Morty Smith has been through a lot over the course of nine seasons of adventuring with his grandpa Rick Sanchez in Rick and Morty. He’s had his consciousness fragmented into a video game’s NPCs, fled his own dimension, buried himself, and met his brilliant, evil doppelgänger. Season 8 ended with Morty facing his greatest fears, and the season 9 finale was another brutal episode that forced Morty to face some dark truths.
“If we stop putting him through [these situations], I guess there is a concern that the show becomes unrecognizable,” showrunner Dan Harmon told Polygon in a virtual interview. “Morty has been a 14-year-old boy for over a decade, and that decade has subjected him to hourly life trauma and a relationship with one of the most abusive people in the universe.”
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty season 9 finale]
“Field of Dreams” opens with a bunch of versions of Rick (Ian Cardoni) and Morty (Harry Belden) visiting an estate sale at the home of a Smith family who died from eating chili so spicy it made their intestines explode. Morty meets a version of himself that likes to “funeral hop” to hear versions of his family say nice things about him and decides to give it a try. He eventually finds a version of his family that has never met another Morty before.
They seem like the ideal family, showering him with love and offering him the chance to visit them whenever he wants, and they’re shocked by the tales of what he’s been through on his adventures with Rick. But eventually Morty sees their dark side as Jerry (Chris Parnell) breaks the portal gun to keep him from going back to his own world.
The reason this version of the Smith family is so different is that they broke off all contact with Rick because he refused to address his alcoholism. Morty tracks down Rick and discovers one of the healthiest versions of Rick we’ve ever seen. He’s been sober for 17 years, is happily married, and teaches at MIT. Rick acknowledges that the quest to invent a portal gun nearly ruined his life, but Morty pushes him to do it anyway. The obsession ruins his marriage and drives him back to drinking and nihilism, turning him into the Rick that Morty has always known.
By the end of the episode, Morty’s back to adventuring with a drunk, irresponsible Rick. Co-showrunner Scott Marder told Polygon that the dysfunctional dynamic between the two characters is “kind of the heart of the show.”
“The finale actually examines it in a really cool way that Morty’s been corrupted by this relationship in a lot of ways, but he’s basically forced to corrupt Rick to get what he wants, which was a cool full circle thing for him at the end of season 9.”
While Morty hasn’t aged during the show’s nine seasons, he has been changed by his brutal adventures.
“I think we have organically grown Morty while still keeping the core of his identity,” Harmon said. “He’s an idealist. He believes in truth. He believes that there is a right way to do things. At the core, Rick has grown too, but he doesn’t really believe that. Their growth occurs while keeping the characters real.”