Time for an extra concentrated dose of Rick and Morty.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Now that we're deep into the third season of Rick and Morty, the main challenge Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland face is keeping the show fresh and unpredictable each and every week. It's no longer enough to just send the two characters off on a zany adventure with an emotionally charged ending and call it a day. As "The Ricklantis Mixup" shows, one way to keep fans on their toes is to promise one thing and then deliver something completely different. Both the title and promo for this episode suggested a fairly textbook Rick and Morty story. Instead, Harmon and Roiland shook things up in a big way by sidelining their lead characters and focusing on several dozen other permutations of Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith instead. That's one way to do it.
This episode had a very strong "22 Short Films About Springfield" vibe. It was less about telling a single, cohesive story than tackling a handful of vignettes that eventually dovetail in unexpected ways. That unusual structure went a long way towards keeping things fresh and exciting for another week. It didn't necessarily help with the fact that this season has become a little too Rick and Morty-dominated lately. I've complained several times about the baffling lack of Jerry lately, but even Beth and Summer have been popping up less and less lately. Still, if they're going to go all-in on the Rick and Morty front, at least they gave us plenty of variety within those parameters.
Roiland surely deserves some sort of award for voicing so many variations on the same two characters. Unless I'm forgetting a stray cameo, this episode was 100% Ricks and Mortys. Not since Dee Bradley Baker voiced every single Clonetrooper character on Star Wars: The Clone Wars has one voice actor put in that much overtime. What's even more impressive is how natural it all seemed. Never did it feel like one guy was just standing in a recording booth talking to himself. Even in cases where you had three or four Mortys conversing at once, the small differences in tone and inflection served to make each one feel unique.
It didn't hurt that the character designs were so diverse and imaginative. Here you have an entire society comprised of thousands of variations of the same two people, and no two characters ever looked entirely alike. Half the fun of this episode was seeing the the steady stream of new Ricks come along. My two favorites were Farmer Rick and the Severus Snape-inspired Headmaster Rick, but each version was memorable in its own way. Again, you really have to admire the dedication that went into fleshing out the Citadel this week.
The premise also offered a fascinating glimpse at how other Ricks and Mortys live when they try to settle down and put down roots. Rick is such a uniquely egotistical character. Normally, he serves no master and refuses to let himself become too tied down by personal connections. An entire society comprised of selfish super-geniuses seems almost destined to fail. The Factory Worker Rick storyline spoke to that dilemma especially well. Every society needs people to work the mundane, thankless jobs. When you're one super-genius among thousands, you don't always get the exciting, fulfilling life you want. Which, naturally, leads you to murder the one Rick in the whole world who seems genuinely happy with his lot in life.
Equally compelling was the look at how Mortys fare in this ruthless, segmented society. There's something depressing about the way so many Mortys talked about cycling through Ricks. That line about "My first Rick's fourth Morty..." really highlighted how pointless and interchangeable an existence these characters lead. It speaks to the bleak, amoral quality of the Rick and Morty universe as well as anything. The wishing well scene in particular was sad and darkly comic in a way this series does so well. We only knew Slick Morty for a few minutes, but his fruitless sacrifice carried weight all the same.
The payoff to all these interconnected vignettes was also great. Harmon and Roiland brought back Evil Morty, a character who was last seen way back in Season 1's "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind." I never actually had any expectation that Evil Morty would return and become a recurring antagonist on the show. But that's another fun thing about Rick and Morty - every so often Harmon and Roiland drop the continuity-light approach and pay off on long-dormant plot threads. I doubt we'll actually see the fruits of Evil Morty's political takeover anytime soon. Harmon is clearly very fond of playing the long game (as seen from his three-season-long Beetlejuice gag from Community). But it's enough to know that Evil Morty is out there and may well pop up again when we least expect it. It should be a lot of fun to see Rick C-137 and Evil Morty go toe-to-toe.
The Verdict
While we may never know exactly what happened during Rick and Morty's undersea adventure, the story this episode actually delivered was surely much better and more unpredictable. "The Ricklantis Mixup" blended humor and tragedy as only this series can, offering a hilarious but depressing look at the countless Ricks and Mortys of the Citadel going about their daily lives. Best of all, this episode set the stage for what should be n epic conflict with Evil Morty, even if it takes another season or two for the show to pay off on that loose end.
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