Highlights
- Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon has no plans to end the series but has considered how the final episode could play out.
- Harmon envisions Morty finding a girlfriend who helps him become independent, leading to the destruction of the dynamic between him and Rick.
- For Morty to be truly happy, he needs to stop seeking validation from Rick and develop his own life and self-esteem.
Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon has no intention of ending the series any time soon, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t considered how the best cartoon of the 2010s will go out.
Amid the controversy surrounding former writer Justin Roiland, Rick and Morty is still going strong. Despite Roiland's active participation in voicing the title characters, the series was quick to recast the Rick and Morty voice actors, and Harmon has the goal of continuing the series.
The 22 Best Rick And Morty Episodes, Ranked
Rick and Morty took the world by storm with its hilarious writing and great story-telling. But which episodes are the best in all the universes?
But during his conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, he shared some ideas about what the final Rick and Morty episode could look like. “It would maybe just be Morty turning 15 and finding a girlfriend that actually makes him want to be an independent person, so everything is kind of destroyed because Morty just wants to be a teenager now and start to grow up,” Harmon told the outlet. "Yeah, maybe Morty's 15th birthday would be the catastrophic sinking of that Titanic."
The central dynamic of the series has always surrounded Morty and his relationship with his toxic grandfather, Rick. A self-destructive narcissist, Rick does love his grandson in his own way, but he is so damaged he doesn’t show it healthily. More often than not, he uses Morty for his own devices, which is particularly easy because Morty isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Throughout the seasons, Rick has become more amiable to his grandchildren -- arguably more so with Summer (Spencer Grammer), who is far more like Rick than her brother is. However, Morty consistently allows himself to be pulled into Rick's machinations and often suffers for it.
One of the most devastating episodes to date occurs in "The Vat of Acid Episode" when Rick gives Morty one of his most lethal inventions, a time-saving device. In this episode, Morty finds himself a girlfriend, and they share a wonderful life until it goes wrong. When the two get stranded during a plane crash, they resort to horrible lengths to survive. They eventually make it home, and their relationship is better for it, only for Jerry (Chris Parnell) to mistakenly use the time-save device, which respawns Morty before he meets his girlfriend. He remembers everything they went through, and she remembers nothing, resulting in another instance where Rick's existence ruined Morty's chance at living a normal life.
For Morty to be happy, Harmon's idea is the best thing for him. No matter how much character development Rick goes through, Morty has to stop getting validation from Rick. He may be helping Rick become a better person, but the teenager still needs to become a fully functioning person at some point. Even Beth, Rick's daughter (Sarah Chalke), struggles to separate herself from the brilliant scientist. Once Morty gets his own life and has enough self-esteem to have confidence in himself, that will ultimately be the end of Rick and Morty.
Rick and Morty seasons 1 - 6 are streaming on Max.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter