Adventure Time is the high watermark for series that were very obviously not allowed to be serialized becoming serialized over time, arguably to the detriment of mainstream appeal. Considering they’re owned by the same parent company and AT has entered the endless cycle of revivals and spin offs on HBO max, I hope…

I almost feel like Avatar doesn’t count because it was more of a mini-series, or at least allowed to tell one cohesive story. Rick and Morty has to maintain the characters over a longer haul.

I haven’t seen all of Adventure Time nor Steven Universe, but know enough about both that they’re pretty rich, and Adventure Time…

Yeah, I think there’s probably more overlap than not between the two positions, but just enough difference in sensibility to poke fun at the extreme opposite pole for thinking something is good storytelling just because it had a callback or it paid off storyline from earlier.

This is a great point, but could still be applied to heavy serialization, right? This finale felt like a momentous turning point for the characters not existing inside the finite curve, Rick Sanchez not being the smartest being in the multiverse, and they have still returned having changed (once they get back to…

I don’t know if he’s said anything recently because I don’t follow Harmontown, or whatever, but the whole point of the ‘story circle’ thing was that it’s not about A→Z but from A back around to A’ (the protagonist “returns to a familiar situation, having changed”).
This doesn’t need to be strictly episodic, there can…

Other (animated) shows that did this successfully were Avatar, Adventure Time, and probably most drastically Steven Universe. I’m sure there were others but there is precedent for this kind of story telling to actually happen on this show. In my opinion, Steven Universe had the same problems as Rick and Morty, where…

I’m curious if other people take Harmon & Co.’s jabbing at continuity at face value? Do we really think that he hates it or is it a way to make fun of the episodic demands of adult swim programming?

Pickle Rick wasn’t really a stand-alone, it tied the whole season together.

I was waiting all season for the golf scene. Disappointed. They could have easily squeezed it in in the montage of Morty doing various tasks with the portal gun.  

I agree. It was great to have these final two after such a divisive season with some unusually weak episodes. I actually liked this season more than most but I agree it had outright bad episodes, which is rare for Rick and Morty. It was just so satisfying the way these two came together and it was nice to see the show…

The anime intro was great

Seems to me like the “Evil” Morty is now in a non-Rick universe, hence the YELLOW portal gun, so the way to go forward with the show is to expand on Morty’s adventures in the infinite worlds where Rick is NOT around (perhaps in contrast to what’s going on in the Rick-is-a-genius universes).

..plus original ‘replacement’ Beth ended up left behind in the Cronenberg universe. Jesus ..this is complicated

He’s Evil Morty because he kills thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of versions of himself and Rick to achieve his ends, but all he really wants in the end is to escape the cycle that being on animated television series inevitably leads to; where relationships can’t really change that much because the comedy…

Nah. Most of the R&M ads focus exclusively on the cold open, so the promos for the finale would have been all about the battle against the owls and 40-year-old Morty appearing 

It was said in the previous episode that even in universes where Beth doesn’t die, Ricks often abandoned her, never to return. 35 year old Rick was contemptuous of Ricks who move in with abandoned Beths, but 85 year old Rick apparently decided to give it a try after a lifetime of pain, misery, and loneliness.

That’s basically it. He got bored with killing all the other Ricks, set up the Citadel out of the surviving Ricks (along with the Finite Curve stuff). Then he got bored with that too, and went and moved in with abandoned adult Beth (like how his younger self called him out in “Rickshine”).

I gotta say, after a season of episodes that were enjoyable but not outstanding, I thought they really stuck the landing here. Also loved the fact that they did these back to back, because I was not expecting the second episode to turn the way it did (into an Evil Morty episode) and I imagine running promotion for…

I think that part is actually kind of one of the few vague spots. The whole “making sure Jerry and Beth fall in love” thing is one of the things Evil Morty shows Morty as an example of how Mortys are basically bred for Ricks. In C-137's memory montage though, his wife (whose name I can’t remember but I know has been…

A little disappointed neither of the crows got names and that the scarecrow wasn’t voiced by Norm Macdonald for some meta humor. Also a little disappointed Jerry-as-a-puddle never got a conclusion.