If you’ve been following these articles, I’m sure you can see that I have had no complaints about this season of Rick and Morty. And not surprisingly, this episode was no different. I may go so far as to say that it is one of the most, if not THE most, intricately written and entertaining episodes to date. Spoilers below, but keep reading if you want to understand what I mean!
Photo Credit: Adult Swim
The word “Ricklantis” conjured a plethora of aquatic images into my mind, so I was prepared for an oceanic adventure full of tastefully repetitive and out-of-place JAWS lines. Imagine my surprise when the Citadel of Ricks was thrown into my face—don’t act like you saw it coming, y’all. We literally got Rick Rolled. They went there.
We did see the very beginning and end of Rick and Morty’s adventure to Atlantis, but didn’t get past the garage. Instead, we were taken on a very different path.The alternative title of the episode, “Tales from the Citadel”, gave off an immediate Tales from the Crypt vibe. And as the title suggested, the plot did split into several storylines following different Ricks and Mortys. Each story focuses on either one Rick or Morty as they go about their lives, all wishing for something more than what they have in the broken Citadel. However, these storylines come back around to tie in with each other by the end of the episode.
Although the Citadel is comprised solely of Ricks and Mortys, the writers really outdid themselves by finding a way to make each Rick or Morty unique enough to distinguish from the others. We essentially saw a swarm of brand new characters take over an entire episode in the middle of the season, which is incredibly weird. But it worked. Several walks of life were called on to create these characters, including those of an incestuous schoolboy, a monotonous factory worker, and a 100%-done-with-this-shit cop.
Really can we please just appreciate Badass Cop Morty going all Training Day during this episode? Aw, geez, that was some top-shelf stuff.
Photo Credit: Adult Swim
The shock of this episode was delivered with the reappearance of Evil Morty, who I’m sure most of us hadn’t really given much thought to lately. It does seem obvious looking back on it now—evil antagonist using gaining political office to carry out his evil protagonist plans? It’s been done, and we’ve gotten used to it. But we’ve never seen it done the Rick and Morty way, so things just got a whole lot more interesting!
Overall, the intricacy of the plot and fine work with characterizations completely overshadowed any predictable content of the episode. Only a few episodes left of the season, so let’s see how Evil Morty’s plans play out!
Photo Credit: Adult Swim
