Why Rick and Morty Season 5 Episode 9 Is Hated
Rick & Morty season 5, episode 9 earned the show some hate from fans; here's why the penultimate episode “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” is disliked.
As a whole, Rick & Morty season 5 was well-received, so why did some fans hate “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” (season 5, episode 9)? Since the series debuted in 2013, the anarchic Adult Swim hit Rick & Morty has never been overly concerned about following the rules of conventional sitcoms. Characters in Rick & Morty frequently break the fourth wall and occasionally address the audience, while the series itself has even been known to outright abandon subplots by having Rick and Morty move to a new reality solely so the show can re-establish its status quo in time for the next episode.
However, Rick & Morty’s season 5 finale changed all of this when the episode ended the show’s multiverse (or "Central Finite Curve"). Until this point, both Rick & Morty the series and Rick and Morty the characters had repeatedly taken advantage of the show’s loose approach to its canon by hopping from one reality to another. From the season 5 finale onwards, however, Rick & Morty made it clear that the actions of its characters would have weight and consequence on the series from now on.
However, before Rick & Morty began to take its canon more seriously, season 5, episode 9 was disliked by some fans for bringing back the show’s more cavalier earlier attitude to continuity. Although the finale made it clear that the plot of “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” was largely a misdirect designed to set up the finale, the episode that split up Rick and Morty and broke the show's format was not as strong when taken as its own entity. While season 5, episode 9 worked well when paired with Rick & Morty’s explosive season 5 finale, as a stand-alone adventure the episode was a frustrating outing for fans.
Season 5 Episode 9’s Plot Set Up The Season Finale
The story of “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” saw Rick and Morty parts ways temporarily. Rick replaced his grandson with a pair of crows while Morty began going on adventures with Rick’s former assistant Nick after freeing him from an asylum. In retrospect, it is clear that the story was intended to set up the finale’s revelation about the nature of Rick and Morty’s power imbalance. However, the twist ending of “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” revealed that Nick was not really Rick’s former apprentice and was not as wronged by the character as he had claimed. Revealing that Nick was actually a secret villain undermined the idea that Morty might realize Rick regularly exploits him and resulted in a plot that had little to say about season 5’s overarching story.
Until episode 9, season 5 of Rick & Morty had done an impressive job of deconstructing Rick and Morty’s relationship. Most of the better-received episodes of season 5 had seen Rick go on adventures with other Smith family members like Summer and Jerry, who Rick finally befriended in “Amortycan Grickfitti” (season 5, episode 5). Meanwhile, Morty’s standalone stories saw the character gain more confidence, agency, and independence when no longer reliant on Rick, as seen in the season premiere and his arc with Planetina. However, “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” undermined this growth by having a character claim Rick derailed their life, only for them to be revealed to be a secret villain. Nick’s role would have worked just as well without this twist and would have reinforced season 5’s overarching theme that Morty doesn’t need Rick to exist.
Rick & Morty's Season 5 Finale Was Shortened By Episode 9
The undeniably funny “two crows” storyline worked well in “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall,” but the plot spilled over into the finale and took up a good third of the episode’s runtime. Ending Rick & Morty’s multiverse made the finale an incredibly dramatic closing chapter for season 5, so it was an odd decision to drag out the “two crows” plotline instead of getting into the events of the Citadel-set climax earlier in the episode. Rick discovering that his nemesis was secretly working with his sidekicks to engineer endless new adventures was a clever meta moment that helped Rick & Morty show viewers that the series was not interested in keeping the same formula for innumerable new seasons.
However, the episode’s ending featured all manner of show-shaking dramatics, such as Rick’s long-awaited backstory, the ending of the multiverse, and Evil Morty’s successful plan coming together. Unfortunately, all of these events ended up compressed into a little over ten minutes of screen time, thanks to the plot from “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” running long. Rick & Morty’s season 5 finale couldn’t help but feel rushed after the episode devoted a third of its runtime to a fun but overextended Samurai Jack homage, only to cram all of the above-mentioned moments into mere minutes of screen time.
Rick & Morty Season 5, Episode 9 Felt Superfluous
From threatening to split up Rick and Morty for the umpteenth time to introducing, centering on, and killing off a one-episode character in the form of Nick, “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” felt like a superfluous outing from one of Rick & Morty’s earlier seasons. Since Rick & Morty season 5 had added character depth and more continuity between episodes, the outing couldn’t help but feel like a regression as a standalone episode, even though it did soon set up a huge finale for the season. To be fair to “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall,” unlike the fan-hated Rick & Morty season 5 episode 4, there was ultimately a reason for the penultimate Rick & Morty outing to feel so unnecessary. “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” being a silly standalone adventure gave fans a false sense of security and gave pause to viewers who assumed the serialization of Rick & Morty would lead to a dramatic season finale.
Thus, thanks to the silliness of “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall,” few viewers expected Rick & Morty’s season 5 finale to be a jaw-dropping episode that rewrote the rules of the show. In that regard, season 5, episode 9 is a triumph that lightened the tone of Rick & Morty season 5 enough to throw viewers off the scent of the next episode’s big twist and acted as a breather between the dramatic finale and the poignant “Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort” (season 5, episode 8). However, much like some fans felt the action-movie parodying episode 6 was too silly for its own good, some Rick & Morty viewers did not care for the inconsequential plot in the penultimate episode.
