Rick and Morty Episode 52: Solaricks

Rick and Morty are left stranded in the wreckage of the Citadel after the previous episode’s events, and Space Beth rescues them and brings them home. Rick then tries to repair his portal gun by resetting the portal fluid, but the attempt goes wrong and sends everyone who has ever used portals back to their original dimensions, including Jerry.

Before they are separated, Rick tells Summer how to get them back, and the episode splits into several parallel stories. Morty is sent back to the Earth he originally came from, where he finds a ruined, overgrown world and meets the version of Jerry who has survived there alone. Jerry is bitter toward Morty for abandoning the family, and the two argue before going their separate ways.

Rick is sent back to the dimension where his wife and daughter died, and he searches through the ruins of his old life for supplies while talking to an AI recreation of Diane that he once made to torment himself. The conversation pushes him to confront how long he has stayed trapped in grief and revenge, and he begins to accept that he has been holding on too tightly.

Meanwhile, Summer, Beth, and Space Beth stay behind in the Smith house and deal with the fallout from everyone else disappearing. They use the beacon Summer was told to activate so Rick can find them again, and the family eventually reunites.

Back together, Rick grows angry again and wants to resume his revenge, but Morty talks him down by reminding him that he still has a family to worry about in another dimension. Rick relents for the moment, and the group settles into a new replacement universe after their original home is no longer usable.

That new arrangement does not last: after they return, Jerry accidentally releases a small alien parasite called Mr. Frundles, which rapidly takes over the world. The family is forced to abandon that Earth and move again to yet another replacement dimension where the local version of their family had already died, and where the only noticeable difference is that people pronounce “parmesan” strangely.

In the episode’s final stinger, Jerry in Morty’s original dimension encounters Rick Prime, who asks where Rick and Morty are.