Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s finally here. After waiting over a year and a half, we’re finally at a place where we can expect new episodes of Rick and Morty on a consistent basis. It’s a feeling that’s more satisfying than even the biggest box of Eyeholes. Because Adult Swim surprised us all with the first episode of Season 3 in April, we’re going to follow their lead and treat “Rickmancing the Stone” as the unofficial start of this season. And god, was it a fun start.
So far, every season of Rick and Morty has devoted one episode to an elaborate, high-concept, pop culture fueled adventure. Season 1 had “Lawnmower Dog,” which was a blend of Inception and Nightmare on Elm Street, and Season 2 had “Look Who’s Purging Now.” That’s what “Rickmancing the Stone” is to Season 3 — a hyper-thematic episode that’s so concerned with capturing the tone and characters of the universe it’s parodying it doesn’t spend much time making jokes or exploring this show’s elaborate sci-fi world. That’s a compliment, by the way. Though it’s one of the show’s least funny episodes, it’s also one of Rick and Morty’s most emotionally charged.
“The Rickshank Rickdemption” ended with Jerry (Chris Parnell) forcing Beth (Sarah Chalke) to choose between him and Rick (Roiland), and we all know who the emotionally stunted Beth chose. That’s where the second episode of Season 3 picks up, with Morty and Summer (Spencer Grammer) struggling to adjust to the reality of their parent’s divorce. Oddly, it’s Morty, who has buried his own dead body, who seems more disturbed by his parents’ separation, while Summer is the one who almost cruelly seems dead-set on avoiding it. For once, it’s not Rick who leads the trio into a world of danger but Summer, who pressures her grandfather to open a portal to go anywhere that isn’t near her dad. That’s how two kids and their grandpa end up in the bondage-filled post-apocalyptic world of a Mad Max spin-off.
“Rickmancing the Stone” only works because this show has taken such great care to establish who these characters are. We know that Summer and Morty are, at their core, good people. Summer spent almost all of “Auto Erotic Assimilation” convincing the members of Unity that they were individuals and that choice has value. All of the death and destruction that happened in “Mortynight Run” only resulted from Morty insisting that Fart was worth saving. Of course, both of those good deeds ended horribly. Summer ended up accidentally starting a race riot, and Morty inadvertently caused hundreds of deaths before killing the very creature he was protecting, but these episodes have taught us that Summer and Morty are truly good people, or at least they try to be. That’s why it’s so alarming to see Summer ruthlessly shoot a cannibal biker and the head and Morty happily cheer on his murderous arm. These aren’t the characters we’ve grown to know. These are the monsters they become when they’re in pain, have a limitless number of multiverses at their disposal, and don’t care about consequences.
In these dark moments, you can see traces of Rick’s nihilism in his grandkids, and that’s perhaps more disturbing than any of episode’s gory deaths. This episode also hints that Rick understands the way he’s changing his grandkids. Though he may enable their terrifying behavior far too often, he’s also not entirely comfortable with it. These traces of regret appear during Rick’s interactions with Robo-Summer and Robo-Morty, the latter of which has a moment of consciousness not unlike Rick’s butter-passing robot. They also crop up when Rick decides to turn the post-apocalyptic wasteland back into something that resembles civilization. As much as Rick loves destruction and pretends not to care about the world, that’s clearly not entirely the case when it comes to his grandkids. He may allow them to escape through sex, violence, and high-concept sci-fi (little on the nose, Harmon and Roiland) for a while, but at the end of the day he cares enough to babysit them.
As is typically the case, Beth and Jerry are given the substantially less interesting, marriage-based B-plot. However, in a delightful flip, Rick, Summer, and Morty’s storyline is so heavy, Beth and Jerry are allowed to deliver the episode’s comedic punches. Though her constant glass of wine indicates that Beth isn’t taking her impending divorce as well as she would like to believe, her over-eager interactions with Robo-Summer and Robo-Morty are really funny. Also, from his absurd Romancing the Stone outfit he was wearing to the wind telling him that he’s a loser, every minute that Jerry was on screen was a joy.
“Rickmancing the Stone” is one of those rare Rick and Morty episodes that leans more toward drama than comedy. It’s sure to go down as a series favorite because the show’s execution of its Mad Max-esque world is so dead-on and aggressively sexual, it’s immediately silly. But damn. Rick wasn’t kidding when he welcomed us to the darkest year of their adventures.
New episodes of Rick and Morty premiere on Adult Swim Sundays at 11:30 p.m. ET
