Warning: Major spoilers for the Season 5 finale of Rick and Morty, "Rickmurai Jack," which aired on Sept. 5, follow.
After barreling through a season's worth of "classic" Rick and Morty adventures with some juicy plot revelations sprinkled throughout, it should have been obvious that this crop of episodes would end with a bang. "Rickmurai Jack,” Season 5's coup de grace, begins as a continuation of the previous episode, "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall," and jets straight into expository territory with reckless abandon.
But first, some context. The previous episode found Rick swapping two crows for Morty as his companions, the implication being that anyone or anything — chosen at random via Rick's handcrafted wheel — could replace his grandson. What begins as an obvious bit from Rick grew into an all-encompassing obsession with the ways of a crow-like alien race, its technology, and its enemies.
While Morty grapples with his own mistakes after spilling portal gun juice on his hand, forcing him to meet with ne-'er-do-well Nick, Rick is gallivanting off on adventures with his crows. This ultimately culminates in a heartfelt yet bizarrely hasty goodbye from Rick as he packs up his belongings from the garage and takes to the skies, telling Morty their relationship is abusive and, ultimately, untenable.
It's all done so swiftly, with such unfamiliar finality for the series, that it seems like just another ruse. Rick must be baiting Morty, he can't truly be leaving — but leave he does, and it all spills over into the finale. The crow subplot worryingly usurps the first few minutes of the episode, until a mishap with Morty and an aging serum find Rick literally torching his ties to the crow race and going on a quest to restore Morty's youth.
That takes us, perhaps unexpectedly, to the Citadel, where none other than Evil Morty is waiting. From the moment "our" Rick and Morty meet with the eerily somber and in control version of everyone's favorite grandson, the tone shifts from flippant and silly to a much more serious one. Big things are about to go down — like Evil Morty stealing the contents of Rick's brain to complete the construction of a device that will catapult him away from the abusive machinations Rick has set in motion: the Finite Curve Barrier.
Wait, what? Yes, this episode's major reveal is one that fans may have seen coming a long time ago, but one that the series didn't seem too keen on showcasing. Perhaps that’s why, when Morty is given the opportunity to look through Rick’s brain for a chance at some important answers, we’re given a peek at his “crybaby backstory” through a sequence of nearly still, silent shots instead of a segment that lets us focus on or process what’s going on. Rick’s revenge tour to kill the one version of himself who took his family, Diane and Beth, away from him, is unsuccessful, and as such he helps build the Citadel before settling down with an alternate Beth and her family.
And the Citadel, which seemed more like an innocent type of “housing” for the Ricks and Mortys of the world? A breeding ground for Mortys that have been engineered throughout space and time, to be perfect. Bred from various versions of Beth and Jerry over countless dimensions — disturbing implications, to say the least, about what Rick is capable of and what he’s willing to do to find some semblance of normalcy or happiness. It’s all incredibly bleak, and somewhat shocking, but incredibly good TV while it lasts.
But before there’s any time to let that, or its ramifications, sink in, Rick and Morty must figure out a way to escape the crumbling Citadel while Evil Morty’s plan is set in motion. Portals have been hacked to kill those that enter them. Ricks and Mortys are dying left and right — and at the end of it all, Evil Morty seemingly gets what he’s been searching for this entire time: a universe where Rick Sanchez isn’t the smartest man in the universe. But to what end? It will be quite some time before we see any answers to these questions, if we ever do.
It’s intriguing stuff through and through, as this episode was a veritable treasure trove of continuity blasts for those watching for more than just the irreverent humor. There's so much going on that it's difficult to believe all of these developments were somehow squeezed down into a half-hour episode — and one wonders why it wasn't instead expanded, sans crows, into an hour-long season ender. What's here is a chaotic, sometimes frustrating sprint through what feels like pages and pages of lore condensed into a couple lines of text.