Rick & Morty Season 7's Twist Ending Was A Clever Repeat Of This Season 1 Episode
Although Rick and Morty’s season 7 finale featured a killer twist, this was not the first time that the cult hit pulled off this exact revelation. Since its inception, Rick and Morty has been committed to deconstructing the tropes and conventions of family sitcoms and sci-fi TV shows alike. Adult Swim’s anarchic animated comedy sees its titular antiheroes run into all manner of genre clichés on a weekly basis, and Rick and Morty season 8 promises to keep this streak alive. The earliest teaser for Rick and Morty season 8 parodies movies like Alien, Pandorum, and Passengers in its short runtime.
However,Rick and Morty’s season 7 ending took the show’s usual sci-fi spoofs to a darker, more existential place. Like earlier season finales, season 7, episode 10, “Fear No Mort,” raised the stakes of the show. The episode introduced a version of Rick’s late wife, Diane, after trapping Rick and Morty in a nightmarish alternate reality. The episode’s twist ending revealed the duo were never trapped at all but, instead, Morty was alone with his thoughts the entire time. Morty’s worst nightmare was a world where Rick didn’t need him, resulting in him imagining such a scenario complete with Diane.
Rick & Morty Season 7's Fake Rick Twist Echoed Season 1, Episode 4's Morty Simulation
Morty Was Replaced By A Simulation Throughout Season 1 Episode 4
In Morty’s mind, Rick followed him into the Fear Hole and the pair both tried to escape together. However, the ending of “Fear No Mort” revealed that Rick never followed Morty into the Hole, meaning the Rick seen throughout the episode was merely a projection. Rick and Morty foreshadowed this twist much, much earlier, in season 1, episode 4, “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” Following Rick and Morty’s first Christmas episode, this outing saw Rick spend the entire episode trying to escape the clutches of aliens who set up fake realities so they could steal his recipe for concentrated Dark Matter.
In the post-credits stinger of “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” a drunken Rick confronted Morty, demanding that he prove he wasn't a simulation.
In the twist ending of “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” Rick realized that all the nested realities he had previously escaped were themselves contained within a larger simulation. The aliens created entire universes to trick Rick, but he outsmarted them with a fake recipe. Nonetheless, the encounter left him shaken. In the post-credits stinger of “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” a drunken Rick confronted Morty, demanding that he prove he wasn't a simulation. This arrived years before the ending of “Fear No Mort,” where the big twist is that the episode’s version of Rick was a simulation all along and Morty was alone.
Rick & Morty Season 7's Ending Twist Worked (Even If The Show Did It Before)
“Fear No Mort” Barely Featured The Real Rick At All
As alien scammers repeatedly tried to steal Rick’s recipe, Rick outsmarted them and Jerry floundered in the light-hearted if convoluted story of “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” In contrast, Rick and Morty’s season 7 finale takes Morty’s plight far more seriously and invests the story with much more emotional weight. Morty may also be dealing with imaginary illusions created by an alien villain, but the story of “Fear No Mort” uses these to tap into his very real insecurities. As such, Rick and Morty’s season 7 ending doesn’t feel repetitive or predictable despite technically sharing its twist with an earlier episode.
- Network
- Adult Swim
- Cast
- Spencer Grammer, Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Sarah Chalke, Kari Wahlgren, Dan Harmon, Maurice LaMarche, Tom Kenny, Dustin Ybarra, Dana Carvey, john oliver, Werner Herzog, Stephen Colbert, Nathan Fillion, Danny Trejo, Christian Slater, Logic, Jordan Peele, Nathan Fielder, Melique Berger, Tony Hale, Joel McHale, Ian Cardoni, Harry Belden
- Franchise(s)
- Rick and Morty
- Creator(s)
- Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon
- Seasons
- 8
- Streaming Service(s)
- Hulu
