The monumental Rick and Morty Season 5 finale dropped more than a few bombshells, including a full explanation of how and why Rick C-137 wound up in the main reality of the show. One year later, the Season 6 premiere leans heavily into the canonical implications of all this while adding a new wrinkle to one popular fan theory.
Rick and Morty Season 6 Episode 1 — “Solaricks” — purposefully pokes fun at Avengers: Endgame in its opening. Just like how Iron Man found himself low on food, fuel, and water as he drifted through space with Nebula, Rick similarly laments his fate aboard a powerless piece of the Citadel. Evil Morty’s actions in the Season 5 finale did indeed destroy Rick’s portal technology. However, it looks like Rick can supposedly fix it, but the process blasts Rick, Morty, and Jerry back to their original realities.
Therein lies the main gist of this episode’s A-plot. Let’s take a closer look at everything that happens in Rick and Morty Season 6 Episode 1, and what it all means for the rest of the season and beyond. Spoilers ahead!
Space Beth in Rick and Morty Season 6
Rick and Morty takes the Avengers: Endgame spoof even further when Space Beth shows up to save Morty and Rick just like Captain Marvel did for Iron Man and Nebula. We haven’t seen Space Beth since May 2020’s Season 4 finale: “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri.” In that episode, it was confirmed that Rick did indeed clone Beth after the events depicted in “The ABC’s of Beth.” One Beth stayed at home while the other went off to become a spacefaring badass like her father. Not even Rick knows which is which.
After the guys get transported back to their original realities, Summer and her two moms have to activate and protect the beacon that’ll allow their family to return. Summer has an obvious preference for Space Beth, her being the “cool” mom. Despite some low emotional stakes, the conflict is resolved quickly enough. Regular Beth even agrees that it might be nice to have Space Beth around, so it sure seems like she’ll be back at least once more this season.
“Jerryboree” solves a major Rick and Morty mystery
Rick’s first task once he’s rescued is rebooting the “Portal Index” in the garage, but instead of resetting portal travel, he reset portal travelers. This causes Jerry, Morty, and Rick to one-way blind hop back to their original realities:
- Rick goes to Dimension C-137, where his evil variant murdered his wife and daughter.
- Morty goes back to the Cronenberg reality that was mutated back in Season 1’s “Rick Potion #9.”
- But what about Jerry? Surprise: The popular Ticket Theory from Season 2’s “Mortynight Run” was totally correct.
During “Mortynight Run,” Rick ditched Jerry at an interdimensional daycare for Jerries called Jerryboree. Except he lost his ticket and it seemed like he may have taken the wrong Jerry at the end of the episode. “Solaricks” confirms this was the case and Jerry’s original reality was one where he remained unemployed, married, and absolutely hated by his entire family.
It’s also worth noting that Morty encounters his original father from the version of Earth that became overrun by mutated Cronenberg monsters, but anybody sharing DNA with Morty did not mutate. His Beth and Summer perished, and this callous Jerry abandons Morty.
Rick Prime is Rick and Morty’s new big bad
The Season 5 finale confirmed that the origin story memory Rick showed the Gromflomites in the Season 3 premiere “The Rickshank Rickdemption” was indeed accurate. He was a middling scientist trying to figure out teleportation technology when another Rick variant showed up and offered tech for interdimensional travel. When our Rick turned him down, that Rick murdered Diane and Beth.
We learn all this in a montage inspired by Blade Runner, and the Season 6 finale picks up on this plot thread pretty much immediately. Dubbed “Rick Prime,” he’s the original Rick from the Cronenberg reality. In other words, he’s the biological grandfather of the actual Morty that the show follows. After trying and failing to catch Rick Prime, our Rick decided to settle down with Rick Prime’s family in the hopes that his enemy would eventually show up.
Near the end of the episode, our Rick and Morty uncover an invisible fortress built by Rick Prime, who’s rigged it with traps and set the entire thing to explode. Rick Prime is nowhere to be seen (we think), but we can assume he’ll play a major role in Season 6 and beyond.
In the Season 6 premiere’s post-credits scene, Cronenberg Jerry and Rick Prime encounter one another in the wilderness. Rather than teaming up, like Jerry hints for a moment, they wind up trying to kill each other. Spoiler alert: Rick Prime wins. “Why are you here?” Jerry asks.
“Buddy,” Rick Prime says, “I have been asking myself that exact same question.”
This more or less confirms that every interdimensional traveler in the multiverse who was not in their original reality was sent back to where they came from, Rick Prime included. Does that mean that Rick Prime is trapped in his home reality? Or will he similarly be able to reboot his own portal tech and begin traveling the multiverse once again?
Rick and Morty Season 6 airs Sundays at 11 p.m. on Adult Swim.
