Note: This story contains spoilers from “Rick and Morty” Season 8, Episode 3.
Only three episodes in and “Rick and Morty” has already pulled out the big guns. After last week’s episode, which featured a rare adventure with Space Beth (Sarah Chalke), “The Rick, the Mort and the Ugly” zoomed in on one of the oddest and most beloved parts of this multiverse, the Citadel of Ricks.
“There was probably [writers] room excitement to tag back in and see what’s left of the Citadel. People might think that it’s utterly destroyed. We see that there are survivors from it,” Scott Marder, the showrunner and executive producer of “Rick and Morty,” told TheWrap.
The original Citadel of Ricks was a trans-dimensional city that was exclusively occupied by Ricks and Mortys from an infinite number of timelines. Over the years, there have been all sorts of wild adventures at the Citadel from a “Stand By Me” inspired coming-of-age tale between four Mortys to a corrupt cop saga between a hardened and overweight Morty and his wide-eyed Rick partner. But at the end of Season 5, the president of the Citadel — often referred to as Evil Morty — destroyed the place, grinding up the bodies of various Ricks, Mortys and their clones to fuel his own escape.
If this were any other show, that would be the end of the Citadel saga. But Adult Swim’s behemoth has always been about pushing sci-fi to its limits. In Season 8, the main version of Rick (Ian Cardoni) and Morty (Harry Belden) crash land on a planet that’s entirely occupied by former Citadel Ricks and Mortys. Though Evil Morty’s plan resulted in killing thousands of people and sending every Rick and Morty back to their original timelines, that reset didn’t apply to Rick and Morty clones. And since every Rick from every timeline in the Central Finite Curve cloned himself and his grandson to ensure they always have a backup, that left a ton of Ricks and Mortys without a timeline to call home.
“The Rick, the Mort and the Ugly” was inspired by Westerns, specifically 1992’s Clint Eastwood movie “Unforgiven.” “There was certainly a lot of love for that movie and Westerns in general,” Marder said. “That’s generally the gist of the root of that one.”
But though the episode wears its broad influences on its sleeve, the installment written by Albro Lundy, James Siciliano and Michael Kellner is more than the sum of its parts, telling a wholly unique story that could only exist in this wild multiverse.
“For me, whenever we feel like we have [an episode] that can’t be done on another show, we’re cooking with something. That normally checks a big box for me,” Marder said.
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