Rick and Morty Episode 36: Rattlestar Ricklactica

Rick and Morty are stranded in space when the ship’s tire blows out, forcing them to stop and repair it. Morty ignores Rick’s warning and steps out of the ship, where he is bitten by a snake in a spacesuit, then kills it in panic. Rick takes Morty to a snake planet for treatment, where they discover a society of intelligent snakes locked in political unrest and preparing for war.

Morty feels guilty about killing the snake that bit him, so back on Earth he buys a regular snake, modifies it to resemble the fallen space snake, and sends it to the snake planet in hopes of inspiring peace. Instead, the snakes interpret the arrival as proof of alien contact and begin accelerating their own development, eventually building time travel and sending snake assassins back through history to protect their future.

The rest of the episode becomes a chaotic time-travel loop as the snakes keep interfering with their own history, leading to more and more advanced snake factions and repeated attempts to kill Morty and each other. Rick and Morty get pulled into the escalating snake war, which spirals into absurd temporal warfare before the situation is finally brought to a stop by the snakes’ own overcomplicated time travel mess.

Meanwhile, Jerry is left trying to hang Christmas lights after Rick gives him a temporary anti-gravity adjustment that makes him able to jump unusually high. The trick works for a while, but Jerry’s effort to prove himself turns into a ridiculous airborne ordeal as he bounces around the house in a series of mishaps.