Promotional art for season 6 of 'Rick and Morty' on Adult Swim

Promotional art for season 6 of 'Rick and Morty' on Adult Swim

‘Rick and Morty’ Returns For Season 6 on Adult Swim

'Rick and Morty' is back for a new season on Adult Swim. But after last season's explosive finale, where will the show go next?

Rick and Morty returns to Adult Swim for season 6 on Sunday, Sept. 4. But after last season's game-changing finale, where will the show go next? Let's fire up the portal gun and dive in.

Strange Doctor in the Morty-verse of Madness

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IDcQ8_sudx4

Rick and Morty's season 5 finale was so mind-blowing, we wouldn't blame you if you forgot it entirely. In short: Evil Morty, now the President of the Citadel of Ricks, revealed a much deeper conspiracy – Rick has been mass-producing Morty's, Matrix- style, to work as slave labor for the all of Ricks in the "universe." We use air quotes because the universe of Rick and Morty turns out to have been cordoned off from the full multiverse; using something called the "Central Finite Curve," Rick has isolated the universes in which he's the smartest being, then stiched them together via the Citadel.

We also finally learn Rick's origin story. It turns out our Rick was visted by another "killer" Rick, who detonated a bomb that killed his wife Diane and baby Beth. Rick then builds a portal gun to scour the multiverse and destroy this Rick, recruiting other Ricks in the process. Rick never finds him, but he teams up with all of his other Ricks to build the Citadel and the curve.

Now would be a good time to admit that your author is more Morty than Rick, and that multiverse-level plots makes our head spin. Regardless of the specifics of the cannon, the episode ends with Evil Morty hacking all of the portal guns, blowing up the Citadel, and escaping through a portal that sends him outside of the Curve, stranding Rick and Morty in space with no clear way home.

On the Run

https://www.youtube.com/embed/jerFRSQW9g8

Given these events, it's especially difficult to theorize where the show is going next. The season 6 trailer doesn't provide a lot of fodder, but it does suggest that Rick, Morty, and the rest of the family will be on the run. Whether this is a brief arc or a season-long story is anyone's guess, but along with the official promotional art (conveniently featured at the top of this post), we get the sense that, for the first time in the series, Rick is not in complete control.

That's probably a good thing. For all of its remarkable plotting and exploration of sci-fi tropes, Rick and Morty is actually a grounded, character-driven show (the balance of these disparate elements is what made "Pickle Rick" such a beloved episode). Now that we know Rick's genuinely tragic origin story, we understand his motivations much more clearly. We've always known that Rick is an assh*le, but the question of "why is that guy such an assh*le?" has finally been answered.

Still, we're not exactly rooting for a redemption arc this season (or beyond). Not only would that ruin the show's comedy dynamics, it would betray what we love about it in the first place. There are no easy answers in Rick and Morty, just like real life. Unpredictably is a feature, not a bug. And season 6 looks as unpredictable as ever.

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