Sunday night's episode of Rick and Morty finally took us back to the Rick Prime subplot and even brought Evil Morty back into the fold. In "Unmortricken," we watched as Rick C-137 finally tracked down the version of him who killed his wife before he proceeded to violently and savagely beat his greatest foe to death.
It proved to be perhaps the most harrowing and violent moment in the show's history and, as the episode ends, Evil Morty leaves with a device capable of killing every version of someone in existence (though he'll only use it if he's not left alone). As for Rick, revenge doesn't appear to bring the scientist any real joy or satisfaction.
Talking to Variety (via SFFGazette.com), Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon weighed in on the decision to finally revisit - and resolve - this plot thread after it was last touched on in the season 6 premiere.
"I think now it can be said that there’s been so much turbulence going on behind the scenes that Season 6 kind of represented me [unplugging] those wires from my heart and my obsessive brain," he says. "I had to look at the show as a job."
As for the decision to let Evil Morty make off with the Omega device, Harmon says Rick "basically gave a leash that’s around his neck to someone that isn’t him, because he’s more invested consciously in the destruction of himself. I think that’s both tragic and also, writers and drunks like me consider that kind of noble and interesting - the commitment to self-destruction."
When it comes to Rick Prime's demise, the co-creator doesn't view that as the end. "I think there’s still a conclusion to a story here," he argues, "because the narcissist will tell you that destroying yourself, it doesn’t solve a problem."
"This is how far we’ve come with Rick’s journey. He is now the one who is existentially isolated. He is the one that doesn’t feel like he fits in the universe around him. Which puts him on the same level as a 14-year-old boy learning there’s multiple universes 10 show-years earlier."
Showrunner Scott Marder agrees with that take and goes on to say that, "[The] episode would have been a series finale on a lot of shows, and I liked that it was just an episode in the middle of one of our seasons. We move at a really crazy pace."
"What do you do if you’re Braveheart and you’ve been avenging your dead wife and succeed and don’t die, and then live beyond it?" he wonders. "Where’s your story go when that’s all that’s defined you?"
These are all very compelling points and where Rick and Morty goes from here should prove to be essential viewing. However, for Harmon, the end of Rick C-137's mission isn't something he views as a problem for a show which has only occasionally tackled serialised storytelling.
"This show, the least of its concerns is wearing out its canonical credit card," he adds, likely alluding to Justin Roiland's firing. "If the show was going to be destroyed, it would have been destroyed by any of the other Godzilla-sized problems that have happened to it, including pandemics, writers’ strikes, and other things."
What did you think about Rick and Morty's latest episode? Share your thoughts in the comments section.