How Old Is Rick in ‘Rick and Morty’?

Who could have guessed that one of the most beloved cartoons of all time as well as one of the most popular currently running shows would revolve around an old man? That’s one of the many surprising details that consistently makes Rick and Morty feel so fresh and delightfully bizarre. But just how old is Rick Sanchez?

Rick’s age is an odd element in Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s sci-fi comedy. Most of the time Rick acts like he’s in his 20s or something akin to immortal, endlessly running around and jumping and ducking through hurdles. Yet every once in a while, his age shows. Mr. Nimbus and Unity proved that Rick has a laundry list of friends and enemies he made years before he reconnected with his daughter. Also, as “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” proved, a lot of Rick’s nihilism and his complicated relationship with mortality stems from how long he’s been alive. That’s why forcing all of those brooding thoughts into the bite-sized package of Tiny Rick was disastrous. After years of casually wondering, we’re closer to getting an answer about Rick’s age.

The answer? Rick is somewhere in his seventies. This answer comes from Rick and Morty Season 5’s showrunner, Scott Marder. “I feel like, given all the tech and stuff he has in his body, his body is in its 70s,” Marder told Monsters and Critics, according to Screen Rant.

“I’m not sure how old Rick is, because if you look closely at the show, no one really has birthdays. So they are in a weird time-like hole, time loop, to some degree. But whatever he does is maintaining himself in his 70s,” Marder said. “Age and all that stuff comes up all the time, because people are like, ‘Oh, it can be such and such’s birthday’ and we’re like ‘We don’t do those on this show, we’ll do a thousand Christmases but we’re never going to show a birthday.’ It’s kind of fun to keep everyone in a cartoon the same age, as it is.”

That answers one question. But if Rick is in his seventies, how is he able to stay so spry? That’s where the world of fan theories come into play. According to an argument by u/ComparisonWorld2, Rick looks so young and can be so athletic because he body surfs. We’ve seen him do this before in the aforementioned “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” and “The Rickshank Rickdemption.” Basically this theory posits that every time Rick starts to age a bit more than he wants, he switches to a body that’s slightly younger than her current self. He may have even installed cyborg parts or developed special serums to keep him young and limber. We already know that Rick routinely mods out his body. “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy” saw him turn his own arm into a gun, and in “Rick & Morty’s Thanksploitation Spectacular” he was bummed out when yelling Inspector Gadget’s “go go” produced feathers instead of a sci-fi weapon. If he can do that, he could totally find a way to eliminate wrinkles.

As with so many things in this show, Rick’s age doesn’t really matter. He will always be the smartest man in the universe and on par with a god. But as with so many other details in this wild show, it’s fun to think about.

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