Could ‘Rick and Morty’ Ready to Embrace Its Lore?

In “Rick Potion #9,” Rick accidentally “Cronenbergs” the world—a sci-fi screw-up so irreversible that he and Morty flee their reality to take the place of a deceased Rick and Morty in a near-identical alternate reality. All at once, the episode introduces the concept of a multiverse of infinite realities, introduces the idea that Rick can take up residence in any of these on a whim (and has done so before), and transforms Morty from naïve and subservient to jaded and pissed off. It’s a seminal moment for Rick and Morty, forever redefining what the series was and what we could expect from it.

The events of “Rick Potion #9” hang over and ripple throughout the entire series. There’s the obvious effect of introducing Rick’s ability to portal his way from universe to universe, as well as Morty’s more cynical characterization. But the series continues to directly recall the episode in more literal ways too, more than once referencing the fact that the Rick and Morty buried their other selves in the backyard or showing us how the Cronenberged Dimension they left behind is still post-apocalyptically trudging onward.

Season six’s premiere, “Solaricks,” revisits what went down in “Rick Potion #9” in the most literal way yet when Rick accidentally resets all portal travelers to their places of origin, sending Morty back to the universe he and his grandpa ditched after they Cronenberged everything up. Further, the episode ends with another blunt callback as Rick, Morty, and the rest of the Smith family bury versions of themselves in the backyard of yet another new universe.

“Solaricks” is something of a companion piece to “Rick Potion #9.” The latter episode marked a point of no return where so many dark truths about the multiverse were revealed to us (and to Morty) that echoes of it would be felt throughout the series forever afterward. It only took close to nine years, but “Solaricks” is finally reckoning with what “Rick Potion #9” set up by reaffirming that all this fucked up stuff happened and that it matters to these characters and their world(s).

This is a big deal because, while Rick and Morty has always contained threads of continuity, it’s more flirted with it when it was convenient, with a winking reference to the Cronenbergs, a visit to the Citadel of Ricks, or the occasional reappearance of Evil Morty. More often, it’s aggressively resisted it in favor of goofy, one-off adventures with no lasting impact. The series has no problem decimating the fourth wall at every turn, so there’s even been a fair bit of overt mockery when the idea of canonical lore has come up, as in “Never Ricking Morty,” which jokingly posits and quickly discards possible future scenes and finales for Rick and Morty, chucking in fan-favorite characters like Mr. Meeseeks and Evil Morty, suggesting at once an awareness of and distaste for the serialized elements many fans have craved. Rick himself has made clear how he despises backstory and lore, dismissing the Citadel of Ricks as a place that “runs on canon” and, in season three’s premiere, tricking a Galactic Federation agent into believing Rick’s origin story is one of those cliched, murdered-family, vengeance-seeking ordeals as first popularized by Charles Bronson.

The avoidance of lore and consequence came to a head with season five, a season which did its damnedest to dodge anything that might be too sincere, sidestepping character and world development in favor of absurdist spectacle. We got a Hellraiser parody, a Thanksgiving episode about turkey super-soldiers, a Voltron parody, and—lest we forget—giant, talking sperm. It was all very stupid and not particularly funny either, making for the worst season yet.