<\/p>\n
Morty Smith has been through a lot over the course of nine seasons of adventuring with his grandpa Rick Sanchez in Rick and Morty<\/em>. He\u2019s had his consciousness fragmented into a video game\u2019s NPCs, fled his own dimension, buried himself, and met his brilliant, evil doppelg\u00e4nger. 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we stop putting him through [these situations], I guess there is a concern that the show becomes unrecognizable,\u201d showrunner Dan Harmon told Polygon in a virtual interview. \u201cMorty 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.\u201d<\/p>\n [Ed. note: <\/strong>This article contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty <\/em>season 9 finale]<\/p>\n \u201cField of Dreams\u201d 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 \u201cfuneral hop\u201d 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.<\/p>\n They seem like the ideal family, showering him with love and offering him the chance to visit them whenever he wants, and they\u2019re shocked by the tales of what he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve ever seen. He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n By the end of the episode, Morty\u2019s back to adventuring with a drunk, irresponsible Rick. Co-showrunner Scott Marder told Polygon that the dysfunctional dynamic between the two characters is \u201ckind of the heart of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe finale actually examines it in a really cool way that Morty\u2019s been corrupted by this relationship in a lot of ways, but he\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n While Morty hasn\u2019t aged during the show\u2019s nine seasons, he has been changed by his brutal adventures.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we have organically grown Morty while still keeping the core of his identity,\u201d Harmon said. \u201cHe\u2019s 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\u2019t really believe that. Their growth occurs while keeping the characters real.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s had his consciousness fragmented into a video game\u2019s NPCs, fled his own dimension, buried himself, and met his brilliant, evil doppelg\u00e4nger. Season 8 ended with Morty facing his greatest fears,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[5554,3845,9578,9577,2690,9579],"class_list":{"0":"post-10566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upcoming-games","8":"tag-brutal","9":"tag-finale","10":"tag-mortys","11":"tag-rick","12":"tag-season","13":"tag-showrunners"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}