Tonight’s ‘Rick and Morty’ Shows That Our Rick Isn’t the Only Morty-Lover

In “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly,” Rick and Morty fans learned that Rick C-137 isn’t the only Rick in the Central Finite Curve with a toxic affection for his sidekick and cloaking device.  

Ever since the Season One episode “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind” first introduced Rick and Morty viewers to the multiversal nature of the series, “kindness” has been a rare quality for any Rick to show to any Morty. Given Morty’s unique, complementary brain chemistry, most Ricks see Mortys purely as important components in their complex and often cruel inventions, and the very Citadel of Ricks sat on a foundation of Morty-suffering that Rick C-137 helped to engineer.  

As established in the Season Three episode “Rest and Ricklaxation,” our Rick canonically considers his care for our Morty to be a negative quality, leading fans to believe that Rick C-137’s humanity toward a Morty that isn’t even his is a once-in-a-multiverse outlier in the grand scheme of Ricks. That is, until tonight’s episode (spoilers ahead), “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly,” which introduced us to Head of Morty Replication Rick, who sacrificed himself to save a gaggle of genetically engineered Mortys from Western-themed destruction.  

In tonight’s Spaghetti Western standalone episode, Rick and Morty fans got to see a glimpse of the lives of former Citadel of Ricks citizens who didn’t have anywhere to go after Evil Morty brought down the centralized, interdimensional Rick society from the inside back in the Season Five finale “Rickmurai Jack.” At this point in the canon, many of the cloned versions of Morty who once populated the Citadel are stuck on a dusty asteroid full of crystal corn, mutant pigs, saloons and gumbo-slinging Railroad Barons.  

The one exception to the TombClone community of post-Citadel pioneers is the Rick responsible for creating the clone population in his past life — or, at least, one of the Ricks responsible. We know he’s not a fan of the auteur myth. This Rick, perhaps haunted by his past, stops an evil scheme to rebuild the Citadel on a similar foundation of Morty exploitation. The self-loathing Rick saves the clones from falling to the same torturous fate of all the Mortys whom Rick C-137 subjected to a life of torture and sets them loose on the galaxy before going on a suicide mission to bring down the Southern Citadel.  

Up until this point in Rick and Morty, Rick C-137 seemed to be the only Rick in the CFC who gave a single shit about his Morty (obviously not Mortys in general), but “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly” shows that callous indifference to the suffering of sidekicks isn’t an immutable characteristic for all Ricks besides the Rickest one. Just as our Rick grew to appreciate and care for the chosen version of his family, so, too, can the countless other Ricks learn empathy.  

If another Rick can care about another Morty, does that mean that, somewhere out there, a second Rick exists who can treat Jerry like he’s almost a person?