Rick and Morty Episode 12: A Rickle in Time

Time has been frozen for months while Rick, Morty, and Summer cleaned up after the chaos from the previous episode, and the story begins with them still trying to finish the housework before unfreezing everything. Rick warns Morty and Summer that, because they have been living outside normal time for so long, they must not touch their parents or make uncertain choices, or their timeline could become unstable.

Rick unfreezes time, but almost immediately Morty and Summer start bickering, especially over who is closer to Rick. Their uncertainty causes reality to split into two parallel versions of events, with both timelines running at once and becoming increasingly unstable. Rick tries to fix the damage with a time crystal and by forcing the timelines back together, but the uncertainty keeps spreading and the fracture multiplies into even more timelines.

As the situation worsens, Rick becomes paranoid that another version of himself is working against him, which only makes the timeline instability worse. A bizarre four-dimensional enforcer appears to punish Rick for the illegal use of the time crystal and hands out collars meant to stabilize the fractured timelines. The collars briefly restore order, but Rick tries to break the situation by removing them, causing the uncertainty to explode outward into many more versions of reality.

Rick then uses the chaos to attack the enforcer by creating multiple versions of himself, eventually overpowering it. Even after that, time is still falling apart, so Rick works urgently to pull everyone back into a single timeline. Summer is sent back to her own version of events, and Rick has to repair Morty’s collar to reunite the family in one timeline.

Meanwhile, Beth and Jerry finally leave to get ice cream after being told to stay out of the way while time stabilizes. On the drive, they hit a deer with their car, which leads to a separate argument and attempt to deal with the animal.