Rick And Morty Theory: Rick Prime Is A Time Traveler
While "Rick and Morty" prides itself on standalone adventures, it's also developed serialization with recurring characters and deep lore. For years, Evil Morty seemed to be the endgame, but now, many fans have turned their attention to the ever-elusive Rick Prime. He's the one responsible for killing the main Rick's family, and he's been on the hunt for him ever since.
Viewers saw just how far Rick was willing to go to take down Rick Prime in Season 6, even going so far as to build a robot to spend time with his family while he exists in a subterranean lair looking for him. Unfortunately, Rick Prime always seems to be one step ahead, and some fans have created theories to explain why that's the case. And it comes down to one sci-fi technique Rick doesn't respect — time travel.
Redditor u/bigblackchungus1 wrote, "Rick Prime is a time traveler Rick, Rick C-137 is the Rick that invents portal travel, thus creating the finite curve. Rick Prime exists in multiple places and times because they are all time paradoxes." It would also explain why Rick has a box of "Time Travel Stuff" in his garage. Perhaps he wanted to use it to track down Rick Prime but didn't want to be the one inadvertently responsible for giving Rick Prime the time travel tech in the first place.
It's hard to track down someone who can go backwards in time
"Rick and Morty" has used time travel in the past, but it's obvious Rick doesn't respect the device. This could all come down to another fan theory that Rick is afraid Rick Prime is actually him from the future. That would mean he's ultimately the one responsible for Diane and Beth's deaths. To avoid such a scenario, he's placed his time travel gear in a box in the garage so that he can't use it.
Regardless, it certainly makes sense Rick Prime would utilize time travel, and it would explain the Season 6 finale, where he's seemingly everywhere at the same time. In a separate Reddit thread, u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 offered another suggestion to the theory, "Rick C-137 doesn't respect time travel and won't use it, so he was of course unable to even pursue somebody who fled forward (or backwards?) through time, basically not existing during many of the years of C-137's life." That's why Rick has needed to dedicate all of his resources to finding another way to trap Rick Prime so that he's in the same dimension and time period as him.
There is one catch to this theory, as u/Hugh_Jazzin_Ditz writes, "The time cops would bend Rick Prime over." The existence of the Time Cops does make things tricky for using time travel going forward, but Rick Prime is such a genius, he could probably find some way to skirt their authority. With "Rick and Morty" going up to at least 100 episodes, there are plenty more opportunities for the writers to have fun with Rick's hunt for vengeance.