Hello Internet. Welcome to Film Theory, the show that wishes
there was a Night MatPat to split the workload no more FNAF
So Rick and Morty is about to return from its midseason break. But before it does, I figured it was a good
time to take a look at the season's first six episodes to check out where things might
be headed next. After ending season 5 by blowing a huge hole
into the universe, Rick and Morty opened season 6 with an all new, all different mandate. In our previous Rick and Morty theory, we
looked specifically at the first episode of the season to conclude that it was all about
ways of handling grief. Rick refuses to let go of his past trauma
enough so that he's torturing himself and everyone around him with it. Meanwhile, the Jerry from Season one's Kronenberg
Universe completely lets go of his past trauma to a self-destructive degree, refusing to
accept anyone into his life and severing all ties with anyone from his past. The true solution, however, is found somewhere
in the middle. Grief isn't solved by never moving on, but
it's also not solved by completely moving on. It's a process of slow healing, acknowledging
that that trauma is always going to be a part of you and just learning to live with that. We concluded that this episode was setting
up a season-long theme of healing for Rick, working on himself. and boy howdy did we get that one right on
the money! I haven't been more right about a theory since… ahh… Mmm In each of these first six episodes, we watch
Rick actively going out of his way to do the most un-Rick thing ever, helping the family
members around him. When Beth falls in love with a clone of herself
in episode three, we see him doing something we've never seen him do before in the Infinite
Universes. Give fatherly advice. When Morty’s psyche is fragmented into a
billion pieces by a video game, Rick spends a lifetime trying to put those pieces back
together, lowering his emotional walls to try and help recover as much of Morty as he
can. Rick even decides to show Jerry some respect. Jerry!! And when a fortune cookie dooms Jerry to a
fate worse than death, Rick even gives up universal power just to save him. And while he may have lost immortal power,
he gained a friend. All of this without the crutch of inter-dimensional
portal travel, despite Rick saying that he was working on fixing it throughout the season. But of course, nothing can last forever. In the final episode, right before the midseason
break, Rick restores portal travel and promises to return to classic, wacky Rick and Morty
adventures. So now this begs the question with Rick and
the Smiths well, on their way through the healing process, what comes next? Are we leaving behind the canon in lore established
by the front half of the season and returning to completely disconnected episodic adventures,
like Rick says? I don't think so. And it's all because of one simple truth,
healing leaves scars: physically, emotionally and mentally. And it's time our characters start dealing
with those scars. And of them, none is bigger than a certain
inter-dimensional world hopper set up in the season's very first episode. That's right friends. By analyzing the season's episodes so far
and what they're saying about the show's characters. I believe that we can predict exactly where
Rick and Morty is headed for the rest of the season. And while yeah, we're going to see the return
of some dimension hopping adventures across space and time. We're also going to be pulling on a story
thread that's been lingering over our heads for several seasons now. Spoiler alert there's a Rick out there that's
going to shatter the status quo of this universe forever. So open up your emergency fortune cookie loyal
theorist, we're heading in. Now, obviously Rick healing the bonds with
his family was a huge part of these first six episodes, but that wasn't all. Another recurring theme that stood out across
the first half of the season was dissatisfaction. Everyone who got what they thought they wanted
actually didn't end up all that happy about it. Marta, the leader of the Morty religion inside
Morty's brain, manages to unite 92% of the world to her cause, a monumental task. But she's left unhappy with the reality that
not everyone in this video game simulation is going to be united as one. The nocturnal Smith Night Family manages to
overthrow the Day Smiths in a coup, thereby allowing them to be in charge of their lives. But then they hate the responsibility that
comes with being active during the day, so they voluntarily hand control back to the
Day Smiths. When hyper intelligent space dinosaurs show
up on Earth to create a utopia for humanity, humans just become bored with this life without
struggle. In every case, these characters are getting
exactly what they wanted, but they're left empty by it in some way or another. So what does it mean? if you're left unfulfilled after getting what
you want, what even is the purpose of life? Is there a purpose to life? Well, that, my friends, brings us to a personal
favorite of the Rick and Morty franchise: Nihilism, the belief that nothing matters. Now, this is really just boiling it down to
the bare bones. But nihilists often believe that there's no
moral order, no actual fundamental purpose to life or existence within the universe. Again, nothing matters. And it's this concept that almost perfectly
embodies Rick Sanchez, a man who has seen infinity and has thus lost the ability to
care about finite things. Nothing matters because all the outcomes are
not only possible, they've already happened out there somewhere. He's seen how pointless it is to try and solve
a problem. So you could say that these characters getting
what they want and then finding out it didn't mean anything supports the view of nihilism. It proves that Rick Sanchez is right. But there are other ways to look at this philosophy. There's a flipside here that views the pointless
universe positively. It's called optimistic nihilism. If we truly live in a universe where nothing
matters, well, that's just another way of saying that everything matters equally. Anything can matter as much as you decide
it matters. You could, for instance, decide that this
channel matters more to you than anything else in the universe, and then go and hit
that subscribe button below the video. Under optimistic nihilism that is a perfectly
fair assessment. And looking at the general ecosystem of YouTube…
yeah, I’d say it's not that far off. In the context of Rick and Morty: of all characters
in the show, Morty is the one who most closely represents this belief. He laid this all out way back in season one. Rick's healing arc through the first half
of the season has shown him slowly coming over to this exact idea. He knows that scientifically nothing matters
because he's seen the infinite multiverse. But the people and events in his small corner
of the multiverse can matter. When Jerry gives Rick a friendship fortune
cookie. Sure. Rick calls this out as a stupid gesture, but
notice that he keeps the fortune. He even goes so far as to look at it again
before putting it in his pocket. It's a small gesture that meant something. With Beth constantly going through self-confidence
issues, Rick decides to leave out a special wine that helps her open up and discover herself
with Space Beth. And when a portion of Morty's psyche asks
that Rick keep their video game world on so they can continue to exist, Rick listens and
chooses to follow that request. He has no reason to do this. He got exactly what he wanted out of the game
and has nothing to gain from being beholden to a video game character. And yet he keeps the game running because
it's a nice thing to do. It's a small action that has a big impact
in the personal universe of someone else. It's what all of these situations in season
six have in common. He has nothing to gain, but he's using his
godlike powers to actually help his family. Even back in episode one, Rick chooses to
rescue the Smiths instead of continuing his self-destructive pursuit of Rick Prime. And this positive attitude is starting to
leak into other parts of the show as well. Throughout the last five seasons, Rick has
gotten actively annoyed whenever the show gets meta, calling attention to its own narrative
in order to play with the concept of how narrative works. That's what the whole Story Train episode
was about a satire on story structure in the in universe consequences of long form storytelling. He even has contempt for his own back story. And really Rick's previous hatred for the
idea of continuity is just an extension of his nihilism. If you believe that nothing matters well,
canon and lore directly conflict with that belief. But now, after healing and embracing this
more optimistic view of the world, Rick suddenly cares about the potential stories that his
series can explore. For example, when he's asked about the rift
left by last season's finale, he actively defends its existence. Normally that's the sort of thing that would
drive him insane. He’d despise the fact that it's there. And yet when the space dinosaurs sew the rift
shut Rick becomes furious about the apparent loss of potential stories. Continuity is slowly starting to matter to
him because it anchors him, it grounds him, it gives him something to actually care about. Sure, in the grand scheme it might be meaningless,
but to him it does have meaning. But this sort of investment from characters
as powerful as Rick can have some major consequences. In episode six, we meet the Space Dinosaurs,
super intelligent beings on par with Rick. These dinosaurs travel the universe to help
other species while doing sick ollies. But wherever the dinosaurs go to help meteors
follow, apparently a species of giant meteor evolved to be their equal opposite, their
ideological nemesis. It's a force of absolute death and destruction
versus an equal and opposite force of creation and creativity. The more good the dinosaurs do and the more
successful they are, the more meteors are born to destroy their progress. And here's the thing. If this is indeed a rule of the universe,
enough so that it's happened several times to the dinosaurs, this then also applies to
Rick. After all, he and the Space Dinos already
see themselves as equals. So it would follow that Rick also has himself
an equal and opposite force, a force that's been evolving alongside Rick in the opposite
direction. That's right, loyal theorist. I believe that Rick Prime, the character that
killed our Rick's family and started the entire chain of events that would lead to the series,
is not only our Rick's nemesis, but his universal counterweight. Kind of. It's actually more accurate to say that our
Rick is Rick Prime's meteor. See, from what we can tell, Rick Prime is
basically the Rickest Rick in all existence and seems to be the embodiment of that pessimistic
view of nihilism that our Rick used to follow. Out of what little we've seen of him Rick
Prime genuinely doesn't seem to care about anything beyond spreading the good word of
not caring about anything to his fellow Rick's. He doesn't even seem to care about his family
at all. Basically, Rick Prime is like the Rick that
we knew from previous seasons but amped up to 11 without any of the character development,
growth and healing that we've seen our Rick going through. He's the sort of guy that would hop to a new
universe in a heartbeat, leaving all his loved ones behind the second things get dicey. So just like the space dinosaurs floated through
the universe, helping out anyone they could. Rick Prime goes from university universe,
making things worse through the creation of other pessimistic, nihilistic Ricks. But in that process he literally created our
Rick. He killed his wife and daughter, which sets
off the events of the series, including the healing and character growth that we're watching
our Rick go through right now. And through this process, our Rick is taking
his first steps to being Rick Prime's equal opposite, a Rick that genuinely cares. You know the status quo of this franchise? The irreverent adventures where nothing of
any consequence happens. That is a thing of the past. Represented in a lot of ways by Rick Prime. Just think, we finally know what happened
to our Rick's family; when it happened on the timeline, where it happened in the multiverse,
how it went down and who did it. But we're still missing that one key piece
of data, Why? Why did Rick Prime do this in the first place? Explicitly all we get is a vague, offhanded
explanation that Rick's don't typically refuse the call to multiversal adventure, but we
don't know why it's so important to Rick Prime that other Rick's follow in his footsteps. Maybe this is why. Maybe he understands that an equally powerful
but oppositely aligned Rick would one day rise up to stop him. And he wanted to make sure that that didn't
happen. Or maybe fate is just pulling him to create
his equal opposite Rick. I, for one, can't wait to find out. But hey, we interrupt your regularly scheduled
programming to bring you your daily allotment of capitalism. That's right, loyal theorists. The holiday season is quickly approaching. And you know that means we got ourselves some
new Theory Wear that makes the perfect gift for you or the Theorist in your life this time around. If you don't feel like wearing any gAmE tHeOrY
GrEeN, we've got ourselves some Film Theory merch to help you rep, the red. First off, we got this great Film Theory academy
hoodie for anyone who wants to embrace their inner film student. It's a really cool design and we kept it a
little bit oversize so you can be cozy inside of those chilly movie theaters as you get
ready to watch [INSERT DISNEY TENTPOLE HERE] this holiday. Plus, we also have ourselves an awesome screen
themed vintage ringer T-shirt, which would look amazing layered under that academy hoodie. It’s almost like we planned this stuff out. Oh, and this one's a bit wild, but do you
love vintage analog horror, but you just wish you could give the tapes a big ol fuzzy hug? Well, now you can with our Film Theory VHS
plushie. It even comes with a cool little zippered
case to keep it safe just one morning. Don't feed it after midnight. And if you've ever wondered what this channel
smells like, you can find out with our new candle set. At the very least, you can help them summon
the next season of Rick and Morty that much faster. So grab a gift that'll make the theorist in
your life happy or just treat yourself to a little something special this holiday. You deserve a nice gift too. Links to all the items are below this video. Or you could just go to TheoryWear.com to
check out the full collection. I think there are some special discounts and
bundles over on the merch site, so you might want to check those out. And in the meantime, remember, it's all just
a theory. A FILM THEORY! aaaaaaaand cut.
