Rick and Morty is Back

On April Fool’s Day, exactly eighteen months after Mr. Poopy Butthole told us the show would return “in like a year and half,” a new episode appeared out of nowhere. Let’s talk about it. There’ll be spoilers, but it’s the first 22 minutes of new material in years, so it shouldn’t be hard to catch up.

The Rickshank Redemption begins with Rick free from prison, celebrating with his family at Shoney’s, which definitely feels like an April Fool’s prank. Almost immediately it falls apart, though, and the Shoney’s is revealed to be Rick’s cerebellum. The Galactic Federation is inside his head, trying to find the secret to his portal gun. It feels a lot like the season 1 episode “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” in which Zigerian scammers put Rick in a simulation to trick him into revealing his concentrated dark matter recipe.

But it’s not quite the same. Then, the simulation took up the entire episode. This time the ruse lasts for about 30 seconds before Rick’s interrogator comes clean, and the name of the game becomes searching through Rick’s memories. It’s less of an immediate, interactive reveal and more of a simple examination of facts.

If that’s what it really is.

Because this show disrupts expectations even when it’s not airing out of the blue on April Fool’s Day. It could be revealed in the next episode that all of this was a simulation while Rick was in prison. Honestly, it could be revealed that anything was anything, and I’d probably go along with it. But for the time being this is all we have, so let’s examine it.

The episode’s big reveal is that Rick knew what he was doing when he turned himself in at the end of season 2. In that finale, we were led to believe that Rick did it because he knew it was the only way his family would be happy. It was self-sacrificing and noble. It was also, maybe, born out of grief for Bird Person, one of the only people Rick has ever genuinely seemed to care about.

Now we’re meant to believe that it was all a ruse and Rick had a plan — he knew he’d be interrogated with that Series 9000 Brainilizer. He knew he’d be able to bring down the Galactic Federation and the Citadel of Ricks in one go. And since he clearly tells us that he lost his ability to improvise (all 6 years of workshops) in the first mind swap, we know he must have had the whole thing planned.

Except that at the end of season 2, we saw Rick alone as overheard his family fight over him, the moment he supposedly decided to turn himself in. Rick had no one to perform for here — we can only assume that his actions were motivated at least partly out of guilt and love for his family.

The entire episode plays with this tension. In the standoff Rick claims not to care about his grandkids, but that turns out to be another plan. It helps him win back Summer and Morty’s trust, but then that’s revealed to be a plan, too. Every mark for and against Rick’s humanity is negated until we have no idea where he stands.

Until the end, of course, when he tells us all he wants is McDonald’s Szechuan dipping sauce. Until that sauce comes back, Rick’s morality and motivation are pretty open-ended.

Morty, however, isn’t quite as ambivalent.

Morty never sees the note taped to the gun in the standoff — when he shoots Rick, he thinks he’s really killing him. Morty’s always existed in varying stages of being fed up with Rick, and at the end of season 2 he told Rick he wouldn’t forgive him if he left. It seems like he meant it.

He does warm to Rick after being rescued, but that’s all negated by Rick’s final tirade in the garage. It’s a clear repeat of the end of the season 1 premier, but this time the stakes are higher and the tone is different. Rick is saying he’s malevolent and emotionless and he lives only for Szechuan sauce. Is this true? I’m not sure I buy it. There’s too much ambiguity surrounding Rick’s emotions right now.

Morty, on the other hand, is losing every remaining illusion about Rick he has left. After being reprieved from literally murdering him, he gets this crazed soliloquy about how Rick doesn’t care about his family and will destroy anyone who crosses him. Morty has no reason to follow Rick anymore, and I’m curious to see where that goes. Is it just me, or is Morty’s voice getting deeper? Is he growing up?

Another character I’m excited for is Jerry. One of the show’s best and saddest recurring themes is Jerry’s glimpses of happiness. The best day of his life was in a simulation running at 5 percent. He fell in love with a shape-shifting parasite in a way he never did with his wife. He found real friendship in Doofus Rick. These moments are heartbreaking because they’re so fleeting and they’re usually based on a lie. And here Jerry’s happy again — he’s been promoted six times this week and he still doesn’t know what his job is. Jerry is not a smart man, but he thrives in the absurd in a way the rest of the family doesn’t.

And at the end of the episode, he can’t stand that his happiness has been taken away yet again by Rick. It gets him kicked out of the family, but it’s a shining moment for him. Now that he’s off the leash he might really go somewhere. Maybe to Doofus Rick — when Summer’s searching the garage before it gets reconfigured as Rick’s lab, we see a framed picture of him in one of the cabinets. (Also stashed in the cabinet is a jar of applesauce, maybe from his Hungry for Apples campaign, and a model boat, possibly from his first kiss with Sleepy Gary).

Has Jerry been having some lonely pining in the garage? You can count on it.

It’s an exciting time, with so many characters in flux. Jerry and Morty are finding themselves, and we’re starting to find Rick.

Maybe.

Or maybe it’ll turn out that this episode really was an April Fool’s prank, and the third season will begin with none of this having happened. It’s totally possible that it will. But it’s also totally possible that it won’t. And that’s a real testament to the show. It’s thrown the rules out the window so many times that I genuinely don’t know what to expect from it, but it’s kept its complexity and mania self-consistent enough that I trust it. It’s a hell of a line to walk, and Rick and Morty is doing it beautifully.

Whatever season 3 brings, this episode has reassured me that we’re still in good hands.