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The Season 6 premiere of Rick and Morty is called ‘Solaricks’ which I have to assume is a reference to the sci-fi movie and novel Solaris which has a lot of weird stuff like replicas and fake memories, so it’s a pretty good spiritual connection to this show if not a direct set of references for the episode in particular.
Here we immediately get a direct reference to the start of Avengers: Endgame where Tony Stark is starving to death, records a message, then gets saved by Carol Danvers. The meta-nonsense starts right away with Rick alluding to Tony and then Morty calling him out for his fake ‘I don’t remember this reference’ nonsense — and then they immediately undermine Space Beth coming to rescue them by deriding her rescue quips.
The fun conceit of this episode is that with all of the problems left behind by the last season finale, Rick’s portal gun is useless, so he plans to ‘reset’ his ‘portal index’. But due to classic Rick mistakery instead the portal travelers themselves reset, meaning everyone goes back to their original universes.
So the easiest one, Jerry, disappears because he went home to the wrong home way back in Season 2, Episode 2 ‘Mortynight Run’ — which was strongly implied at the time. That aired way back in 2015 so this is a pretty impressive callback, even if the theory was pretty well established in the fan community back then.
The only ones that belong there are the two Beths and Summer (I mean that tracks), and they are involved in a minor little plot where the two Beths kind of compete for Summer’s attention, who seems for now to be more impressed by the ‘Space Mom’ and her space competence. It’s a good thoroughline for the ultimate theme of the episode, which is about found family and legitimately caring about things.
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Morty (in a canonical continuation) ends up back in the apocalyptic ‘Kronenberg’ universe, where it appears Jerry is the only human left and is now pretty capable. His notes about having to lose everything and how that affects Morty is another good connective note — as is how rescuing Morty is the absolute first thing Rick does when he can.
Rick’s story here is the most sad, where he ends up back in his original one where his family was killed and he programmed a sentient voice of his wife to ‘haunt’ him and punish him for failing to protect them. It’s a sad and funny idea, as this Diane voice keeps horribly jabbing at Rick for his failures as he realizes that he actually needs to move on — legitimate growth for once.
The stuff with that Evil Rick is certainly fascinating, as he’s an even worse, even more nihilistic version of Rick that we’ve seen so far. His pre-recorded trap stuff feels exactly like something our Rick would do, even if him shooting Jerry for no real reason then feels a step too far. It’s an interesting new antagonist now that Evil Morty has left the Rickverse.
Perhaps the most meta nonsense in the episode is them explicitly calling the other Jerry ‘Season 2 Jerry’ with a similar animation style and everything from back then. Of course, due to Rick being irresponsible and Jerry being clumsy, a horrifying ‘Mr. Frundles’ alien ends up infecting the entire planet in a cute but terrifying way.
It was a very strong opener to the season, resetting things in a way that isn’t really resetting anything and with a very strong emotional thematic series of scenes. It’s also quite funny and a good sign that the show hasn’t lost its ideas going forward — a lot of interesting ones that hopefully hold a lot of potential for the sixth season.
What did you think of the season premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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