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The final two episodes of Rick and Morty Season 5 tease a mature breakup and then tease a mature reconciliation, with a lot of jokes along the way. The first half, ‘Forgetting Sarick Mortshall’, is obviously a reference to the R-rated rom-comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and here the analogy is explicitly called out, as per usual with this show — Rick specifically mentions that there is a non-romantic nature to their breakup.
It starts with Morty off on his own, righting the many wrongs Rick has left behind, like the classic silly named Mister Cookie President. But Morty is running low on the precious portal fluid that seems to be perhaps the most important invention in the multiverse. After Morty tops off his portal gun with Mountain Dew instead, he ends up getting linked to a dude named Nick, voiced by actor Nick Rutherford and with a visual design that mimics him pretty closely.
Feeling annoyed by these actions, Rick tries to teach Morty another lesson with his wheel of sidekick choices — these have such gems as Jerry (spin again), half a Paul Giamatti, bag of meat, kyle 2.0, and two crows. It is with this last choice that Rick takes and changes everything. When the crows experience empathy and want to help people, Rick tosses them into a nearby avian alien planet — and then gets captured temporarily by said aliens.
These giant avians somehow manage to convince Rick that no training is necessary, that the toxicity inherent in his sidekick relationships is unnecessary and that embracing the empathetic nature of the crows is a more mature approach. After a series of silly scenes with Nick and Morty trying things out before inevitably going wrong, Rick has it out with Morty — he understands finally that their dynamic has always been toxic and abusive.
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So he leaves with his new sidekicks, telling Morty he’ll always be his grandpa as the song ‘Borrowed Time’ by Tennis plays, an original piece written specifically for the show. This directly leads into the second half called ‘Rickmurai Jack’, a reference to the classic cartoon Samurai Jack. But the connections are more than skin deep.
The episode starts with a very direct anime parody and an actual anime opening with Japanese lyrics for a show called ‘Rick and Two Crows’. It turns out that the two crows were already involved with a funny scarecrow monster, so I guess that’s the end of that emotional chapter! Instead Rick shows up, looking forty and having used a faulty aging serum to trick and manipulate Morty into feeling guilty about a lot of time passing.
It’s a tactic which Rick actually respects, and then even Jerry does — after Morty says he’s desperate to get back together, Jerry proudly says, ‘Just like his old man’. That was great. So they’re off to the Rick and Morty citadel to fix Morty’s age and it’s the beginning of the end of things.
After a bit of a clichéd but still funny runner on a 26-year old Morty happily being told he was influential as he dies, we finally connect things back to the meta-canon of the show as President (and secretly Evil) Morty arranges for Rick and Morty to have a meet and greet. We are introduced to something called the ‘Central Finite Curve’, the origin from Season 1, Episode 9 which is fourth-wall broken to us by a Stan Lee looking Rick who shouts ‘Excelsior’ to make the homage even more obvious.
Eventually things get more and more out of control with a lot of tossed in hyperviolence in the Citadel, including some flashbacks revealing all of the ways they intentionally tried to get Mortys to be born from Jerry and Beth. There’s even a little meta-joke with Evil Morty about not needing a higher quality of dialogue and then simply talks about the ‘curve thing’. Cute.
And then it’s all explained, and Rick reveals the truth, one that we’ve suspected for a long time. Rick’s wife was killed in front of him by a different Rick, so this leads into our Rick going on a kinda quixotic quest for vengeance. Eventually he manages to get the Citadel even built with the survivors of one his destructive battles — this is certainly something that was never mentioned before.
The mysterious ‘curve’? An artificially created cage/crib/jail of multiverses where Rick is dominant, something that also explains the way that the so-called infinite multiverses we’ve seen never have anyone truly as capable as Rick. Because after all, if the multiverse truly is infinite, there should always be something more.
Of course, Evil Morty breaking free of these constraints is a tricky thing for the show, because with a truly infinite multiverse, the possible story ideas are also infinite. So they’ve certainly not made things any easier for themselves. The other note that closes a new loop is literally printed in text, an escape booster lever literally labeled that the ‘Booster must operate with partner’.
Perhaps it was a bit overly obvious, but I can’t say I don’t like the perspective, that maybe a new dynamic might exist, maybe the abusive, toxic nature of the Rick/Morty relationship can mature into something real and hopeful. That’s sort of how I feel about the season, in that there were a lot of things I really didn’t care for, and one awful storyline that never should’ve aired (which I shall not relitigate once more).
But there was a lot of very funny stuff and some decent heart too, certainly not the best Rick and Morty season or even the best finale. There were truly some great episodes in there and some truly awful ones, but in the end it’s doesn’t really matter — the show hasn’t lost me yet and I hope it never will.
What did you think of the season finale? Sound off in the comments below!
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