Rick And Morty (S08E03)

“The Rick, The Mort, and The Ugly”

As Rick and Morty clean up debris from the destroyed Citadel, they briefly land on an asteroid inhabited by a bunch of cloned Mortys.

These clones were leftover from when Rick sent all of the other Ricks and Mortys back to their respective universes in the Season 6 premiere; so, without a universe to return to, these clones ended up making a home for themselves on this asteroid.

But the episode doesn't really spend time with our Rick and Morty, as it decides to focus on a lone Rick who lives with these Cloned Mortys instead.

And I really enjoyed it! Especially since the story involved a couple of Ricks trying to rebuild The Citadel. Because I've always loved episodes that revolved around The Citadel - and given how it was destroyed several seasons ago - I'm glad that it actually made a return here. Especially if it means we'll get to see more surprising Citadel stories in the future.

But getting back to the story at hand; some cloned Ricks show up to kidnap some cloned Mortys, and take them back to what remains of The Citadel. There, it's revealed that the cloned Ricks are using the cloned Mortys DNA in an attempt to recreate their lost cloning technology. All of their attempts have failed, however, until the lone Rick comes along, and it's revealed that he used to be the lead scientist on The Citadel's old cloning facility.

So the cloned Ricks offer the lone Rick a new job, and he immediately manages to clone his own Morty. Unfortunately for the cloned Ricks, this new Morty clone ends up becoming a hulked out Morty who  kills all of the Ricks.

The lone Rick then sacrifices himself in order to save all of the kidnapped Mortys, who are now free to live whatever kind of life they want. So I thought this made for a really nice episode!

I do wish that episode spent more time fleshing out this lone Rick's character - especially since his relationship to the cloned Mortys definitely felt rushed - but that doesn't change the fact that I found his story to be a fascinating one. And I'm curious to see if his story will have a larger impact on the continuity of the series.

I personally like seeing tales from The Citadel, so I wouldn't mind seeing some of these cloned Ricks and Mortys again in the future. But even if they never show up again, that doesn't change how their presence in this story made for a satisfying standalone episode. And with three good episodes back-to-back-to-back, Season 8 is turning out to be one of the best seasons of Rick and Morty in a long, long time.

I really hope the rest of the season will be able to maintain the same level of quality, but I guess we'll see how the next episode will I actually turn out to be, once it gets released on Sunday.