“Rick and Morty” returns for a 10-episode Season 5 on Adult Swim this Sunday, June 20.
This episode gets exceptionally dark in the Rick and Morty plotline, as Rick allows Morty to choose the adventure for once, leading to a scene with a predatory jellybean that is not played for laughs.
According to the episode’s writers — six were credited, including Roiland and Harmon — they originally pitched “about a hundred” mind blowers, narrowed them down and voted, and then wrote even more.
It’s a Rick and Morty and Summer adventure, as the trio ends up on a planet controlled by a hive entity known as Unity, Rick’s ex.
Ultimately, this is all a means for Season 2 to end with Rick sacrificing himself to the Galactic Federation to protect the family, though Beth simply thinks it’s her father abandoning her again.
Don’t mess with the original.
According to “Rick and Morty” writer Ryan Ridley, the episode was inspired by the introduction of Buffy Summers’ younger sister, Dawn, in the fifth season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — a character who all the other characters believe to have been there the whole time, even though the audience knows that not to be the case at all.
A seemingly run of the mill episode about Morty using a love potion leads to Rick and Morty having to abandon the Earth they — and the audience —know as theirs , move on to a new, similar reality, kill the Rick and Morty from that Earth, bury their bodies in the backyard, and assume their identities.
The “Rick and Morty” pilot could be a bit of a difficult entry point into the series, as it’s about as much the opposite of a premise pilot as one can get, almost in a Rick-esque attempt to keep the audience at arm’s length from the jump.
In case you’ve forgotten the time that Rick and Morty took a majestic, life-changing trip to Atlantis, it’s worth noting that this episode is also known as “Tales from the Citadel.” While our Rick and Morty spend time in the lost city — offscreen — the series checks in on the Citadel of Ricks in the aftermath of the death of the Council of Ricks.
While Rick ultimately makes it to therapy to explain his self-centered worldview — at the tail-end of a session that pinpoints him as the root cause of his family’s issues — that doesn’t magically fix everything.