Zahid Iqbal
Finally the wait is over, after one interminable week we finally get new episodes of Rick and Morty, and no more Flashbacks of the last year and a half spent rolling in pizza on the floor wondering when the new season will arrive.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!!
Source: Giphy
And good god, was it worth an extra week, I would say this far in the series there is not another episode that drives home the themes of Rick and Morty more effectively. While The Ricklantis Mix Up (or “Tales from the Citadel” as the story line is called in the episode) explores many different themes, such as racial profiling, corruption in political campaigning or police brutality, the core theme of Rick and Morty is the same as it’s always been, self loathing, and nowhere in the series is it more on display as in any episode that involves The Council of Ricks. It’s actually one of the core reasons the show stops to focus on the interactions between characters and alternate versions of themselves, in that context it’s easy to see a metaphor in Burn Out Cop Morty brutalizing and looking down on the many impoverished Mortys of the citadel, or why there would be a scene of Assembly Line Rick shooting his boss, who is also him, to death.
Source: CartoonAttic
This episode was on point in every shot, every line ringing with the dark humor and and heartbreaking philosophy the show has become known for. Like the sad tale of Assembly Line Rick, trapped in a dead end job were his genius wastes away, no portal gun and (judging from the fact that he was working there since a year before Mortys birth) never having had a Morty, he is so desperate to escape his dead end life he must resort to what Ricks do best to have a hope of escaping the citadel, terrorism.
Source: YouTube
Unfortunately this doesn’t go well for him, not only does he kill the Rick whose brain the factory was using to distill a special chemical for their dessert wafers (yes, really) but he ends up being deceived, replacing the Rick he sought to rescue and likely tainting the flavor of the dessert wafers with the subtle bitterness of wasting your life in a job that demeans your intellect for over a decade.
There is also the horrifying story of Burn Out Cop Morty, a Morty who has been an officer of the law on the citadel for so long he has begun to see other Mortys as little more than animals, serving as both a tale of police brutality and a metaphor for racial profiling.
Source: Villain Wiki
The truly heartbreaking part is how relateable the character becomes when you realize he dehumanizes the other Mortys to deal with the fact that he is just like them, just another scared teenager dragged into terrifying scenarios by his relationship to Rick. His final moments show a genuine vulnerability, which of course does nothing to change the contempt in his heart or prevent the inevitable end of his career at the hands of his new Rick partner.
Finally the crowning moment of the new episode, the return of Evil Morty!
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Source: YouTube
It would seem that founding the Cult of the One True Morty and setting Rick C-137 against the citadel may have simply been all a part of his plan to take over and install himself as dictator, but this is likely not the last we will see of Evil Morty. How can we be so sure?
The name of the season finale episode for season 3 has already been released, and that name?
The Rickchurian Mortydate.