The Epic Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 1 Post-Credits Fight Explained

Contains spoilers for "Rick and Morty" Season 6, Episode 1 – "Solaricks"

With Season 6 of "Rick and Morty" kicking off on Adult Swim, everyone's favorite misanthropic, dimension-hopping scientist is back. The new season kicks off with "Solaricks," an episode dense with both plot and jokes, as Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland) deal with the fallout from Season 5's multiverse-breaking finale and reset the playing field for adventures to come.

In August, one of the "Rick and Morty" showrunners addressed concerns from fans and signaled that more continuity was coming in Season 6, but even going in with that expectation, "Solaricks" requires fans to have done some serious homework. After five seasons of hopping around the infinite multiverse, with lore and backstory piling sky high, it's an episode that seems targeted toward the most die-hard fans of the show. For anyone who hasn't been keeping track of the many incarnations of the show's cast of characters, some things may prove hard to piece together.

One such moment is the post-credits stinger, which finds a version of Rick encountering and killing a version of Jerry (Chris Parnell). That same Rick tries to outsmart and potentially kill the main version of Rick from dimension C-137 earlier in the episode. So what's going on in this scene and why does it matter? Here's the "Rick and Morty" Season 6, Episode 1 post-credits fight explained.

With five seasons in the rearview, the "Rick and Morty" timeline is scattered across dimensions more than ever before. The Rick who fights and kills Jerry in the post-credits scene of "Solaricks" is actually the Cronenberg'd dimension's original Rick, better known as Weird Rick. As chronicled in the Season 3 premiere, "The Rickshank Redemption," Weird Rick killed C-137 Rick's wife, Diane (Kari Wahlgren), along with a young version of Beth. More recently, in the Season 5 finale, "Rickmurai Jack," we learn that C-137 Rick's entire life since then has been a quest to find and kill Weird Rick. It's the reason he chose to live in Weird Rick's original dimension, which was eventually destroyed and turned into the Cronenberg'd dimension during the Season 1 episode "Rick Potion No. 9."

Speaking of "Rick Potion No. 9," the version of Jerry we see in the post-credits is the show's original Jerry, also from the Cronenberg'd dimension. Let's call him Feral Jerry to keep things simple. After the events of that episode, Rick and Morty abandon the family and travel to a nearly identical reality, leaving Morty's original Beth, Jerry, and Summer (Spencer Grammer) to fend for themselves. They remain alive when Rick and his new Summer briefly visit that dimension in "The Rickshank Redemption," but by the time Morty ends up there once again in "Solaricks," only Feral Jerry still survives.

When portal travelers are reset near the top of "Solaricks," Weird Rick is thrust back into the Cronenberg'd dimension. After setting a trap for C-137 Rick, who ultimately opts to leave with Morty instead of fight him, Weird Rick travels back to Earth. This is the point at which he encounters Feral Jerry, who finds the crashed remains of Weird Rick's transport. When Jerry slashes his neck, Weird Rick has a Wolverine-like form of self-healing that allows him to laugh it off and shoot Feral Jerry, first in the stomach, then with a killing shot to the head.

Before their fight, Weird Rick remarks that he's never been close to a Jerry. This seems to imply that he abandoned Beth before she met Feral Jerry in that dimension, which would place the time of Weird Rick's departure sometime while she was in high school.

While uncharacteristic for most versions of Jerry, it makes sense for Feral Jerry to attack Rick. As he told Morty earlier in the episode, he's been hardened by the apocalyptic state of his Cronenberg'd universe and the death of the remaining members of his family. He also explains that he's learned to let go of attachments to other people. But he still underestimates Weird Rick, who, as we know, is one of the most ruthless Ricks in the multiverse. So long, Feral Jerry. To quote Weird Rick, you really arced out.