Rick and Morty collect death crystals on a foreign planet

Rick and Morty made its return Sunday night after a long two year wait, and it seems like the writers wanted their titular characters to catch up on some of the things they missed during the hiatus. The showrunners decided to use the main characters as avatars to express their opinions on some of today’s hot cultural debates, and they made a mess of it.

Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Repeat picks up long after where the show left off. Rick has managed to mend his relationship with the rest of the family in between seasons, on the conditions that he has greater respect for them and their autonomy. He grabs Morty towards the beginning of the episode, and after reluctantly asking for permission to take him, they head to another universe to mine death crystals.

Rick dies towards the beginning of the episode after Morty crashes their ship in his quest to create the ideal death for himself. Luckily, Rick has backed himself up in hologram form and can be fully revived once Morty creates a clone body for him to take over. Morty refuses to do so — doing so may make his ideal death with his high school crush less likely — and Rick ends up spending the majority of the episode in hologram form.

Majority of the episode features Rick trying to convince Morty to give him a body to live in while Morty chases his ideal death scene. Rick begins to dimension hop at some point, hoping he can get back to his own dimension after he is rerouted to the wrong body.

This dimension hopping gives the writers an opportunity to commentate on hot button issues. One scene shows Rick arrive in a dimension that has been taken over by a fascist regime. When he interacts with this dimensions version of Rick in the garage, Morty arrives. Fascist Morty kills his dimensions Rick and says that he was “too political.”

The fascist removing — or in this case killing — someone over being “too political” draws a very clear parallel to real life events. Many on the right — particularly the type who would be fans of this show — try to hide their racism and sexism under the guise of not liking “politics.” Complaints about a woman or person of color being cast into a lead role of a movie, video game, tv show etc. have always been justified by hiding the sexism and racism behind the abstract of “politics.”

Rick and Morty makes a statement here. By showing the fascist, someone who we can clearly assume is racist, sexist and bigoted in many ways, committing a murder in cold blood and justifying it with the person being “too political” it forces fans of the show to look at what the phrase means and how it is being used.

While that was a bright spot within the show’s social commentary, it was surrounded by a few other, less than ideal, opinions shared by the writers through the show.

The most obvious took place within a TV report in the normal universe. A man and woman are news anchors reporting about crimes committed by Morty in his quest to follow the path of the death crystals. They get into a quick argument, and the woman accuses the man of gaslighting her. The male anchor replies by stating, bluntly, “gaslighting doesn’t exist, you made it up because you’re f****** crazy.”

Throughout the episode, hologram Rick makes jokes about what kind of hologram he identifies as and accuses Morty of “solid privilege” for not also being a hologram. Both of these are very clear references to cultural debates surrounding trans rights and the ideas of privilege, and who has it in American society. It trivializes these issues and makes jokes out of legitimate problems.

These jokes feel more irresponsible when you account for the audience of Rick and Morty. As mentioned earlier, it includes much of the group that may already be against the ideas of acknowledging structural racism and privilege that affect everyone. It includes a group who already may be opposed to the idea of trans and non-binary people and may think it is funny to make jokes about identifying as things like an “attack helicopter.”

While politics are inescapable, especially in the modern landscape, the writers of Rick and Morty used their platform to punch down. They know who their audience is, and the “too political” statement from the fascist shows they are not scared to challenge beliefs some viewers may hold. They chose to address these issues, and they chose to attack groups that are already vulnerable to their audience and reinforce the ideas that their struggles are trivial.

The writers of Rick and Morty need to be more responsible. They owe it to the audience, and to all people involved in our political discourse.