Highlights
- “Mort: Ragnarick” is a return to form for Rick and Morty season 7, with an unpredictable storyline and dark humor.
- The episode introduces new characters like a humanized Bigfoot and a supervillain Pope, and features a band of iconic movie monsters.
- The episode satirizes religion and explores the theme of humility for Rick, as he is constantly outsmarted and forced to admit his mistakes.
Warning: This review contains spoilers for Rick and Morty season 7, episode 9.
After a disappointingly Rick-less episode last week, the titular duo is back together in a return to form for Rick and Morty season 7. In “Mort: Ragnarick,” the penultimate installment of the season, Rick attempts to harness the infinite energy source of Valhalla by allowing himself to be killed by Bigfoot. When the plan backfires and turns the Pope into an omnipotent supervillain, Rick has to team up with Bigfoot to escape an endless death loop. With a wildly unpredictable storyline, some lovable new characters, and plenty of the show’s signature pitch-black humor, “Mort: Ragnarick” is a great episode of Rick and Morty.
So far, Rick and Morty season 7 has been pretty hit-and-miss. This season has offered some of the show’s all-time greatest episodes, like the shocking, lore-heavy revenge episode “Unmortricken” and the subversive clip show “Rickfending Your Mort,” but it’s also had some of the series’ worst episodes, like the tiresome, one-note “Rise of the Numbericons: The Movie.” Thankfully, “Mort: Ragnarick” is one of the hits. The most underwhelming episodes of the season, like “Air Force Wong,” have split up the eponymous duo and sent one of them on a solo adventure without the other. “Mort: Ragnarick” briefly splits up Rick and Morty when Rick has himself killed by Bigfoot and goes to Valhalla, but he’s quickly joined by Morty when he mistakes Bigfoot’s silence for sympathy. From that point on, it’s a classic Rick and Morty adventure.
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“Mort: Ragnarick” introduces some awesome new characters to the show’s ensemble. There’s a version of Bigfoot that Rick initially captures, then later befriends and turns into a human with regular-sized feet. There’s a version of the Pope who’s intent on becoming an all-powerful supervillain armed with the infinite energy of Valhalla (and eventually becomes a Pokémon, or Pope-émon). And there’s a band of iconic movie monsters – Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. – that the Pope keeps in captivity at the Vatican to use as a sort of paranormal vigilante squad.
As its Marvel-inspired title would suggest, “Mort: Ragnarick” is a superhero story. Everyone gains superpowers from the unlimited power source of Valhalla and then uses those powers to keep sending each other back to Valhalla. But it’s more interested in simply telling a superhero story than satirizing them. Rather than parodying comic book narratives, this is more of a satire of religion. Rick and Morty has covered religion before, but this is a quirky new way of looking at that subject matter. The use of the Pope as the big bad draws a parallel between religious beliefs and the superhero myth. The episode uses three very different belief systems – Catholicism, Norse theology, and Devil worship – to show that all religions are essentially the same: they’re bureaucratic institutions that have a one-sided relationship with an intangible deity (or deities) and bring people together with a blind belief in a higher power. Characters like Superman and Wonder Woman were conceived as messianic figures whose stories of good versus evil exist to teach young, impressionable readers about the difference between right and wrong.
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This season has mostly done away with B-plots, telling a single storyline in each episode. This has allowed the writers to explore each storyline in more depth – this episode probably wouldn’t have a monster squad or a Viking time loop if writers Jeremy Gilfor and Scott Marder had to make room for a B-story – but it also means that Summer, Beth, and Jerry have been barely featured. Beth is nowhere to be seen in this episode, and Summer only appears as a clone in one scene (and she doesn’t say a word). Jerry makes a funny appearance in the cold open as Rick brings him close to death to confirm the existence of an afterlife and he learns that his near-death experiences are starting to annoy his late grandparents – his grandpa won’t even come to the light to greet him anymore – but a character as important (and as hilarious) as Jerry deserves more than just an obligatory cameo appearance.
Most episodes of Rick and Morty validate Rick’s narcissism and his belief that he’s smarter than everyone else, but he’s humbled in “Mort: Ragnarick” as he’s constantly being outsmarted. He pays a gruesome price for underestimating Bigfoot’s intelligence and he loses time and time again when the Pope uses his own power source against him. There’s nothing that Rick hates more than having to admit when he makes a mistake, and “Mort: Ragnarick” forces him to make that admission a few times. After Rick was weirdly absent from last week’s episode, this week’s episode brings him back with a vengeance and gives him an interesting internal conflict: having to accept that, sometimes, even the smartest man in the universe is wrong.
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