Rick and Morty season 4 premiere recap: Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat

Rick and Morty is back and it’s worth every second of the long wait since season three. According to the official synopsis, Morty goes mad in this one and Rick does stuff, which is vague, but accurate.

The Smith family is back together on Rick and Morty and apparently functioning happily and healthily, which obviously annoys and bores Rick. A new rule is that Rick has to ask – not command – Morty to go on adventures with him. What a pointless inconvenience! Rick and Morty excuse themselves from breakfast to go to Forbodulon Prime for death crystals.

Death crystals are exactly what they sound like. Not crystals that cause death, but crystals that show you all your possible deaths based on your infinite choices. Rick makes another one of those startling philosophical observations, saying that the future of anyone who’s living life right will keep changing based on their unpredictable choices. “Anyone who knows how they’re definitely going to die is either boring as hell or about to get shot.”

That’s when Rick and Morty are attacked by crystal poachers, who are the lowest form of life because they think the universe is their own personal piggy bank – which doesn’t apply to Rick and Morty, of course, because they’re Rick and Morty. Duh. Luckily, they have the death crystals and Rick knows exactly when they’re reloading. He takes them out and they gather up the rest of the crystals.

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Rick doesn’t want to use the crystals himself – “People who spend their life avoiding death are already dead” – only to sell them. Morty pockets one and discovers a future where he dies old with Jessica and becomes obsessed with making the choices that will lead to that future. Unfortunately, this leads to a struggle between Rick and Morty as they take off and Rick is killed when he’s thrown through the windshield and impaled on some jagged rocks.

Ironically, the man who thinks that avoiding death makes you dead already can never die. A hologram of Rick from a chip in Morty’s spine instructs him to take a tissue sample from “real Rick’s” corpse (“Calling density privileged entities ‘real’ is incredibly holophobic.”). But when it comes to actually producing a clone, Morty is guided by the death crystal and refuses.

Meanwhile, Rick’s backup gets rerouted to another universe where the Rick still has an active Phoenix Protocol. Only this universe is a fascist dystopia and as Rick keeps dying in an increasingly unlikely series of events, he keeps encountering fascist realities (“Godammit, when did this shit become the default?”). I think we all know how he feels. He eventually finds a nice Wasp-Rick who invites him to dinner and helps him get home.

Morty continues to make uncharacteristic choices so that he can die with Jessica while Holo-Rick continues to persuade him to clone real Rick. Things escalate quickly when Morty faces down a group of bullies with a cache of technologically advanced weapons, inexplicably leading to an overblown police and military response. Ultimately, Morty gives himself up, goes to trial, is proclaimed innocent after giving the judge a message from her dead husband, and avoids public outrage by issuing a statement of specific tones that elicit a sympathetic response.

Of course, when Jessica approaches him after the trial and invites him to go skinny dipping, he turns her down because of the crystal. It seems like Morty is constantly missing his opportunity to get together with Jessica because he’s so focused on these science fiction plot devices. He wanders into the desert and activates some kind of organic sentient blob that grows up around him and keeps him alive. This is his life now.

Rick, Holo-Rick, and Wasp-Rick arrive to save Morty from himself, then they have to stop Holo-Rick when the sentient goo makes him huge, corporeal, and insane. Wasp-Rick lays a bunch of eggs in his eye and his head explodes when they hatch into wasps. Gross.

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The lesson is to balance living in the moment with thinking ahead, and to mix up the season with a balance of new things and classic episodes. And sometimes with Rick and Morty not doing anything at all. Sounds like season four is going to get creative!

Oh yeah, and Morty overhears Jessica talking about how she wants to work in hospice when she grows up. She’ll sit by the dying and say “I love you” repeatedly, followed by their name – which is exactly what Morty saw in his death crystal vision. What the hell!

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