got this great Film Theory academy hoodie for anyone who wants to embrace their
inner film student.
It's a really cool design and we kept it a little bit oversize so you can be cozy inside
of those chilly movie theaters as you get ready to watch [INSERT DISNEY TENTPOLE HERE]
this holiday.
Plus, we also have ourselves an awesome screen themed vintage ringer T-shirt, which would
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It’s almost like we planned this stuff out.
Oh, and this one's a bit wild, but do you love vintage analog horror, but you just wish
you could give the tapes a big ol fuzzy hug?
Well, now you can with our Film Theory VHS plushie.
It even comes with a cool little zippered case to keep it safe just one morning.
Don't feed it after midnight.
And if you've ever wondered what this channel smells like, you can find out with our new
candle set.
At the very least, you can help them summon the next season of Rick and Morty that much
faster.
So grab a gift that'll make the theorist in your life happy or just treat yourself to
a little something special this holiday.
You deserve a nice gift too.
Links to all the items are below this video.
Or you could just go to TheoryWear.com to check out the full collection.
I think there are some special discounts and bundles over on the merch site, so you might
want to check those out.
And in the meantime, remember, it's all just a theory.
A FILM THEORY!
aaaaaaaand cut.