Rick And Morty ‘Solaricks’ Review: It’s Mr. Frundles’s World, And We’re Not Living In It
Image Source: Adult Swim
It had been exactly 52 weeks since Evil Morty ravaged the Citadel and freed himself of the Central Finite Curve in Rick and Morty’s season five finale “Rickmurai Jack”. Wormageddon ended up being a treasure hunt event with no real impact on the series. On Sunday, the Adult Swim series returned for its sixth season, and in “Solaricks”, the ramifications of that finale are felt.
The episode begins and the Citadel is still gone, the saucer is adrift in space without power, and with a lack of resources, the surviving Citadel Mortys went to each other for survival. While that aspect was handled a bit anti-climactically, there’s much more to what we were left with. The portal system is still screwy, and the portal guns are non-functional. Rick and Morty are stranded, pointedly like Tony, Rocket, and Nebula in Avengers: Endgame, and their Carol Danvers comes in the form of Space Beth. Upon arriving home, Rick must reboot the portal index, which resets the portal fluid. But instead of fixing portal travel, he reset travelers, which pulls them back to their original universes. Think of the end of Digimon Tamers, or Rose on Doctor Who losing her grip and being pulled to the parallel Earth. This affects our Rick (who inserted himself into our Morty’s family after his family was killed), our Morty, who escaped his Cronenberged universe in “Rick Potion No. 9”, and even Jerry, who turns out to have been mistakenly picked up from the Jerryboree at the end of “Mortynight Run”.
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Morty lands on his original Earth for the first time since “The Rickshank Redemption” when he showed Summer where he came from. The land is overgrown and Jerry is the only survivor. They try to bond, but Jerry ends up ditching him because Morty abandoned them. Rick froze time on his original Earth but forgot to stop the aging process, so after resolving that, he goes and heads out of that reality. Once reconvened with Morty, he reveals that the Rick that killed his Beth and Diane is Morty’s grandfather. That our Rick’s hunt for Rick Prime landed him at Prime’s home long after he went off on his spree. Rick and Morty end up going to Prime’s base but fail to kill him, so Prime escapes with a pod.
Image credit: Adult Swim
Summer and the Beths travel to the Citadel to make returning easier for the displaced with a beacon. Jerry needs to be rescued next, and he does. They go home, and season 2 Jerry comes down from his shower, he lets loose from a crate Rick’s had in his room a creature named Mr. Frundles. Mr. Frundles is an adorable wide-eyed and fanged triangle who bites old Jerry’s ankle, infecting it with its being, and doing the same with everything in sight until the entire Earth becomes an uninhabitable Mr. Frundles by the time they can consider going back. Rick hurrying his family back to the ship was very reminiscent of his panic over the cob planet in the second season finale. Now, the entire family has been displaced, as they all jump to a new identical reality where they have replaced their recently deceased counterparts. Space Beth wants to be part of things more often, and back on Earth C-137, Killer Rick establishes his villainy even further by rejecting teaming up with Hermit Jerry and killing him.
The action, the story progression, and the character development it all brought together made “Solaricks” a very strong premiere. It can be especially appreciated how this blood family is also a found family and that they’ve embraced it so warmly. It was also seen that Summer has even more knowledge of Rick’s systems and protocols, which shows a lot of trust in his machinations. If this premiere is a grander indication of what’s to come not only this season but the entire back half of the show’s run, it’s going to be an amazing ride. Rick and Morty, 100 years. Next week is “Rick: A Mort Well Lived”.
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