Rick and Morty Episode 51: Rickmurai Jack

Rick is deep into a new life of bizarre, crow-themed adventures, fighting owl-like enemies alongside two crows when Morty finally tracks him down and begs him to come back home. Rick refuses and tries to continue his odd new routine, but the crows eventually turn on him by sneaking off to have adventures with Rick’s old enemy, leaving Rick feeling used and abandoned.

Morty then returns to Rick’s orbit by revealing that he has aged himself into a middle-aged man using serum from the Citadel of Ricks, hoping to guilt Rick into taking him seriously and reversing the situation. The two end up traveling to the Citadel, where the episode shifts into a much larger conflict as the Citadel is already unraveling and a Morty’s long-running plan is reaching its end.

Inside the Citadel, Rick and Morty are forced into the chaos as the city’s systems fail and the place begins collapsing around them. The Citadel has been sabotaged, portals have become deadly, and Ricks and Mortys are dying as the destruction spreads through the city.

As they move deeper into the Citadel, Morty learns about Rick’s past through memories and sees that Rick once spent years hunting the Rick responsible for his wife and daughter’s deaths, eventually helping build the Citadel before later leaving to live with the Smith family. The episode uses this material to show how deeply Rick’s life has been shaped by that loss, even as the immediate danger keeps escalating around him.

The climax comes when the Morty orchestrating events fully reveals his plan and offers Morty a chance to leave with him, but Morty refuses and stays with Rick. Rick and Morty then help evacuate the remaining deformed Mortys from the Citadel’s underground area into Mortyburg, detach that section from the city, and flee just before the Citadel is swallowed by the portal-fluid catastrophe.

Their escape succeeds, but only barely: the portal fluid turns into a deadly black-hole-like threat, forcing them to race away from it with no usable portal fluid left. At the same time, the Morty behind the Citadel’s downfall escapes separately, leaving the ruined Citadel behind as Rick and Morty are stranded in space with their exit cut off.