Review: Rick and Morty: Finals Week #1: Wrath of Beth

Morty may be the one going through Finals Week, but this comic anthology has been letting the whole family in on the scholastic fun. On Monday, Rick got to try out his best Sherlock Holmes cosplay while making Morty suffer without his English studies. Tuesday saw Summer leading by example as she excised her understandable teen angst through a bit of the old ultra-violence – but was it enough to let Morty muddle through gender studies with a passing grade? Now it’s officially mid-week, which means it’s time for ‘Wrath of Beth’ – the tale of how one of the Smith family’s dual matriarchs is putting the kibosh on Rick’s missionaria protectiva, one planet at a time. 

Wednesday finds the bad-ass, adventurous version of Beth looking for a place to lay low after some kind of shit has gone down with the Galactic Federation. However, when she discovers a suitably off-grid planet, Beth learns she’s not the Sanchez responsible for first contact – based on all the religious statuary, it seems Rick has been the main god here for quite some time. 

‘Wrath of Beth’ was written by media tie-in master Jake Black, and underneath its veneer of recycled catchphrases, it’s got the irritated smarts you want from an episode of Rick and Morty. It’s also a charmingly chilling look at what our world could be like if Rick fans inherited the earth.

This particular over-stuffed issue was excellently illustrated and coloured by R&M mainstay Marc Ellerby, who also designed two of ‘Wrath of Beth’s’ variant covers. The other cover’s distinctive sketchy style comes courtesy of Lane Lloyd, whose instagram account is well worth checking out for those who enjoy seeing their favourite comic characters in a slightly different, occasionally NSFW light. 

The alien inhabitants of Planet RFEH-1228 not only worship Rick, they’ve apparently evolved into some semi-functional society of lab-coat-wearing, early-era-catchphrase-spouting acolytes that spend most of their days performing blood sacrifices on ‘Morty’ at the altar of Rick. 

The ‘Mortys’ are all part of an adorable, non-dominant species that the ‘Ricks’ dress up in yellow shirts before sending them on a blood-soaked ‘adventure’ into death. 

Both the ‘Ricks’ and the ‘Mortys’ of Planet RFEH-1228 seem inexorably drawn into the pattern laid out for them by their forebears, which likely means that human Morty’s ‘subjet du jour’ is probably Religious Studies or some such. Space Beth is a great character to undertake this adventure, as she, too, is driven by an outside force that she perceives as her own free will. When he created a second version of Beth, Rick created a diametric daughter – two outwardly identical women that exist on either side of a line that neither is able to cross. It’s not a coincidence that Space Beth is the polar opposite of Earth Beth – her every move is a reaction to the woman she doesn’t want to be. Space Beth’s ‘choices’ come into being once Earth Beth has already chosen the opposite option – it’s basically like an intergalactic version of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” in a universe where “the road less traveled by” hasn’t already been sloganeered into meaninglessness. 

Are the little ‘Mortys’ really afraid as they approach the altar of their demise, or are their facial expressions just another part of their learned behaviour? Do the ‘Ricks’ style their hair that way, or has the yearning for Rick-hair resulted in a sort of natural selection where only Rick-hair aliens get to mate? There’s no way to know! 

Space Beth and Earth Beth share the same memories up until the moment of their division – those shared memories are why both Beths still feel bad about trapping Tommy in Froopyland, and why Space Beth still feels a close connection to the kids- in her mind, she raised them just as much as Earth Beth. Maybe Space Beth is the one who raised them, and Earth Beth is the copy. Either way, it feels to Space Beth that she’s walked away in the middle of her child-rearing duties, and, bad-ass as she might be, that still makes her feel really shitty about herself sometimes. One could surmise that the attraction between the two Beths is born of the desire of both Beths to co-parent their children, but that’s not very sexy, so let’s not surmise that for now. 

All that really matters here is that Space Beth’s memories about loving ‘her’ kids drives her to rescue the alien race of Morty, berserker style. Slaughtering a race of her fathers to save a race of her sons is certainly a choice, and it’s a choice she makes with apparent relish. She uses space-guns, space grenades, and space-gauntlet lasers to stick it to the patriarchy, and spills a crazy amount of dad blood. 

When Beth (and by extension, us) learns the origin of this planet’s fucked-up faith, it’s just a bunch of half-assed bullshit her dad slapped together to keep Morty in line, with some Christopher Nolan style time manipulation thrown in for good measure. So yeah, Morty is supposed to be studying for his World Religions final.

While Wednesday’s ‘Wrath of Beth’  was an undeniable thrill ride, we must turn our collective attention towards the glory of next month’s foray into Thursday’s ‘Contested Convention,’ which seems like it’ll have something to do with political science. See you tomorrow, next month!