Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S7E5, “Unmortricken” (written by Albro Lundy and James Siciliano and directed by Jacob Hair).
Rick and Morty S7E5, “Unmortricken,” was not provided to press in advance of it airing, nor was the cold open released a couple of days early, both of which have happened every episode so far this season. So naturally, all of us fans were abuzz over what this could possibly mean, with the main speculation being that this would be a lore-heavy episode or at least feature some heavy plot advancement. As it turns out, both were true: “Unmortricken” is huge in what it could mean for the show going forward.
We open with a refresher on Evil Morty: he was simply a regular Morty that gets fed up with Rick’s sh*t. After another misadventure, Rick attempts to call Morty’s bluff when his grandson once again airs grievances. Morty proceeds to get Rick very drunk, before transforming into Evil Morty and forcibly bringing his Rick along with him for a Rick genocide and Citadel takeover, culminating in Evil Morty escaping from the Central Finite Curve in which all Mortys were subservient to Ricks.
Evil Morty has been spending his time gathering resources to relax in a cozy mansion outside the Curve, but his peace is disturbed as Rick C-137 (“our” Rick) and Morty have been consolidating dimensions to try to flush out Rick Prime, disrupting the integrity of the Curve and opening up portals that unleash monsters on Evil Morty’s retirement home. An irritated Evil Morty is forced to work with our Rick and Morty, suggesting a modification to Rick’s process which brings in a single new Rick.
This Rick could be Rick Prime, but Rick hesitates, thinking it might be a trap. Evil Morty smugly states that Rick is only hesitating because he doesn’t want to give Evil Morty credit for finding his target. An impatient Morty presses the button to terminate this new captive Rick, and it turns out that it was a trap: the captured Rick explodes into black goo, sucking Rick, Morty and Evil Morty into a black portal to a small room housing multiple other versions of Rick that had also been hunting Rick Prime.
Rick Prime’s face comes up on screens on the walls, and reveals to his captives that he used a weapon called the Omega Device, which is capable of erasing every version of a person across every universe across infinity, and used it on Diane. This explains why Rick never simply plucked another version of his wife from a different universe—she no longer exists at all, thanks to the device.
Rick Prime pits the captive Ricks against each other in a fight to the death, with the last Rick standing getting their Diane back. Rick C-137 fruitlessly tries to explain that Rick Prime is not capable of restoring Diane, but the other Ricks don’t listen, picking each other off until one remains, and is almost immediately killed when Rick, Morty and Evil Morty work together against him. The prize, a resurrected Diane, is as Rick predicted, not actually Diane. It’s just a killer robot with Diane’s face who screams hurtful insults as it attempts to kill Rick—just another one of Rick Prime’s cruel psychological games.
Evil Morty once again works with Rick and Morty to destroy the robot and combine their own portal technology with the black goo to escape the prison before it self-destructs. It’s funny to watch Evil Morty in this episode, especially in how his reactions to all of this crazy stuff is simply boredom and irritation: he just wants to get back to his solitary existence, even if it means working with our duo. I also loved the number of times Rick attempts to shoot Evil Morty, on the off-chance that maybe that one time, he wouldn’t have his force field up.
Surmising that no one had escaped Rick Prime’s trap before, Rick analyzes the black goo to finally pinpoint Prime’s position, and leaves the Mortys behind to kill his nemesis (although Evil Morty immediately portals there with Morty anyway). Arriving there, he sees that Rick Prime has rebuilt the Omega Device. And there’s Rick Prime, in the flesh—finally seeing them face to face is a big moment. Rick Prime demonstrates how the Omega Device works by killing Rick’s uncle, Slow Mobius, by summoning him to the Device, killing him, and erasing him from every universe in which he exists. For whatever reason, Slow Mobius uses his powers to slow time, extending his painful death in a hilarious and tragic moment.
The battle itself, while brief, is epic: hand-to-hand combat, swapping cybernetics, giant robots—it’s a big, exciting and dynamically animated sequence that culminates in Evil Morty covertly swapping places with Morty to gain the upper hand against Rick Prime and take him prisoner, after which Evil Morty downloads the schematics for the Omega Device and leaves him at the mercy of Rick.
Rick proceeds to beat Rick Prime to death with his bare hands in what might be the most brutally violent scene in the show I can think of. There is a lot of blood. And Rick Prime remains defiant to the end, laughing and taunting Rick through his bruised and battered face.
A blood-soaked Rick answers in the affirmative when Morty asks him if he’s okay, but as Mazzy Star’s “Look on Down from the Bridge” overwhelms the soundtrack, Rick can only go through the motions of living his life, clearly shell-shocked. Briefly, he shows some positive emotion during a family dinner, but he quickly slides back into a state that suggests that killing Rick Prime has not brought him the closure he expected it would, and he now has no idea what exactly his existential role in the universe is.
And that’s where we end the episode: Rick has gotten his revenge against the man that murdered his wife, but it doesn’t seem to have solved anything or brought Rick any satisfaction. This was a massive episode in terms of plot, and it really felt like a season finale rather than a mid-season chapter. The biggest thing now I think is that Evil Morty is in possession of the Omega Device, and while our core cast is safe for now, there’s no telling what Evil Morty intends to do with it on a broader scale. Next week will probably be a lot more low-key, but I’ll see you then regardless of what happens.
