As Justin Roiland’s synopsis for this week’s episode asks, “Who’s even real, broh? Are you real? Broh?” That is the question du jour while watching “Mortiplicity,” and while one can assume they have the correct answer by the final, pre-epilogue scene, the thing about “Rick and Morty” is that it always leaves that lingering question.
But intricate plots full of repetition and confusion and sweeping the rug out from underneath the audience is the series’ bread and butter.
“Mortiplicity” is an episode in the same vein as those, keeping the audience on their feet as they try to figure out who the real Smith family is and who the decoys are.
Because while “Rick and Morty” has proven its ability to show gravitas when it comes to loss of life, ultimately, it has fun in treating life as meaningless as Rick believes it to be.
Going from a premiere with multiple plot threads for the family to one solid thruline, “Mortiplicity” opens the way plenty of “Rick and Morty” episodes do: with the Smiths at the kitchen table, learning about what new horrific adventure Rick and Morty are about to embark on.
According to what ends up being a decoy Rick, much like the real Smiths, the decoys were made “to go on fun self-contained celestial adventures.” To be fair, that is certainly what is happening in this episode and with these decoys.
And despite the explanation that decoys are not clones, there is a heck of a lot of overlap in the way all of these decoy versions of the Smiths think.
All of this then leads to decoy Smiths — still constantly under the assumption they’re the real deal until they’re not — deciding to pose as squid aliens to go around undetected and also take out other squid aliens.
From this point on, the episode really continues to milk the fact that these decoys are sentient beings with their own emotions and feelings — both to temporarily fool the audience that they’re the real deal and to tease the audience, in general.
Later on, there’s also the puppet decoy Smiths — not to be confused with the glockenspiel decoy Smiths, which look like marionettes — which are obvious decoys because of their appearance but feature a seemingly genuine heart-to-heart between Rick and Beth.
The least surprising aspect of this episode is probably the detour it takes to the pre-war decoy sanctuary, because if there’s one thing “Rick and Morty” truly loves, it’s getting all of its various versions of certain characters into a presumably safe place just for them… and then ultimately massacring them.