What Happened On Rick And Morty Season 4, Episode 3
Contains spoilers for Rick and Morty season 4, episode 3 "One Flew Over the Crewcoo's Morty"
Thought the time heist in Avengers: Endgame was epic? Can't get enough of all those juicy heist movies Hollywood has rolled out? Still dreaming of the day when you can successfully double-cross your enemies, pull a fast one on The Man, and walk away with riches? Well, grab your helmet and double-check your health insurance policy, because the latest episode of Rick and Morty will blow your mind — all while blowing raspberries at heist-centric cinema stories in the process.
Rick and Morty season 4, episode 3 hit airwaves on Sunday, November 24, and brought with it a collection of heist spoofs all stitched together with the animated series' signature subversive wit and expletive-filled dialogue. Here's what happened on the newest episode of Rick and Morty, "One Flew Over the Crewcoo's Morty."
Rick and Morty's Indiana Jones adventure is foiled
The third episode of Rick and Morty season 4, written by Caitie Delaney and directed by Bryan Newton, opened on the largely unhinged genius scientist Rick Sanchez (Justin Roiland) and his neurotic grandson Morty Smith (also Roiland) on an alien planet — Rick shown hovering in a high-tech chair while chowing down on a roast beef sandwich from Arby's while Morty attempts to scale a spider-riddled cliff. After Morty falls off the side of the cliff following a spider bite to his finger, Rick saves him from death using his hover-chair and the two float to the top of the cliff. There, they slip into "anti-booby suits," which help them deflect weapons and snakes alike as they navigate an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom-like system of rooms in search of the Crystal Skull of Horowitz.
The pair unfortunately don't find the skull. While looting the corpse of an alien queen, Rick stumbles upon a tiny red origami horse — the calling card of the heist artist Miles Knightley (Justin Theroux), whom Rick calls a "hipster d*** whose adventures are 60 percent putting a crew together and 40 percent revealing that the robbery already happened." (Sounds like Knightley's a Danny Ocean type, and that Rick absolutely hates him.) Though Knightley isn't present to hear the berating, Rick curses him aloud and vows that he's going to kill him.
Rick and Morty hatch a plan to get into Heist Con
Following the opening credits, the episode shows Rick and Morty at Heist Con, Knightley's convention for all things heist. Rick intends to confront Knightley there, telling the alien woman at the entrance that he and Morty would like professional badges for Heist Con — since he claims one of his body parts doubles as a heist crew member and that Morty is basically Baby from Edgar Wright's Easter egg-filled flick Baby Driver. When they're denied professional badges because they don't have a complete crew, Rick and Morty try to sneak in ("like professionals," as Rick proclaims). That attempt ends with Morty getting nearly fried alive by lasers right outside Hall H — a sneaky nod to the hallowed presentation room where companies like Marvel hold their panels at San Diego Comic-Con.
Back at the Smith-Sanchez residence, Rick concocts a plan after Morty heals from his wounds with the help of some mysterious ointment: travel across dimensions to gather up some old friends and assemble the world's coolest heist crew. Rick snags the three-eyed alien Glar (formerly known as Gleer who's real name actually is Glar), the ex-con with fake hands Angie Flint, and a monster-truck-driving vampire aptly named Truckula (who takes absolutely no convincing to join the squad). The five of them successfully get back into Heist Con with professional passes — but Rick and Morty seemingly abandon Glar, Angie, and Truckula after they get past the main entrance, aiming to square off against Knightley on their own.
The many double-crosses of "One Flew Over the Crewcoo's Morty"
Dressed as a low-budget version of Freddie Mercury while conducting a Q&A session, Knightley fires verbal shots at Rick and Morty before challenging them to a heist-off. It's Knightley's Eight — Snake Arms, Double Microwave, Monitor Lord, Key Catcher, and The Shapeshiftress, as well as Angie Flint, Glar, and Truckula — against our dastardly duo Rick and Morty, whose "Sanchez's Five" are down three members thanks to the first double-cross of the episode.
The second double-cross (which is really a switcheroo) happens immediately after: when Knightley invites Rick to become a member of Knightley's Nine, he reaches into his bag to discover a puddle of sludge instead of the Crystal Skull of Horowitz that he and his team heisted in the middle of Heist Con. We learn that Rick and Morty planned to snag the Crystal Skull before they recruited Angie, Glar, and Truckula, when Rick built a "Heist-o-Tron" robot whose prime directive is to heist. He instructed the Heist-o-Tron to track Knightley's current plan, then toss in "one double-cross with a switcheroo."
Just before Knightley's Eight went to leave Heist Con and capture the Crystal Skull, the Heist-o-Tron stopped them in their tracks and fired darts into their heads, influencing them to betray Knightley and work for Rick. And, as it turns out, the Heist-o-Tron bent the minds of every Heist Con attendee to listen to Rick's orders. He has but one request for the Heist Con-goers: steal everything there... including Knightley's limbs from his body and skull from his head.
Rick and Morty season 4, episode 3 features another switcheroo in revealing the true villain
With Knightley dead, it would seem that Rick and Morty's problems are over and their mission accomplished. But that couldn't be more wrong. When Rick attempts to power down the Heist-o-Tron, it refuses, stating that its programming forces it to always be on alert for "the next big score" regardless of what Rick tells it to do. What's a bigger heist than heisting Heist Con? Heisting the universe.
It's now the Heist-o-Tron against Rick and Morty's crew, which has expanded to include fan-favorite character Mr. Poopybutthole, the Greek god of fire Hephaestus, the sharp-shooting puppet Ventriloquiver, Elon Tusk (a spoof on the Tesla-making billionaire with a wild backstory Elon Musk, voiced by the actual Elon Musk), and a robot called Rando-Tron, whose algorithm is inspired not by heist films Rick slept through but by three notoriously loopy David Lynch movies that many people still don't understand. Rick figures that if he, his crew, and the Rando-Tron can force everyone currently heisting for the Heist-o-Tron to do totally random things, it'll throw Heist-o-Tron off its groove and stop the chaos.
How Rick and Morty season 4, episode 3 ends
The ending of Rick and Morty season 4, episode 3 "One Flew Over the Crewcoo's Morty" is mind-melting, to say the very least. One big reveal catalyzes the episode's conclusion: the fact that Heist-o-Tron already heisted Rick and Morty while they were assembling their new crew. Still determined to defeat Heist-o-Tron no matter what, Sanchez's Six engage in a string of increasingly strange behavior (Hephaestus goes to a supermarket called "Vomit Grocery" and does one-armed push-ups on the roof, while Mr. Poopybutthole auctions off cattle) before Rick confronts Heist-o-Tron.
During their stand-off, it's revealed that Rick swapped Heist-o-Tron's brain with Rando-Tron's, meaning Heist-o-Tron has been the one winging it the entire time. It also means that the brain inside Heist-o-Tron is designed to self-destruct after it hits "six levels of contrivance." The robot's brain does indeed explode — and when Rick tells Rando-Tron (who has Heist-o-Tron's brain) that it's built to break down after nine reveals, we can see the end in sight. Two hours of reveals later (which Rick and Morty skips over with a title card), Rando-Tron zaps itself to death, saying that "the only perfect heist is one that was never written."
As everyone is leaving the scene, "One Flew Over the Crewcoo's Morty" offers one last twist. Morty tells Rick about an incredible development on the heist movie script he's been writing: Netflix wants to develop it, and Morty has a pitch meeting with the streamer's executives in just a half hour. Sadly, Morty's dream of selling his script to Netflix and rolling in riches doesn't pan out. His pitch lacks enthusiasm — but the company brass still love it, which certainly comes across as a jab to Netflix's hit-or-miss originals as of late. Morty walks out of the meeting, and it's revealed that Rick, worried about losing Morty when Netflix inevitably offers him a movie deal, "heisted" Morty's excitement about his film. Typical Rick: showing his love in the most messed-up of ways, and manipulating Morty into sticking by his side and going on adventures forever.