The festive finale to season six of Rick and Morty, “Ricktional Mortpoon’s Rickmas Mortcation,” indicated the new direction the show was going to take in its overarching story. The show used the renowned cheerfulness of the holiday period to darken the characters and their motivations.

The episode begins with Rick, voiced by the show’s co-creator Justin Roiland (Solar Opposites), giving presents to the rest of the Smith family with a particularly cheery resolve. Everyone is happy with their personalized gifts, especially Morty, also voiced by Roiland, who gets a lightsaber exactly like in Star Wars. Rick throws fruit at Morty in the garage and plays with it ecstatically until he drops it perfectly vertically onto the ground. The lightsaber melts through the earth’s surface and starts heading down toward the earth’s core. They both go to intercept it and, traveling down, find a shock on the tenth floor. Rick, the actual Rick, is down there still hunting down his nemesis. The Rick who Morty was with was a robot designed to be twenty-two percent more kind to Morty and had been filling in since Morty called Rick’ boring’ in the previous episode. Robot Rick “Rickbot” cannot say he is a robot without dying, and Morty tasks him with keeping up the shenanigans with his family, who dearly love this kinder version.

The President, voiced by Keith David (The Thing, They Live), shows up on the Smith’s lawn and berates Morty for even wanting a lightsaber. When Morty breaks down crying, they resolve to fix the situation together and head down into Rick’s lair. Rick disparages them, he and Morty get into a fight, and after trading further insults, they agree to let Rick destroy the lightsaber on track to destroy the earth. Rick uses another lightsaber with added speed, but he gets into an argument with it, so the weapon ventures off course, killing numerous innocent people in Italy. Rick doesn’t seem to care. Rickbot, on the other hand, finds it increasingly difficult to keep lying to the Smith family, who increasingly iterate their affection for him. They amusingly play the game “Are you a robot?” and explains how he can’t lie without them understanding the deeper meaning.

Rick and Morty argue further, and the grandfather tells him how hurt he is by the comment that he is “boring.” So, Morty and The President go to stop the lightsaber, and Morty saves the day. The President then reveals his obsession with Star Wars and takes the lightsaber from Morty. Jerry, voiced by Chris Parnell (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, 21 Jump Street), offers Rickbot the chance to carve the turkey. Morty then comes in and reveals how he is a robot. The smith family attacks him and destroys him. The President drops the lightsaber, which falls to the earth’s core again.

Rickbot is rebuilt, and he and Morty take down The President in space. In the clinical moment, Rickbot stops Morty from killing The President by diving in front of multiple miniaturized lightsabers. They slide through Rickbot and cause the building to collapse. Rick saves them all with a portal gun. As Rickbot dies, he gives Rick credit for his creation and all of the goodness towards Morty. Rick also learns from him to be a bit kinder to Morty and invites him to join him in hunting his nemesis, Rick Prime.

Rickbot, as a twist, was entirely unexpected, and his whole conundrum of being unable to reveal his identity was endlessly humorous. It’s interesting to see the show turn back toward a major arc at the end of a season in which so much time was spent subtextually arguing for their divergence from a singular path. Let’s hope that this move toward Rick finding his nemesis does not underwhelm viewers as the resolution of ‘Evil Morty’ did.

Rating 7.5/10