Draft 3: Rick and Morty season 5 finale.

Evil Morty: a disappointing finish

So Rick and Morty season 5’s finale aired about a year ago, and I have some thoughts on the
finale I’ve been meaning to get out for a while now. So here we go. The finale was 2 episodes
aired back to back for around 40 minutes of run time and that right there brings me my first
problem with this finale. Over half of it is dedicated to a plotline about Rick and Morty splitting
up before we even start on the canon stuff, there’s only about 15 minutes left by the time Rick
and Morty even get to the citadel. And honestly the Rick and 2 crows portion was quite bad, I
may do another video discussing it later but that aside, I don’t know why they cram this crappy
plotline in there and actually have it displace the conclusion of the subplot they’ve been
building up for almost a decade now. Moving on. They fuck around in the citadel for another
couple minutes before finally getting invited to dinner with president/evil Morty. Honestly, I
think the episode of is decent to good at points but still have some issues with it. Dining with
evil, he reveals that, Rick helped build the citadel. Already, I just have to ask “why?” In the first
citadel episode Rick is shown treating the very idea of the citadel with disdain. And this very
episode he’s revealed to have actively been on a murdering spree of Rick’s in a quest to avenge
his murdered wife and daughter. So why then does he turn around and build the citadel in
service to an idea he rejects to help people alternate versions of himself he’s been hunting
down. Anyway, Evil Morty goes further to explain that the citadel has long been
breeding/cloning to create enough Morty’s for all the Ricks to use for… something, cloaking
devices? It’s not 100% clear. Evil Morty continues to explain that his whole objective has been
to break out of the CFC because he’s quote “sick of rick.” Here is where I really start to have
problems with Evil Morty’s motivation. Essentially his goal is to go to a universe where Rick is
not the smartest man there… So why can’t he just go to one of the infinite universes this side of
the CFC where Rick is dead. Hell, he’s plenty capable of killing Ricks, why doesn’t he just go to a
universe where Rick is and kill him. Seems like he would be more than capable of getting away
from Rick if that’s his motivation without going through all this. So it’s really just not a
particularly strong motivation. They really try and push Evil Morty as a morally grey character
when he actually claims this motivation is what makes him evil. Ummm no, what about building
a torture chamber of Morty’s as a cloaking device (it’s well established Evil Rick was under Evil
Morty’s control when he was hiding out.) What about the army of mutant Morties he’s using
for slave labor. What about the wholesale slaughter of Morties this episode as he blows up the
citadel. It’s like how is this guy complaining about how Ricks treat Morties when he personally
has treated them 10X worse? So Rick and Morty escape and Evil Morty heads to the otherside
of the CFC and disappears into a yellow portal.

There is a lot to unpack here. Basically they teased the answers to these big questions they
asked for years. What is Evil Morty’s goal, why is he doing what he’s doing? I just thought the
answers they came up with were just not very good.

And as an aside they decide to cram Rick’s canon backstory into the last 12 minutes too, which
was already hinted at strongly in 3.1. Honestly it really just confirmed what we already were
told, I have to ask why it was included in the first place. It really doesn’t explain why Rick helped
build the citadel. If they were gonna go this route, it probably should have been it’s own
episode.

Honestly the action sequences were not bad. It was an okay finale, they called in pretty much
every canon chip/ mystery they built over the last decade in 10 minutes. There was probably 2-
5 episodes worth of good material they could’ve gotten for this build up. And I feel like the
reveal of Evil Morty’s motivations just was not good enough. He himself is one of the worst
practictitioners of what he claims to hate Rick for, his goal of getting away from the Rick and
Morty system seems easily achievable without blowing through the CFC. Ultimately, and this is
a personal opinion, I feel like Evil Morty needed some kind of personal vendetta against C-137
and his goals needed a lot more foreshadowing. The CFC stuff really just feels like it came out of
left field.

Ideas:

1) Why was over half of the finale dedicated to crappy Rick and 2 crows plot
2) Why would Rick help build the citadel when it stands against everything he believes in
and he has a personal vendetta against other dimensions versions of himself.
3) How can Evil Morty resent Rick for abusing Morties when he is the most prolific abuser
of Morties in the entire show?
4) How can he claim that resenting Rick is what makes him evil given the above.
5) Why does he want to leave the CFC when he is more than capable of getting away from
Rick on this side of the CFC.
6) Why would you cram Ricks back story into this episode which is already overburdened
with canon content?
7) Not bad, but they called in every canon chip they placed in the course of 10 minutes,
and there’s not many places left to go after this.
Opinion: Evil Morty needed a personal motivation against C-137 not an abstract credo. Even in
scifi, character’s need motivations and goals people can understand. Think about Star Wars.
The big reveal is simple, Vader is Luke’s father. Luke’s motivation is simple, to turn his father
back to the forces of good. Evil Morty’s motivations and goals are not understandable, and
there’s not much reason for him and C-137 to fight other than happen stance
Draft 4 Evil Morty: a disappointing finish. Rick and Morty season 5 finale discussion

So Rick and Morty season 5’s finale aired over a year ago, and I’ve had some thoughts on it that
I’ve been meaning to say for a while now, specifically the Evil Morty parts. There were some
aspects of this subplot that were good, the soundtrack and action were great, but overall I felt
like they could’ve gotten a lot more out of all the Evil Morty build up in this finale. Let’s start
with the lack of screen time. The season 5 finale was 2 episodes that aired back to back, and for
some reason I can’t understand not only did the Evil Morty plot split time with a B plot about
Rick “dumping” Morty for 2 crows but it actually got significantly less screen time. I can’t
understand why this decision was made, you’ve got the climax of a story line you literally have
been building up for over a decade and you cram it into half an episode? This is made even
worse because the Rick and 2 crows plot is quite bad. I could honestly make an entire separate
video about why it was bad, but bottom line is even though there were good aspects to the EM
part, it’s dragged down by the R&2C story it is sharing time with.

That aside, my biggest problem with this episode is the reveal of Evil Morty’s goal and
motivations. Rick and Morty C-137 meet up with Evil Morty and he reveals that the infinite
Ricks built a wall around all the parallel universes separating “the universes where he is the
smartest man in the world from the universes where he isn’t.” and that his goal is to break
through that wall. My big problem with this is why would Rick do that? He is never depicted as
being insecure about his intelligence. And he’s the only one with a portal gun that we know of,
can’t he just not go to those universes? Is he really so insecure that he can’t go to a universe
where he’s the second smartest man in the universe? Didn’t he literally build his own universe
where he met somebody as smart as him (Zeep). I know the CFC is name dropped several times
in the past, but I still don’t feel like this was foreshadowed at all. Second off, why is Evil Morty
so desperate to break through the wall? He claims it’s because he is sick of the abusive behavior
of the all the Ricks. But honestly if he wants to get away from Rick, he should be more than
capable of doing that on this side of the CFC. What about all the universes where Rick is dead?
Why not just go there? And even if there weren’t universes like that, he has been shown to be
more than capable of killing Ricks, so he could literally go to any universe, murder the Rick and
accomplish his goal in 1/1000th the time. They try to paint this motivation as somehow morally
grey, with EM blatantly stating he’s evil “because he’s sick of Rick.” Okay, how is this guy
pointing fingers about how Ricks treat Morties. He’s literally the most prolific abuser of Morty’s
in the entire show. He spent the entire episode slaughtering them. And of course, let’s not
forget this: <play clip of morty torture cloaking device.> Overall it’s not terrible, but it seems
like there could have been a lot more to this conflict that has been built up for a decade now.
Personally I would like to have a seen a more personal reason for Evil Morty to be at odds with
Rick C-137, the conflict is weakened because Evil Morty is essentially opposing an abstract idea.
This is my own opinion, but even in sci fi and fantasy, motivations are best kept personal and
simple. Think of Star Wars, Luke’s goal is to save his father. LOTR Frodo’s goal is to destroy the
ring. Harry Potter, Harry’s goal is to kill Voldemort. These are easy to understand, but Evil
Morty’s goals are incomprehensible. It is really a shame, because there is no way they can
continue the plotline now. There’s no reason for EM to ever conflict with Rick C-137 again.
The episode also decides to establish a canon backstory for Rick C-137, again I don’t understand
why it had to be crammed into the last 12 minutes when it easily could have been it’s own
episode. They go with the Rick Prime assassinated C-137’s wife and daughter idea that was first
shown in season 3. I like this, but season 3 did it better. They also establish that Rick helped
build the citadel, which makes absolutely no sense. And again just tries to feed in to this
morally grey thing they’re going for which doesn’t work because evil morty is not even close to
morally grey.

So yeah the canon material was not terrible, but it really felt like it had more potential than
what they did with it. Where do you even go from here? It’s okay, but they called in every
canon chip they put out there over the last decade, where do you go from here? It’s not bad,
but they could’ve done a lot more.

Those are my big points, I have a few minor issues with execution. For one, they make a lot of
jokes, if you can call them that, that break the fourth wall. They probably do it 10 times in the
last 15 minutes alone. They’re not all bad and I understand Rick and Morty is a comedy but
some of them come at the cost of the drama and characterization and they’re not even that
funny. Firstly:<clip> This isn’t really a big deal, but it’s just so unnecessary. It’s not even a joke,
what is the point of this especially in the day of the internet? So unnecessary, moving on.
Secondly:<clip> This is really not funny at all, and it undermines the drama because Rick knows
danger is coming and he’s not taking it seriously. The stakes are supposed to be high but you’re
showing the audience that they really aren’t. Thirdly <clip> this is probably my least favorite
instance. For starters they already did a version of this joke that was much better in a previous
season. Lastly this dialogue is bad, and is it really an excuse to just state we’re writing bad
dialogue and then include terrible dialogue? What is even the joke there. Finally and this is my
biggest complaint, this undermines the characterization of Evil Morty, unlike other jokes. Up
until now EM is portrayed as cunning intelligent, well spoken, and suddenly he speaks like a
neanderthal. Imagine if in the end of ROTJ the emperor started going “me make Luke Evil”
again I understand this is a comedy, but they’ve dipped their toe into drama before and had
success with it. And these jokes aren’t even funny! If it was rip roaring hilarious I would cut
them some slack. Those were the worst offenders, there is a fuckton of meta commentary in
this episode and at best it is unobtrusive and at worst it is undercutting the drama.

So yeah, it was not a terrible climax. The action and soundtrack were great, and I guess it was
passable as a conclusion to the evil Morty story line, which had long long been awaited. But
ultimately it feels like a lot of potential was squandered.

Ideas

1) Split time with R&2C

2) Doesn’t make sense why Rick would build the CFC
3) Doesn’t make sense why EM wants to break out of the CFC ( 1 guilty of the very
behavior he despises Rick for(evil), 2 can get away from Rick on this side of CFC)
 4) Rick’s backstory is shoehorned in for some reason, it’s largely confirming things we
already knew with the nonsensical addition that Rick helped build the citadel.
5) Meta jokes/commentary that aren’t funny and undermine the dramatic tension.
Overall: It was not a terrible climax but there was a lot of squandered potential. EM plotline
could have reached greater heights than it did, and now they’ve written themselves into a
corner with it so it likely never will. A lot of worldbuilding and canon material was squandered
in 12 short minutes.
Draft 5: Rick and Morty season 5 finale: What went wrong?

So Rick and Morty’s season 5 finale aired about a year ago and even though I am way late to the
game I am going to go ahead and say my thoughts on it anyway. As you may have guessed from
the title of this video. I was disappointed with the finale. I am not even going to talk about the
R&2C crows part of the episode, because there’s enough there for a whole separate video. For
now, I’ll just say that it is clearly bad and I have no idea why you would devote 25 minutes of a
40 minute finale to that B plotline and only the give the evil Morty plotline climax AND Rick’s
backstory 15 minutes.

The Evil Morty material is a lot more interesting to talk about. There were parts of it that were
good. The soundtrack and action were great, the dialogue was decent and Evil Morty has a
decent presence as a villain. My biggest problem with this plotline of a lot of what was revealed
didn’t really work that well, which is pretty disappointing after years of having this stuff being
teased. Let’s start with the CFC. “A wall around infinity the Ricks built to separate the universes
where he is the smartest man in the universe from the ones where he isn’t.” Okay, why would
Rick do that? It’s not like he’s portrayed as being insecure at all about his intelligence
throughout the series. How many smarter people can there possibly be out there? Is the
universe where he’s the second smartest person really so bad? Shit just doesn’t make anysense,
but accepting that. EM goes on to describe how Ricks have been systematically abusing Morty’s
and he resents them for it. Stop again, he might have a point here if he weren’t the most
prolific abuser of Morty’s that exists. But even setting that aside, he apparently wants to break
out of the CFC because he wants to get away from the Ricks, but isn’t he perfectly capable of
doing that on this side of the CFC? There are plenty of universes where Rick is dead, can’t he
just go to one of them? His goals and motivations are just straight up don’t make sense, it’s not
compelling and it’s pretty disappointing that they wasted years of teasing and build up on this.
Again it’s not completely terrible, but it’s a lot of potential squandered. It honestly feels like
they never knew what direction they wanted to take EM in, and they just made this up at the
last minute. Like they try to act like he’s some morally grey figure now. Okay great, but then
why do you introduce him as constructing a torture device of hundreds of Morty’s? They also
shoehorn in that Rick apparently helped build the citadel, with absolutely no explanation for
why. Instead they reveal his canon backstory (crammed into 3 minutes) which actually has him
wholesale slaughtering Ricks for murdering his wife and child and apparently he went from that
to “let’s build a citadel for these mother fuckers.” It’s just so forced to try and make Rick look
like a bad guy. The presentation was decent but all the new canon content just does not make
sense. And it get’s worse because they’ve written themselves into a corner with Evil Morty now.
There’s no reason for him to get back into the story, there’s no reason for C-137 to seek each
other out, and what is he going to he doing on the otherside of the CFC? Knitting? Playing the
violin? There’s nowhere to take him after he disappears into that yellow portal that could
explain why he went to all this trouble.

That’s the main problem, that aside while execution was decent there were a few complaints I
had. Mainly, the amount of jokes they made the undercut the dramatic tension. I know it’s a
comedy, but most of them weren’t even funny. Like when they have evil morty say “I do the
thing, with the curve.” They literally already made that joke in season 3 where it was actually
funny, but the problem is that EM is consistently portrayed as a very intelligent and eloquent
speaker so you are actually undermining his characterization for the sake of a joke that doesn’t
even land. It was a poor decision. There are other examples, but that is the worst one by far.

So the conclusion it’s decently entertaining, decent execution, but really not very compelling
writing. And unfortunately they called in pretty much every chip they had out on the table from
back when the writing was a little more inspired.
The Evil Morty subplot: a disappointing finish

In spite of having only 2 episodes dedicated to the character prior the season 5 finale, Evil
Morty was one of the most interesting characters in Rick and Morty canon. The character drew
an immense amount of speculation from fans of the series and the reveal of his motivations
backstory and goals was probably the most highly anticipated story beat of the show’s entire 8+
year run. We finally got the answers to these questions, plus a few more with Rick and Morty’s
season 5 finale and while I wouldn’t call the Evil Morty parts of this episode bad, I feel the
conclusion of this subplot ultimately resulted in a lot of wasted potential.

For starters, even though the season 5 finale had 40 minutes of runtime. Only 15 minutes was
dedicated to the climax of the Evil Morty subplot AND explaining Rick c-137’s backstory. 25
minutes was dedicated to a story about Rick “breaking up” with Morty for 2 crows. I honestly.
cannot imagine what the decision making process was behind shoe horning probably the most
anticipated R&M story line in to the finale after ANY episode. But to make matters worse, the
Rick &2C plotline is straight up awful. I honestly might make a follow up video about why it is so
bad. Anyway the point is the material could easily have filled up 30 minutes of runtime instead
of being squeezed into 15 minutes.

Setting that aside, I wouldn’t call the Evil Morty section of the finale bad. The soundtrack and
action was all good. However, what I really take issue with is that Evil Morty’s motivations and
goals make no sense. Let’s start with his goal. Evil Morty’s goal is to break through the CFC,
which is a “wall” the Ricks constructed to separate the infinite universes where he is the
smartest man in the universe from the infinite universes where he isn’t. Already I have so many
issues with this. For one, if Evil Morty wants to go to a universe where Rick isn’t the smartest
man, why doesn’t he just go to one of the many universes where Rick is dead? Or hell, he’s
been shown many times to be both willing and able to kill Ricks, he could pick any universe he
wants on this side of the CFC and make it Rick-less. But even accepting that he has to get to the
other side, I have to ask why would the Ricks build the CFC in the first place. Insecurity over his
intelligence is a character trait Rick has never shown before. Why would he have to go to such
effort to isolate himself from other intelligent people in other universes? Especially especially
when no other character in the universe has been shown to be capable of inter-universe travel.
So I don’t understand why the CFC is there, or why Evil Morty has to destroy it.

But even setting that aside, let’s get into Evil Morty’s motivations. So Evil Morty wants to get
out of the CFC because he can’t is disgusted at how the Ricks have abused the Mortys of the
multiverse. They even try to make a point that this the only thing that makes him evil. Okay,
how can the guy who did this<> and this <> honestly claim to be bothered by the abuse of
Morty’s? He is the most prolific abuser of Morty’s that we’ve seen on the show, that’s why he’s
evil ffs, not because he doesn’t like Rick. It honestly just feels like they came up with this
plotline at the last minute.

That’s easily the biggest problem with the episode, but there are other ones too. Watching Evil
Morty destroy the citadel is a lot less dramatic, when C-137 already did that 2 seasons ago. And
ironically the show treats it as a lot more “evil” when evil Morty does it and I don’t think that’s
intentional commentary. So yeah, the execution is actually pretty good, but the ideas and story
beats just don’t make sense, and in my opinion clearly were not planned out ahead of time.

This is such a waste of potential to me, because you built these mysteries up for years, but it
turns out you never had an answer for them.