Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Rick and Morty Season 9, Episode 1!
By now, Rick and Morty has us trained to look forward to at least one “mythology episode” per season – those episodes that advance a larger narrative, dig more into Rick’s tragic past, and involve characters like Rick Prime and Evil Morty. It happens that Season 9 kicks off with one such episode. Evil Morty is back, but as flashy and bombastic as this episode is, the results are a little underwhelming.
I’ll just get right to my core complaint with “There’s Something About Morty.” I’m not a huge fan of how Evil Morty is handled here. He’s long been one of the show’s more fascinating characters. He’s not just a Morty who has the intelligence and confidence of a Rick; he’s a Morty who desperately wants to be free of the toxic, destructive Rick/Morty dynamic as a whole. But with the character having more or less achieved what he set out to do (and helped Rick take down Rick Prime, for good measure), it’s as though the writers don’t really know what to do with him anymore. Maybe the answer should have been to simply retire Evil Morty?
Regardless, casting Evil Morty as Rick’s clingy new partner-in-crime doesn’t seem like the right angle. For a guy who went to such great lengths to free himself from a multiverse of Ricks, it just seems odd to see Evil Morty now portrayed as a rival for Rick’s affections. It rings hollow and works against the core conflict of this episode. I’m all for seeing Rick and Evil Morty duke it out, but I’d rather they have a more compelling reason to come to blows.
Still, there’s plenty to like in the premiere if you can get over what feels like the mischaracterization of Evil Morty. The Collective (Tilda Swinton) is a fun Galactus-meets-The Borg villain that offers up a challenge worthy of two united super-geniuses. And it’s only fitting that Evil Morty wins the day mostly by banking on his counterpart’s predictable clumsiness.
Morty/Evil Morty voice actor Harry Belden also deserves a lot of credit for how deftly he handles both roles here. Evil Morty sounds tangibly different from regular Morty. At one point, there’s an exchange where Evil Morty is doing a mocking impersonation of his other self, and Belden really nails the subtlety of that exchange.
In general, “There’s Something About Morty” thrives on the strength of its spectacle. This series has always been leaps and bounds above most of its fellow Adult Swim shows in the animation department, but the gulf is especially stark here. There’s a real sense of scale and carnage to the Collective battle that befits a conflict between two mad scientists and an all-powerful space god.
That scale carries over to the later showdown in the Bunker Dimension, where we really see Rick and Evil Morty unleash their full power against one another. If it weren’t for the fact that we got a full season of Rick and Morty: The Anime, I’d say we’ve never seen the series look this much like an anime. Rick and Evil Morty even go full Dragon Ball in the scene where they squat and scream at each other while their respective nanobots go to war. It’s impossible not to be entertained by the neverending barrage of larger-than-life carnage.
The payoff to this battle is also pretty amusing, as Evil Morty learns the hard way why Rick doesn’t like to mess around with time travel. It’s a fitting way to end the deadlock between the two characters. I just worry that Evil Morty is now locked into this underwhelming new role as Rick’s jilted archnemesis. Hopefully, when he inevitably returns in a season or two, the show won’t simply deliver Round 2 of their free-for-all battle, but find some way of making this rivalry more unique and poignant.
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