Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S9E7 “Mortgully: The Last Rickforest” (written by Daniel Cole and directed by Michael Kellner).
You’d think by now that Morty would stop blindly going along with Rick on any adventure his grandpa wants to bring him on. But Rick and Morty just wouldn’t be the same if he did, so here we are. “Mortgully: The Last Rickforest” finds the pair on a planet to harvest tree sap, which Rick says is primo. In a matter of seconds, Rick and Morty are picked up by vines and the tree sprouts an elderly face, which scolds them for being spacefarers who consume planets and “spread sickness to the stars.” Despite their claims to the contrary, the tree declares that they will be reformed, and drags them underground, where their souls get dropped from a branch into a cavern below, into a body of water in which they become reincarnated as amoebae before the title sequence.
As Rick and Morty try to figure out how to escape, they are approached by another amoeba who guides them through a crowd he refers to as “cellmates” (get it?), and they’re in a prison of sorts. His friendliness quickly changes to aggression, and he proceeds to kill and eat Rick and Morty. They’re reincarnated, back to where they were a few seconds ago, and Rick deduces that if they die, they start over here. Their assailant appears once again, much bigger this time. Rick takes him by surprises and kills him. “Prison rules, Morty! Get to the top of the food chain or you’re someone’s dinner!” Rick and Morty suck up the remains of their former killer and grow as a result. Rick further realizes that they can multiply and subsequently evolve.
They do so, multiplying hundreds of times until they form into fish, then grow limbs, then climb out of the water on to land, near the mass of roots leading up to the tree (referred to as the Warden) above ground. Rick says they’re in a soul containment field: if they get to the surface, they escape the reincarnation cycle. Unfortunately, Morty has not figured out how to breathe outside of water, and promptly keels over. Rick proceeds to drown himself so he can go back to get him.
This time, they evolve into spiders, where they can easily let their food come to them, but Morty f*cks up again and gets caught in his own web, trapping Rick with him. They both die and get reincarnated again, with Rick’s idea to evolve with wings. They land at the foot of the Warden’s roots and plot to fly up to the top of the cavern, but apparently the Warden can hear them, and promptly grabs them with his roots and crushes them.
Their next attempt is to reincarnate and evolve into monkeys. The arrive at a watering hole, where they are set upon by apes. Rick uses a sharpened stick to slaughter them, but Morty is fatally crushed by a falling body. This time, Rick doesn’t join him. Morty reincarnates, and realizes that Rick isn’t coming back. He’s approached by a friendlier amoeba, who guides Morty on a path not of violence, but of peace, serving nature. Morty and his new friends are killed as bees, but upon reincarnation, optimistically set out.
Meanwhile, Rick, still as a monkey, has taken over the ecosystem as a ruler, enslaving hundreds of animals to build a fort and prepare to scale the Warden’s roots. It works for a while, but each slave that tries to climb the roots is killed. Rick continues to attempt to defeat the Warden, via sawing and burning, but is thwarted every time.
Back to Morty: evolving multiple times, he laments that they seem to be going in circles. His new father figure insists that this will eventually placate the Warden into releasing them, but they’re not in any hurry. Morty realizes that the other peaceful organisms are content with where they are, and decides to kill himself to reincarnate back to an amoeba. He decides this time to evolve into vegetation, and via a very good montage, continues to evolve and spread, utilizing the cycle of vegetating and being sh*t out to continue to spread into hundreds of trees, and eventually becoming a root of his own to begin scaling the Warden’s roots. He finally bursts through to the surface to talk to the Warden. He excitedly notes the nutrients in the soil, and the Warden tells him that they are the life cycles of his prisoners, providing nourishment. Unfortunately, the Warden deduces that Morty is a spacefarer, and kills him. Time for Morty to start over.
Rick, seeing what has happened, willingly plummets to his death to rescue Amoeba Morty before he’s killed by the guy from the beginning. Morty reveals to Rick that they’re all just there to feed the Warden, and the two of them decide to work together once again. Rick evolves into a human, Morty evolves into his plant form again, and together they convince the other inmates to design their own self-contained ecosystem to starve the Warden. They thrive on their peaceful, plant-based living into a flourishing society.
It works, and when the starving Warden, no longer feasting on a death cycle, looks down into his cavern, he sees the dying world save for the one thriving plateau. He uproots himself to attack the society, but they’re ready. They fire multiple harpoons into the Warden’s roots, pulling on him until they finally rip him away from the top of the cavern and expose the sky above. The felled Warden is astonished that the united ecosystem no longer want to kill each other, and finally dies.
The animals are a little confused as to whether this was it, and wonder why they weren’t returned to their original bodies. Rick and Morty insist that they “just have to believe,” tell them to all close their eyes, and airlift themselves out of the cavern to freedom, leaving their civilization behind. Returning home, they go into the living room (no explanation as to how they got back to original human form), where Summer asks them where they’ve been “all day.” That was an actually funny bit indicating that their endless lifecycles and evolutions were only a day on Earth. Morty, with a renewed knowledge, grabs Summer’s Biology textbook, quickly rifles through it, and hands it back: “Nope.”
Season 9 of Rick and Morty is on an incredible hot streak, with hit after hit so far. “Mortgully: The Last Rickforest” is no different, once again delivering wonderful creativity and sharp humor. It packs a lot into its half-hour runtime and the storyline of reincarnation is very clever, particularly with their different ideas as to how to survive and escape. The third act is particularly satisfying, with Morty’s survival ideas and Rick’s pacifist leadership working to defeat the Warden and escape home. I think there are three episodes left in the season, and if we keep on the same trajectory, we’re looking at early-days Rick and Morty quality. Can’t wait for the next one.
