The Rick And Morty Season 5 Finale Scene Fans Thought Made No Sense
This article contains spoilers for Rick and Morty's two-part Season 5 finale, "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall" and "Rickmurai Jack."
Season 5 of "Rick And Morty" on Adult Swim went out with a bang.
Multiverse shenanigans are set off by a now lone Rick — acting even more roguishly than usual — attempting to replace Marty as his sidekick, and his subsequent universe hopping (with the crows he took on as assistants), result in much mayhem across the timestream. Morty returns to the fold, and the reunified twosome head to the Citadel, a place Rick had long been avoiding. The result of that trip delivered humor, action, and pathos all in one familiar and funny package. And the chaos which took place in both parts of the finale — titled "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall" and "Rickmurai Jack," respectively — may or may not have far-reaching consequences on the show's already-greenlit sixth season.
However, the fans who dwell down at the Rick and Morty section of Reddit have some conflicted thoughts about how the show wrapped up its very controversial fifth outing, and some of them have discovered a detail which they believe makes absolutely no sense when it's held up to scrutiny.
How to kill two Ricks with one stone
In "Rickmurai Jack," Rick's primary motivation behind building the Citadel is to broker peace between himself and the other Ricks in the multiverse. This occurs after he went on a multi-dimensional killing spree of other Ricks, in the wake of the deaths of his daughter Beth and wife Diane in an explosion (yes, those Season 3 flashbacks were real) as he searched for the Eviler Rick who taught him about portal gun technology in the first place. While Rick, failing his quest to find Eviler Rick, settled down in the C-137 reality with a new, now adult Beth, he agreed to form the Citadel with the other Ricks to protect the "central finite curve", which pocketed their section of the multiverse and walled off all worlds where Rick isn't the smartest man in that reality or doesn't exist. To ensure its maintenance, they bred a clone army of infinite Mortys. Thus was Evil Morty inspired to break free of this enforced partnership with his grandfather, destroy the Citadel, and defy the destiny imposed upon him by the central finite curve.
Here's the problem raised by Reddit user scoopy01: when it comes to Rick-Prime's motivation, why did he not simply head directly to the universe where he met the other Rick and kill him? Since Rick hates all of the other Ricks in the universe — why take part in building the Citadel at all?
Is Rick's motivation all about ego?
Another Redditor, user Xaitor119, points to one reason why Rick didn't follow the other him back to the dimension where they met and make an end of him — "[T]hat would be time travel and even if he could, he would have to know where the Evil Cyberpunk Rick was going to be to teleport there and kill him." Since the logical internal rules of portal travel seem to indicate that while Rick knows how time travel works, he doesn't employ it, and simply seems to move sideways or into the future in the show's universe. Thus there would be no way Rick could go back and undo his mistake.
As to why Rick might work with the other Ricks when he hates them, user Danbito suggests that the most typical of Rick motivations — his ego — might be at work here. Specifically, the user suggests that Rick gathered the already-suspicious cadre of other Ricks together to unite them against this singular killer Rick. "The central finite curve is essentially beneficial to Rick's ego but also likely to placate the Citadel with the prevention of another C-137 Rick that goes on a murder spree," they point out.
Other fans pointed out that Rick's driving thought here might be as simple and selfish as wanting to be the smartest man in the multiverse. Either way, in a show with a canon as loose as "Rick and Morty" is, it's definitely a noodle-scratcher.