Hawk Ripjaw
The following contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S6E10 “Rictional Mortpoon’s Rickmas Mortcation”
Rick and Morty S6E10 “Rictional Mortpoon’s Rickmas Mortcation” closes out the season with a hilarious Christmas-themed finale. Rick surprises the family with a series of gifts from across the multiverse: Jerry gets an extradimensional edition of Miracle on 34th Street, two hours longer than the original (the bonus footage is just a guy naming additional numbered streets and declaring that a miracle has happened on that street, in a joke that is way funnier than it has any right to be). Beth gets a photo of her and Rick in a universe where she wasn’t murdered as a child, and Space Beth gets the same thing because no one knows which Beth is the real one. Summer gets money in her Venmo account, and Morty gets a genuine lightsaber.
Morty and Rick run to the garage to play with Morty’s new lightsaber. Shenanigans ensue: Rick pretends to turn into a pile of clothes like Obi-Wan in A New Hope, and tosses assorted fruits at Morty for his grandson to slice in half…until Morty accidentally drops the lightsaber perfectly vertically, blade down. The lightsaber melts through the floor, and keeps going.
Rick and Morty frantically descend the sub-basements to try to catch the lightsaber as it continues to fall perfectly straight down, melting through each floor. Morty suggests Level 10, but Rick overrides him and takes them to Level 15, at which there is a cozy sushi restaurant, but the lightsaber hasn’t gotten there yet. Morty takes them back to Level 10 before Rick can object, and the doors open to reveal…Rick. Dirty and disheveled, clipboard in hand, Rick reveals that the man standing next to Morty is a robot, programmed to be nice to the Smith family while Rick himself continues to hunt Rick Prime, the murderer of his original family, across the multiverse.
Morty is understandably furious: the entire Smith family, even Jerry, have been so happy with how kind Rick has been as of late, and it wasn’t even Rick himself. Rick tries to reason with Morty that he can’t be a good grandpa until he destroys his arch-nemesis. “It’s like a Netflix drama down here, and I don’t mean an accidentally good one.” Rickbot has also been programmed to lie about being a robot, and Morty isn’t about to let him break the facade, though Rickbot makes a valiant attempt to be outed as a robot and end his existence.
The President lands on the front lawn to inform Morty that the lightsaber will continue to travel straight down until it hits Earth’s core and detonates the planet. The President also outs himself as a bitter Gen-Xer with nothing but hatred for a nerdy franchise. Morty and the President reluctantly sideline their drill machine plan to let Rick destroy the lightsaber, but Rick’s overbearing attitude towards his own sentient lightsaber sent to destroy Morty’s saber backfires, and Rick’s saber takes a detour to slaughter half of Venice (The President talks himself into believing that Saudi Arabia was responsible). After Morty refuses to let Rick accompany him on the drill machine, Rick admits that the whole reason he created Rickbot is because Morty doesn’t respect him anymore: he opened up a little to Morty, and now Morty finds him boring.
Two things about Rick’s admission here: first, I am very happy that Rickbot was only a thing since the Knights of the Sun. It means that the Pissmaster situation involved the real Rick, and keeps Rick’s actions in that episode (and his growth) genuine. Second, the fact that Rick built a robot version of himself to be nice to the Smiths because his own feelings were hurt and he felt that his grandson was bored of him also speaks volumes to how far Rick has come. Hand-waving Rick’s entire arc this season with “he was a robot the whole time” would have been a terrible storytelling decision, and I’m glad that they went the direction they did.
Morty and the President drill down to the core, and manage to intercept the lightsaber. Returning to the surface, Morty’s elation is cut short when the President confiscates the lightsaber, revealing that he himself is an original Star Wars nerd, and has hated Star Wars since Return of the Jedi got “all Muppet-y” and the “Mickey Mouse sh*t machine” continues to churn out soulless content. Morty, back at home, reveals to the family that Rickbot is not the real Rick, leading the family to slaughter the hapless robot (set to “The First Noel”).
Simultaneously, back in the White House, the President starts reliving his childhood, placing a bowl on his head and swinging the lightsaber around like he’s a young Padawan…until he accidentally loses control of the lightsaber and it lands perfectly vertically, blade down, and once again continues its path towards the Earth’s core. Because he’s a scumbag with no sense of personal responsibility, the President jettisons the White House into space. But the Smiths revive Rickbot, and Rickbot and Morty once again intercept the lightsaber and go up to the White House to confront the President.
Behind the Oval Office is a secret room filled with Star Wars dioramas and set recreations assembled by multiple past Presidents. Ironically, the President exclaims how Disney ruined Star Wars with bad ideas, yet throws multiple enemies at Morty such as droids with lightsaber hands (which Morty handily defeats) and droids with lightsabers for eyes (which immediately destroys itself because you can’t see if your eyes are lightsabers). Finally cornering the President, Morty picks up a lightsaber gatling gun, which fires five lightsabers at him. Rickbot, still wanting to die, throws himself in front of the attack…and all five lightsabers from the gun fall perfectly vertically, blade down, through the floor of the White House.
While Morty is willing to sacrifice himself to hold onto Rickbot, they’re all saved in the nick of time from being sucked into space by Rick portaling them back to the Smith household. As Rickbot, coughing up oil, dies in Morty’s arms, he tells Morty that Rick built him to make Morty happy, and anything Rickbot did was something Rick would have done as well. Rick, realizing that he shouldn’t have hidden from his family, invites Morty to help him. The season closes in classic Rick and Morty fashion: drunk, drooling, eyes-pointing-in-opposite-directions Rick enthusiastically recruiting his terrified grandson into his next grand scheme and proclaiming the direction of their future adventures.
This was a great season with very, very few lackluster episodes and some extremely strong development for Rick. Rick is capable of being an extremely terrible, vindictive, toxic human being. But even since S1, he’s been shown to be capable of empathy. Before his original wife and daughter died, he was clearly a loving husband. As he continues on his adventures with Morty, there will certainly be stretches of him being as awful as possible. But he’s taking steps forward, and I am very much looking forward to the ludicrous, the meta, the grim, and the human elements the show continues to explore.
