Rick And Morty Season 3: What’s Happening Next?

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

Wubba lubba dub dub! On April Fool’s Day 2017, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland played a terrific prank on their fans by launching the first episode of Rick And Morty season 3 entirely unannounced. After a year and a half of waiting (it turns out that Mr. Poopy Butthole’s air date prediction was pretty spot on), finally, fans of Adult Swim’s excellent sci-fi show have something new to obsess over.

The rest of season 3 is expected to arrive this summer. That leaves us with a few months to make some wild (and probably way off the mark) predictions of what’s to come. There have been plenty of clues and hints, but with a show this anarchic, it’s always impossible to tell the red herrings and the Easter Eggs from the important stuff. But, anyway, here’s what we’re thinking/guessing/in some cases kinda hoping might happen in the remainder of season 3…

Revenge of the Ricks/the Galactic Federation/Jerry

By installing himself as the de facto patriarch of the Smith family and the entire Rick And Morty multiverse, Rick has pissed a lot of people off. Jerry, who’s keener to swallow plates of pills and have no idea what he does for a living than continue sharing a house with Rick, isn’t going to be chuffed about spending some time divorced. And any surviving members of the Galactic Federation and The Council Of Ricks are going to be equally peeved. Making a load of new enemies is fairly traditional season premiere content for any show, so the most easy to prediction to make here is that Jerry, the Federation, and the Council will have it in for Rick prime in the episodes to come.

Heck, perhaps they’ll even form an uneasy alliance to try and bring him down. But, as you know, Rick And Morty isn’t all that interested in playing by the rules, so I could be totally wrong about this.

Phoenix Person

The most overt tease of what’s to come popped up after credits of the season 3 premiere, where it was revealed that Tammy (Summer’s classmate, who was revealed as a Galactic Federation sleeper agent in the season 2 finale) survived the showdown at her own wedding. She’s still with the Federation, who still have at least one base left.We’ve buried the lead there, though. The most exciting thing about that post-credits scene is that Tammy has brought her betrothed Birdperson back to life as Phoneix Person (Cyber Bird doesn’t sound as cool, does it?). Presumably, the resurrected version of Birdperson will no longer be on Rick’s side in the war against the Galactic Federation. Along with those cyber brain implants surely comes some sort of brain-based, allegiance-changing jiggery-pokery. Eek.

Squanchy

At the end of season 2, Squanchy beefed himself up with some space steroids and fought off the Federation to buy the Smith family enough time to escape the Rick And Morty equivalent of Game Of Thrones’ red wedding. So far, we’ve seen no evidence of whether he survived the fight. Could he be locked up in a Federation facility somewhere, squanching away in a lonely cell? Or maybe Squanchy has been given some cyber enhancements of his own. Perhaps the Federation’s plans involve turning Squanchy and Birdperson against Rick, which would be one way to make this ongoing conflict even more personal.

Szechuan sauce

The quest to find more of that sweet McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce is now officially Rick’s series arc. He’s willing to go through nine seasons of madcap adventures if it means bringing back that Mulan tie-in dip. (Fun fact: McDonald’s have already responded to the episode, going so far as to tweet the words ‘McNugga Lubba Dub Dub.”) It seems highly unlikely that we’ve heard the last of this. Will we finally see that box labelled “Time Travel Stuff,” which has been sitting teasingly on Rick’s shelving unit since season 1, being dusted off and used? Adding time travel to the mix would be one way to majorly shake up the show, and it could create the possibility for Rick to reveal his real origin story, if the writers ever want him to.

Rick’s mental state

As Nathan Fillion’s brain-invading bug character put it, “there’s no tougher titty than a psychotic break.” And Rick’s latest end-of-episode ramblings certainly didn’t sound like the monologue of a sane, well-balanced man. Perhaps, as season 3 develops, Rick’s mental state will be explored in more detail. The darkness within Rick has always been a part of the show, of course. The drinking and ranting have been there since the start. And the scene after Unity broke up with him, when Rick nearly killed himself, remains one of the bravest moments in TV history.

Also, in the season 2 finale, the Galactic Federation prescribed Jerry some anti-depressants. And in the season 3 premiere, the entire family was eating pills for every meal. It feels like there’s a theme developing here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Harmon and Roiland used upcoming episodes of this animated comedy to make some big comments about depression and mental health.After all, part of the appeal of this show is that it’s not just a sci-fi comedy rigmarole. It’s also a character piece, where the players develop and change week on week. Showing something of the mental toll these adventures take, and how our heroes can continue to function, would be well within Rick And Morty’s wheelhouse.

Rick Vs Morty

“Uh, good thing I saw that note,” mumbled Morty, after he shot Rick in the head without knowing he had a fake gun in his hand. It wasn’t the only moment in the season 3 premiere to tease a conflict between the show’s title characters, either. There was also the whole subplot of Morty explaining to Summer that Rick is hardly a hero. He bails on things and leaves whole worlds behind, including the original universe this show took place in, which is now the post-apocalyptic “Cronenberg world.” And at the end of the episode, Rick told Morty that making Jerry and the government “go away” was all part of his plan. Morty was no fan of the Federation, but the fact that Rick instigated a divorce between his parents is bound to create tension. Morty continues to doubt and (to some degree) dislike Rick… perhaps he’ll even turn against him at some point.

Jerry’s favorite Rick

The Rick we’ve come to know as “Doofus Rick” had an even bigger impact on Jerry than we knew. Early on in the season 3 premiere, before Rick transformed the garage back into sci-fi mode, it was shown that Jerry keeps a little photo of the friendly Rick that “eats his own shit” in a cupboard shrine. Is this an innocent Easter Egg, or a tease that Jerry will be rekindling that friendship now that he’s lost his family? Only time will tell…

Hybrid Rick/Morty?!

Speaking of background Easter Eggs that may or may not become important, did you spot the Rick/Morty hybrid lurking in the background of the Citadel during the season 3 premiere?As I’ve seen suggested on Reddit, “You either die a Morty, or live long enough to see yourself become a Rick.” That’s a theory that could change everything, unless that Rick/Morty mash-up was simply a joke.

Pickle Rick

“A pickle will rise,” promised a recent Tweet from the Rick And Morty account. That strange sentence is a reference to Pickle Rick, an official Adult Swim YouTube video, which documents Morty going to the garage and finding Rick, now in pickle form.Yep, it looks like an upcoming episode of the show will chronicle Rick turning himself into a pickle. But why? Who ruddy knows!

Puppets?

Although they’ve been labelled as “non-canonical adventures” on the Adult Swim website, it’s still interesting that a series of Rick And Morty shorts were produced in the gap between seasons in a puppeteering style. Is Dan Harmon planning to borrow a gimmick from his previous show, Community, and shift Rick And Morty into a different visual style at some point? We’ll have to wait and see.

“Don’t date, assimilate!”

Here’s another fun clip they’ve put out between seasons. It’s a live-action commercial, advertising a dating service for people that Unity has assimilated. In no way does this confirm that Rick’s former lover Unity (voiced by Christina Hendricks) will be back in season 3, but we’d love it if she was.

Scenes from the credits

Tantalisingly, there are still loads of clips from the show’s opening credits theme tune montage thingy that haven’t been seen in actual episodes. Jerry doing homework with a robot Morty is a personal favourite. Perhaps this is post-divorce Jerry trying (and failing) to spend time with Morty during season 3? Again, that’s just my random guesswork, which might be utterly useless. We’ve also yet to see Jerry giving birth, and a bunch of other scenes from the intro. The shot of Rick portal-ing into the ground and leaving Morty behind as a huge monster chases them would be a particularly tricky one to work in.

Back to Cronenberg world?

To reiterate: it’s impossible to tell with this show when seeds are being sown and when they’re not, but there’s a chance that the return to Cronenberg world – formerly Rick And Morty’s main universe – was a tease of things to come. The original Beth looks to have gone totally feral, and Jerry and Summer are both very anti-anything-that-stinks-of-Rick. Also, Cronenberg World Jerry wanted Morty to stay, which is cute.But yeah, I’m just grasping at straws at this stage. They could revisit this original universe if they wanted to, or they could just leave it be. Maybe that version of Jerry will repair the portal gun and came looking for Rick… that could be fun.

Rick can no longer improvise!

When Rick had to swap his consciousness with that of a bug thing to escape the Federation, he gave up his “fear of wicker furniture, [his] desire to play the trumpet, [his] tentative plans to purchase a hat and six years of improv workshops.”Will Rick’s inability to improvise send him on a dark path? Will his catchphrase-creating game suffer as a result? Will I ever stop speculating based on tiny, probably-insignificant details?! Err, yeah, I’m going to stop now…