The Big Picture
- In the upcoming season of Rick and Morty, the biggest question that will be addressed is the search for Rick Prime, the variant of Rick who killed his wife and daughter.
- The previous season explored the changing dynamic between Rick and Morty, with both characters realizing they need each other. Rick even creates a decoy robot to spend time with his family while he focuses on his mission to find Rick Prime.
- The sixth season also introduced a romantic relationship between two versions of Beth, Earth Beth and Space Beth, which is embraced by Jerry. The show continues to balance canon by introducing new secondary characters while reminding viewers not to take the episodic plot too seriously.
A new season of Rick and Morty is about to premiere on Adult Swim, but beyond the mystery surrounding the new voices of the titular characters after Justin Roiland's exit from the series, the new episodes will tackle one of the biggest lingering questions remaining in the world of the animated comedy. The Smith family has gone through a lot of interstellar adventures together, as their dynamic continues to change as time goes on. Here's everything you need to remember from the previous season of Rick and Morty ahead of the seventh installment's premiere on October 15.
Who Is Rick Prime?
On April 1, 2017, Adult Swim released the third season premiere of Rick and Morty as a prank, before announcing when the rest of the episodes would begin to air weekly. Titled "The Rickshank Rickdemption," the episode follows Rick as he escapes from prison after being arrested during the battle at Birdperson's (Dan Harmon) wedding. But in a shocking twist of events from a series that had always been shy about revealing information from Rick's past, viewers got a chance to learn more about where this particular version of the brilliant scientist came from.
While trying to sabotage the interrogation machine the authorities were trying to use on him, Rick created a fake scenario from his memories. In the vision, other versions of himself tried to get him to join the organization that would eventually be revealed as the Citadel of Ricks. But since the protagonist of the series had already gotten used to a peaceful life with Diane (Kari Wahlgren) and his original iteration of Beth (Sarah Chalke), Rick refused to join the team. After denying the invitation from his counterparts, a green portal opened, dropping the bomb that would kill his wife and daughter immediately.
The tragedy would lead Rick towards a depressive path, aimlessly wandering the multiverse while looking for the person who ruined his life, aka "Rick Prime." His search wouldn't take him to the killer — instead, he spent his days murdering other versions of himself from other realities, even if they hadn't done anything to him directly. This lifestyle would end up taking Rick Sanchez to the place where audiences got to meet him for the first time back in 2013, coming back to the killer's reality and taking his place within that timeline's version of the Smith family.
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The Hunt for Rick Prime Begins in 'Rick and Morty' Season 6
To be fair, Rick Sanchez has been looking for the variant of himself that killed his wife and daughter from his original Earth long before the events of the show began, but a few factors always stood in his way. The consequences of his severe alcoholism and his constant need to isolate himself from anyone who might want to help him prevented Rick from asking for support when he needed it the most. His lack of trust in others could probably be explained by the fact that the people he loved the most were killed by someone who had his own face and voice.
But the last season of the series focused on how his dynamic with Morty changed, with both characters reluctantly admitting in some form or another how they both need to be in each other's life. After Morty goes against his grandfather's advice and joins the Knights of the Sun in Episode 9, Rick decides that he can replace himself with a robot because nobody is going to listen to him anyway. With the decoy spending time with his family during Christmas, he is able to isolate himself in his work, focusing on the biggest mission he has taken on so far.
After finding a direct trail to his family's killer, Rick has decided to stop ignoring his feelings and resume his search for the man who ruined his life. The unfortunate thing about Rick Prime is that he's a genius that can rival the audience's Rick's intellect. Leaving millions of fake beacons across the galaxy, locating the evil version of Rick is harder than expected, leaving the scientist who wants to avenge the deaths of his wife and daughter with nowhere to go. As Rick himself says in the Season 6 finale, Season 7 will bring the hunt for Rick Prime to the forefront.
Love Is in the Air For Beth and Space Beth in 'Rick and Morty' Season 6
Back when Beth was having an existential crisis about wanting to have space adventures, just like her father, but also wanting to be a present member of her family, she and Rick agreed that the only way to move forward was cloning her. Without telling both Beths who the clone was, Rick completed the process and allowed his daughter to explore two possible versions of her life. While the process was difficult for Earth Beth to get through, she could've never expected what was going to happen next.
When the sixth season of the show aired last year, an episode titled "Bethic Twinstic" saw Space Beth coming back to the Smiths to celebrate Thanksgiving. While talking about wine from an alien civilization that apparently just happened to use French as their official language, both Beths realized they had a crush on each other, starting a fling between variants that could come straight out of Loki. Since the entire family was spending a lot of time together because of the holidays, things would get out of control relatively quickly.
Throughout most of the episode, the Smith family members slowly find out about the romance between the two versions of Beth, except for the one member who isn't as bright as the others. Everyone was concerned about how Jerry (Chris Parnell) would react when he found out that the version of Beth he married was falling in love with the version of Beth who decided to leave him behind. But when Jerry inevitably found out about what was going on, he quickly embraced it, marking the start of a relationship between both Beths and Rick's peculiar son-in-law.
'Rick and Morty' Season 6 Tries To Balance Canon
More recent installments of Rick and Morty have focused on introducing memorable secondary characters to help develop the relationships of the main cast. One of these unique personalities is Mr. Nimbus (also voiced by Harmon), the ruler of the ocean and Rick's nemesis. While he had never appeared in the series until its fifth season, the character was established to know Rick particularly well. Their long history could be resumed by a single line both characters shared over dinner during the episode where Nimbus was introduced, "Mort Dinner Rick Andre."
Since Rick has become a better person over the course of the show, he's less aggressive than what fans have come to expect from the mad scientist. Realizing what was going on with the man he used to have explosive battles with, Nimbus asks Rick what Diane would think of him if she was still alive. Rick's energetic answer is just yelling towards his enemy: "Don't try to establish canonical backstory on me!" The line might seem like an amusing joke related to Rick's occasional ability to realize he's in a television show, but it also speaks about the philosophy of the series as well.
Rick and Morty has always been a series that likes to have fun with its outlandish premises and parodies it has come up with for a decade at this point. And while the writers behind the show have established a complex backstory for the main version of Rick that opens green portals on television, they also constantly remind audiences to not take the episodical plot too seriously, and enjoy the ride instead. Rick Prime is still out there, hiding away from Rick C-137, but there's a possibility that might not be the most important thing to focus on moving forward.
You can check out the official trailer for the seventh season of Rick and Morty below, before the series returns to Adult Swim on October 15.