Rick & Morty: 6 Ways The Season 5 Finale Is The Best So Far

The Rick and Morty season 5 finale hit audiences on September 5 with a two-part hour-long block. This followed their most recent short hiatus during the season 5 airing. What makes this particular season finale so great is that it hit the ground running with a lot of commentary about not only its own show but television in general.

Furthermore, it delved deep into backstories that fans have wanted a closer look at for a long time. This finale left the door open for season 6 in a way that no other seasons have, and was action and content-packed from start to finish.

6 Canonical Plotline

Fans have been at war with writers and themselves over the desired nature of the show’s episodes. Rick and Morty has made several commentaries on the issue, especially in the season 4 episode “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat,” in which a Fascist Morty takes Rick hostage and yells, “Stop asking questions. Stop doing meta-commentary. Just have fun. We’re going on a simple, fun, classic adventure.”

When Fascist Morty couldn’t pick an adventure upon Rick asking, it addresses the issue. Self-contained adventures can only go so far in the way of meaningful content. Rick and Morty writers have a bigger story to tell, and sometimes those bigger stories require serialized drama, especially when there’s so much complex lore to a world like that of Rick and Morty. By taking place in the canonical setting of the Citadel with the resident canonical villain, Evil Morty, the show was able to do deeper character development without having to worry about a new episodic plot and conflict to flesh out.

5 Rick’s Identity Is Revealed

An overarching question across the five seasons of the show has been “Who is Rick C-137?” Theories have popped up left and right about his origins and whether or not the snippet of his backstory given during “The Rickshank Rickdemption” had any truth to it. Bits and pieces of information have been revealed here and there over the 50 episodes of the show, but no definite answers have been given until now. A sneak peek into the truth was teased in “Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort” when Birdperson’s memory of Rick commented, “You’re one of those creeps who moves in with abandoned adult Beths.” This implies that there aren’t really any Ricks that “return” to their own Beths, but rather, Ricks who have lost Beths that move in with ones abandoned by other Ricks.

And as fans find out through Rick’s brain scan in the finale, that’s part of the truth. The other part-truth is the Federation fake memory – with only the formula being the augmented part, but Diane and Beth’s deaths at the hands of another Rick being completely true. Rick’s backstory adds a layer to the finale that none previously have had: a glimpse into why Rick is the cynical, depressed alcoholic that he is. He spent years looking for the version of himself that killed his family only to fail and ultimately land into the show’s Morty’s life.

4 Toxicity Finally Addressed

While the show later goes into the genesis and permanence of the relationship between Rick and Morty, the penultimate and final episodes of the season delve into the dynamic of the relationship in a sort of somber way. In “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” even the episode title is a reference to a movie where a man spends a whole trip trying to get over the love of his life that mercilessly dumps him. These two episodes finally have the duo addressing the unhealthy dynamic between them. Rick constantly tells Morty that he’s replaceable, attacking his self-worth and emotional wellbeing. When he leaves Morty in lieu of two crows (per a pretty disrespectful Wheel-of-Fortune-style display) Morty rebounds with an equally bad Nick.

When things go south, Morty calls Rick for help but he doesn’t come. He’s even forced to cut off his own hand using a train. When Morty returns, bloodied, Rick replaces his hand but rejects Morty’s request that they get back together and admits to being toxic toward Morty for the first time on the show. Morty is heartbroken, and in the finale, he tries repeatedly to get Rick to come back. When the crows get back together with Crow Scare and dump Rick, he returns home to Morty, and their relationship is compared to an abusive romantic relationship, with Morty unwilling to ask for respect in place of mistreatment because of his desperation to get back together.

3 Rick And Morty’s Infinite Relationship Importance

Another way this finale outshines others is that it explores Rick and Morty’s relationship and, as a result, makes a commentary on sitcom and episodic character relationships. Morty said it best when he first visited the Citadel in one of the best episodes, “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind.” Upon seeing all of the different versions of himself and Rick walking around, Morty comments, “You know, when I first saw all those Ricks and Mortys, I thought, “Gee, that kind of devalues our bond.” But then I realized it just means that our relationship must be pretty special to span over all those different timelines!”

He ended up being more right than he could have imagined. Their relationship is special, or at least the first authentic one must have been for Ricks to deem it so valuable. Every hero needs a sidekick complementary to them, and Ricks found that their complementary sidekick was Morty – the “happy-go-lucky” to their “cynical and calculated.” In deciding to fabricate this relationship in an assembly-line method, the show mirrors the generator-style pairings of sitcom duos.

2 Big Bad Villain

The meta-joke made by Morty at the beginning of the episode about endless battles and adventures with no “big bad” to fight ended up being a foreshadow of the return of Rick and Morty’s closest thing to a canonical villain: Evil Morty. Evil Morty’s appearances on the show have been few but meaningful. His introduction in “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind” was left open-ended, and he wasn’t seen again until two seasons later in the season 3 fan-favorite episode “The Ricklantis Mixup,” where he became the Citadel’s first Morty president and murdered anyone who discovered his real identity or master plan (which up until the finale, was a mystery). Since then, Evil Morty only appeared in season 4’s “Never Ricking Morty,” even though that was an anthology self-contained on the Story Train.

Fans have been waiting for Evil Morty to finally make his move, and this finale gave them everything they could have hoped for. Although fans didn’t get an answer to Evil Morty’s true identity, they did get answers about his motivations: upon finding out about the Central Finite Curve, and the truth about Mortys’ predetermined existence inside “an infinite crib built around an infinite f***ing baby,” Evil Morty’s desire was to travel outside of the Curve and find out what life is like where Rick isn’t the smartest man in the universe – or life where Rick doesn’t exist at all.

1 Changes For The Show

Another thing the season finale did that put it a cut above the rest, is change the possible format of the show for future seasons. With the Central Finite Curve not only addressed but broken, the format of Rick and Morty will undoubtedly have to change in the coming episodes. The show was contracted for at least a season 10, so the next four seasons of Rick and Morty will be unable to rely on the multiverse for episodic content. Some theorize that this is a response to Marvel exploring the multiverse in their upcoming films, but others think it’s an effort to keep the show from getting stale. Regardless of the reason, the change has a lot of implications for the show and its characters.

Rick and Morty no longer have the luxury of the safety net that the curve provided (at least for Rick) or will possibly not be able to travel among those universes at all. This means no more Cronenberg or squirrel-style abandonment. If they are still able to travel among realities, will they explore those in which Rick is no longer the smartest? There’s also the addition of Evil Morty’s journey. He had his own, yellow portal gun to go off and explore realities. Will the show continue to follow his storyline? Canonically, the show will also have to grapple with Rick’s identity and actions and what they mean for Morty and the other main characters of the show. This finale set unprecedented groundwork for future plots, and it will be really exciting to see where it takes the future of the show.

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