Review: Rick and Morty “Mort: Ragnarick”

This is a pretty simple Rick and Morty concept to understand – Rick needs to be killed in order to ascend to a sort of Nordic-inspired version of the afterlife in order to pull off a heist of the heavens themselves.

The boys head over to a facility in Norway in an effort to get just dead enough to rob the spirit world of its untapped energy reserves, but not so dead as to remain dead.Dead Ricks can be replaced via reserve clones.

How does Rick know that there is an afterlife? Because he’s been killing Jerry repeatedly as a sort of semi-willing death scout. Rick’s chosen way to temporarily shuffle off our mortal coil? Death by Bigfoot. Morty’s job, postmortem, is to ensure all goes well on the Bigfoot end of things. It’s a task that he completely fails at upon learning that the beast is capable of complex feelings like regret and higher-minded gestures like prayer. Morty gets himself killed, landing himself in Valhalla as well. Neither gentleman ingratiates himself with the local population, and wave after wave of warriors are slain at the hands of Rick and his kick-ass stolen weapons. Everybody who dies in the battle respawns at the pub, since, you know, everybody in Valhalla is already dead.

Meanwhile, the now escaped Sasquatch and a loose Clone Rick are captured by The Pope’s people, who want to use Bigfoot as a furry mercenary to do a little bit of papal wet-work. One of the boons Bigfoot earns is a machine that translates text into speech, which finally allows him to speak his mind. Overall, he’s dissatisfied with the way things have been going. Much cloning ends up going down, bonds are forged, The Pope is defeated, and all’s well that ends well, except in the case of Bigfoot, who gets screwed over yet again, despite having a dope new look.

Another win for R&M Season 7!

Mort: Ragnarick does all the things that a penultimate episode should do – it moves fast, keeps itself funny, and packs in an unprecedented amount of theological theory without being too obvious. There’s so much going on in this episode, all of it completely unhinged while making total sense. Rick has achieved varying degrees of Godhood over the years, generally by ruling over an alien world, or a tiny universe, or some other science-y type situation, but he’s never really spent that much time concerning himself with human notions like the afterlife until this episode.

Using a Bigfoot to kill yourself makes sense from a Viking stand-point – Rick must be felled by a mighty foe in order to reach Valhalla. It’s also possible that, in accordance with some Judeo-Christian traditions, that Rick would be unable to achieve pseudo-scientific ascension if he were to actively kill himself. It also feels like a Nathan Fielder level work-around in the best kind of way. Also, Rick yelling Pope!! every time he shows up for the show down at the Vatican is very, very funny. For R&M fans who feel like this season has been light on catchphrases for us to shout at each other on the street, I submit to you ‘Pope!’

Morty suffers quite a bit in this episode, not the least of which is being basically wrung into deadness at the hands of Bigfoot. Morty has died more than a few times on the show, and there have always been clones kicking around (remember when we only had the one Beth?) but this episode really solidifies Morty’s position as a replaceable forever boy, along the same lines as Hank and Dean Venture. Death is but a blip to the cartoon clone-boys of the world.

Embracing the religious through scientific exploration is a bit of a departure for Rick, but it’s also really starting to feel like maybe everything we’ve ever seen him get up to has been in pursuit of his lost Diane. He’s searched high and lo for her in all the universes, only to learn recently that Rick Prime had annihilated them all with his Omega Weapon. It only makes sense that he would start looking for her in places beyond the corporeal realm. His scientific explanation for what constitutes ‘heaven’ doesn’t negate any theology about the sweet hereafter, and the harvesting of infinite energy feels a lot like immortality. I suspect that what looks like a simple infinite energy robbery is in actuality, part of a larger plan to bring Diane back from the dead, or to contact her soul in some way. We already learned that he’s proved that ghosts exist – he has already created a robot ghost, so maybe that will come into play. Or maybe not. But with infinite energy comes infinite possibilities, so we’ll see!

Whether Rick is up to some necromancer shit or not, this episode has gotten me all hot and bothered about next week’s finale! See you then!