We waited a year and a half for the third season of Rick and Morty. And, just like that, the season finale is upon us. For most, this season has been the smartest, most complex, and darkest of the series thus far, which made it well worth the wait.
With just two episodes left this season, let’s take a minute to hypothesize about the finale – The Rickchurian Mortydate, which IMDB briefly describes – “Rick goes on a confrontation with the President.”
What in the infinite timelines could that possibly mean? First, let’s take a look at the title itself.
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It’s clearly a play on The Manchurian Candidate, the 1962 Cold War thriller about the brainwashing of the son of a prominent political family, who becomes an unaware assassin in an international communist conspiracy.
Many titles to episodes of Rick and Morty have been a play on titles of films, tv series, and novels. While they may not be direct parodies of the titles Rick and Morty are playing off of, it may give us some clues as to what to expect in the episode.
The Rickshank Rickdemption, for example, a play on The Shawshank Redemption, is all about Rick’s escape from the Galactic Federation prison planet.
A Rickle in Time, a play on A Wrinkle in Time, shows Rick, Morty, and Summer accidentally splitting their reality into dozens of timelines, and having to put everything back in place.
And so on, and so forth.
So, if The Manchurian Candidate is all about a corrupt political leader, how could that possibly play into the plot of The Rickchurian Mortydate?
President Evil Morty.
For the uninitiated, in the recent episode, The Ricklantis Mixup, we see a number of story-lines involving Ricks and Mortys from alternate realities living in the Citadel of Ricks. One story is that of a Morty who is running for President of the Citadel against various Ricks. Through powerful speeches, and an assassination attempt, this Morty is elected the winner. The big twist – it’s Evil Morty who is running the Citadel now.
For the really uninitiated (seriously, go back and watch the series from the beginning), Evil Morty made his first appearance in season one episode, Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind, as an eyepatch-sporting Morty. In the episode, he was part of an Evil Rick and Morty team that was going around assassinating Ricks from other dimensions. At the end of the episode, the Rick SWAT team is about to arrest Evil Rick, only to discover that he was actually being remote controlled by someone else. The big reveal is that it was the Morty with an eyepatch – an evil Morty.
Evil Morty clearly has some massive, interdimensional chaotic plan up his sleeve, and is now in the best position to execute it. But what exactly are his plans with all the Ricks and all the Mortys from all the realities? More specifically, what is his deal with Rick from Earth C-137 (our Rick)?
“A cocky Morty can lead to some real problems,” Rick says to Morty in Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind. “It can be a real bad thing for everybody.”
What exactly happened to Evil Morty to make him so, well, evil?
One of the biggest theories circling the interwebs is that Evil Morty is actually the original Morty from of Earth C-137 (gasp)!
Could Rick be confronting his original Morty, and to what cost? How will the Morty we know and love come to terms with the fact that he might not be his Rick’s original Morty. Could this be the official breaking point for Morty — which in turn will make him go evil.
Is it all a fixed, circular timeline?
Is anybody else freaking out right now?
We have a couple of weeks to ponder it all. In the meantime, enjoy the penultimate episode of the season, The ABC’s of Beth.
