Solaricks
Rick's portal glitch sends travelers back to original dimensions.
The 52nd episode of Rick and Morty, "Solaricks," opened the sixth season on Adult Swim. Broadcast on September 4, 2022, it picked up right after the season five finale, "Rickmurai Jack." Albro Lundy wrote it, and Jacob Hair directed.
Quick Facts
- Series
- Rick and Morty
- Season
- 6
- Episode
- 1
- Production
- RAM-601
- Runtime
- 22 minutes
- Air date
- 4 September 2022
- Writer
- Albro Lundy
- Director
- Jacob Hair
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Rick and Morty, after getting stuck in the Citadel's wreckage, are brought home by Space Beth. While trying to repair his portal gun—which Evil Morty had sabotaged—Rick resets the portal fluid and triggers a glitch. This glitch sends everyone who has ever used a portal back to their original dimension, including Jerry because of what happened in "Mortynight Run." Before the travelers are zapped away, Rick tells Summer how to retrieve them: Jerry goes back to the dimension he came from after the Jerryboree mix-up, Morty ends up in the Cronenberged dimension, and Rick is sent to Dimension C-137. While gathering supplies from his old house, Rick talks with D.I.A.N.E., an AI version of his dead wife Diane Sanchez that he made to torment himself, and decides to stop seeking revenge for her murder. As he leaves through a wormhole Summer created, D.I.A.N.E. points out that Rick Prime—the one who killed Diane and Rick's original Beth—would also have been returned to his home dimension by the glitch. In the Cronenberged world, Morty meets his Jerry, who now travels alone after losing his Beth and Summer and has become as nihilistic as Rick. Rick arrives and explains this dimension is Rick Prime's original home; he moved in with Rick Prime's family hoping to ambush him someday. They break into Rick Prime's hideout, where they find him in a tube while pre-recorded messages mock Rick C-137 and suggest he might be a clone. Meanwhile, Space Beth gets pulled into an argument between Beth and Summer over which Beth Summer prefers, all while they raid the Citadel and battle five-dimensional monsters from the wormhole. Summer gets them to stand down. After Rick and Morty come back and rescue them from aliens, they pick up Jerry from his original dimension—one where he and Beth never briefly divorced.
Production
Albro Lundy wrote the episode, Jacob Hair directed it, and it honors producer Mike Mendel, who passed away in 2019. Lundy and co-creator Dan Harmon saw Morty's return to the Cronenberged dimension as a consequence for his and Rick's careless dimension-hopping, and observed that Jerry has become "perfect" without his family. The title nods to Stanisław Lem's novel Solaris, where a protagonist is haunted by a replica of his deceased wife. Beth remarks that she acted like a Dance Mom.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average score of 8.0/10 based on 11 reviews, with the critical consensus calling it "a sterling start to Rick and Morty sixth season of demented misadventures." Samantha Nelson of IGN rated the episode 9 out of 10, praising how the premiere looks back at previous seasons to demonstrate growth while noting similarities to Avengers: Endgame. Steve Greene of IndieWire graded it an A. Den of Geek's Joe Matar was more mixed, describing it as "kind of a slog" and hoping for a brisker pace now that the complicated exposition is done.
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