[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Rick and Morty, Season 5, Episode 2, "Mortiplicity."]
Well, there goes any hope for actual change in Rick and Morty, at least not the kind teased in the great premiere episode.
When last we left the Smiths, no one wanted anything to do with Rick, who was kind of humiliated by his nemesis, Mr. Nimbus, and Jessica kissed Morty before declaring herself a Time God and leaving seemingly forever. This episode mostly ignores that, before diving into another classic Rick and Morty adventure in which the family dies multiple times, sci-fi tropes are exploited for all they're worth, and we even got an emotional realization or two.
There's a reason Justin Roiland hyped this episode up when he talked to us, and said it should have been the premiere. In fact, the best way to describe Mortiplicity is to use its co-creator's own words: "Episode 2 is fucking insane in the best way. It's really a classic, over-the-top, Rick and Morty brain-melting episode. In a good way."
We start with a classic Rick and Morty scene in which the family sits around the breakfast table while Rick and Morty proudly proclaim that they are going to kill the Christian God (who is real and has been asleep for thousands of years). Before they can sneak up and kill him mob-style, the family is brutally murdered by space squids. Then we cut to another Rick, who is very much alive and explains that a decoy family has been killed and they are now in danger, which should have been clear from the start, since decoy Jerry said he had a job interview later that day.
Clones are a classic sci-fi trope, one that this very show has toyed with before — it's only been a couple of episodes since we last saw Space Beth, after all. But this is the hardest the show has dived into the concept, as we start to suddenly meet more and more clones that die horrible deaths. You see, in Rick's narcissism, he never thought to realize that once you create a perfect copy of Rick, he'd start making his own copies of himself because he thinks he's the original, and those copies would then make copies themselves, thinking that they are the original. Because of the number of decoys all there who have no idea if they are the original, they won't stop killing the other Ricks until there is only one. As one Rick explains, "It's Highlander rules."
Like the best episodes of Rick and Morty, the concept is taken to its most ridiculous extremes, as the further remove a decoy is from the original, the weirder they get, like a Smith family made of robots, or wooden dolls, or gruesome The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired creatures that wear human faces as disguises. Just before we get tired of the format of seeing a family check on the decoys, only to realize that they might be decoys themselves, before another family comes in and kills them, Mortiplicity raises the stakes or introduces a new layer of weirdness to maintain the show's familiar lightning-fast pace.
After a quick montage of dozens of Smith families maiming, assassinating each other, or committing suicide, we jump to a sanctuary for decoys. Episode writer Albro Lundy gets a lot of mileage out of showing different versions of the Smith family and the small differences between them. One Jerry may be faster to pick up on what's going on than the others, while one Rick may even be supportive of his daughter instead of calling her a bitch for questioning Rick's motives for creating the decoys in the first place. Still, some things never change, like Morty trying to kill someone with a spoon.
Even if the end of the episode seems to make the events that preceded it completely moot, there are still plenty of great moments of character realizations here. Mortiplicity isn't as interested in answering who is real or what that means as it is interested in exploring how we react to that question. After all, this is the show that once said "Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV?" Here, it's all about the mayhem and destruction that follows as each version of the Smith family fights tooth and nail for their right to exist, even if they are muppet versions of the family. It never occurred to Rick, in all his intelligence, to consider that his decoys would think like him and create other decoys, because he doesn't think that anyone could think like he does. Likewise, we get a powerful if brief heart-to-heart moment between Rick and Beth where Rick finally apologizes to his daughter for the way his recklessness endangered them.
Last week, I praised the show for seemingly trying to break the rules of sitcoms and make its characters go through some permanent change for a while. Though some things have certainly changed in the eight years since Rick and Morty premiered, this episode made it clear that serialization is not in the cards as of now, and that's okay. Even when the show pulls back on a big change, like revealing that none of these were the real Smiths, it still revealed enough about the characters that the audience itself has changed.
Next week when we see Summer and Morty fight, or Beth complain about Rick, they may not spell out that they know what happened in this episode, but every word they say carries the weight of the fun, mayhem, murder, and trauma that the audience saw them experience in Mortiplicity. This episode makes it clear that Rick and Morty doesn't care about a singular Smith family or a solid canon, because they can always pull an alternate dimension or a decoy card. All that matters is that the audience has seen the different versions of the characters go through some big things before they are reset by the laws of sitcoms. For now, that'd do.
Interdimensional Lost & Found
- Why does every new guest character's name starts with "Mr."? Also, Mr. Always Wants To Be Hunted needs to meet Mr Poopybutthole asap.
- This week's references: while one Morty sees the decoys and compares them to Westworld, another references Ex Machina. Rick's response to both? "Don't try to fuck them."
- The inclusion of Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever" during the end credits to pay off that great Highlander reference was perfect.
- Speaking of end-credits, wood Jerry lives for so long that he sees alien civilization evolve to be the Wild West, and then convert to Christianity.
- It cannot be a coincidence that this episode introduces a When Wolf movie right before the release of Werewolves Within. Someone has been reading our Year of the Werewolf articles.
- Of course, Rick's passwords for unlocking the decoys are "80085" and "8==D."
- We once again get a bit of a shoehorned-in, yet still very true and relevant, political commentary. Last week was a takedown of police brutality and racism. This week, the president explains the Electoral College's ties to slavery.
New episodes of Rick and Morty air Sundays on Adult Swim.