This post on Evil Morty contains spoilers for Rick & Morty S03E07: ‘The Ricklantis Mixup’.

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When we last saw Evil Morty in S01E10, ‘Close Encounters of the Rick Kind‘, he was stamping on a cybernetic eyepatch that he’d been using to imperceptibly control his ‘Evil’ Rick. His plan – foiled by ‘our’ Rick & Morty, though they didn’t catch the real culprit – appeared to be to eliminate Ricks from other universes. With each Rick killed, Evil Morty kept their Mortys in captivity and using their ‘Morty-waves‘ to cover the presence of his operation.

Pretending to be working for ‘Evil’ Rick, Evil Morty had been torturing his fellow Mortys, using their ‘Morty-ness’ as a cloaking shield to hide his Rick-assassinating operation from the Citadel of Ricks. Other than ‘our’ Rick – aka Rick C-137 – Evil Morty is probably the baddest motherfucker in the show.

In the most recent episode – S03E07, ‘The Ricklantis Mixup’ – Evil Morty became President of the Citadel of Ricks, upending the existing class structure and taking full control of all Ricks and all Mortys. We can be sure it was the same Evil Morty because of the eyepatch photos leaked to his campaign manager, and because the episode ended with his theme song. Just like the first episode he appeared in, ‘Close Encounters…’, this episode closed with an Evil Morty scene soundtracked by Blonde Redhead’s ‘For The Damaged Coda‘.

But this news leaves us with questions. Questions like: Where has Evil Morty been? What’s he planning? Is his Presidential campaign part of his former plan to kill Ricks? And why was he intent on killing Ricks in the first place? Let’s take a look at what the fan theories are saying. 

What is Evil Morty planning?

Revenge on Rick C-137 

The prevailing theory is either that A) Evil Morty originated in the same universe as ‘our’ Rick, or that B) Rick once visited Evil Morty’s universe, and in both cases he screwed over Evil Morty. We know that in ‘our’ Morty’s dimension, Rick has been absent from Beth’s life for 20 years, meaning he wouldn’t have known ‘our’ 14-year-old Morty for much time before the pilot episode – but in ‘Close Encounters…’, we see Rick C-137’s memories of a baby Morty, which prove he had a relationship with another Morty prior to ‘our’ Morty.

It’s thought that he did something as catastrophic to Evil Morty’s world as he did in the ‘Cronenberging’ of S01E06 (‘Rick Potion #9’), leaving Evil Morty with an enormous grudge against Rick C-137, which led him to frame Rick C-137 for the Rick assassinations in ‘Close Encounters’. Rick may have been referencing his relationship with Evil Morty in ‘Close Encounters of the Rick Kind’ when he told ‘our’ Morty: “A cocky Morty can be a real big problem. A real bad thing for everybody. I’ll explain when you’re older.”

How will he exact revenge on Rick?

One fan theory suggests Evil Morty’s plan all along has been to become President. Tying Evil Morty’s actions in S01E10 to his rise to  power in S03E07, Redditor ajga85 says: “He wanted all those Mortys to become Rickless. He wanted the Citadel to find them and bring them back to the Citadel… most Mortys would remain Rickless, thus becoming a huge political issue affecting the Citadel’s social fabric, while also becoming a single voting block that Evil Morty could use to rise to power.”

This suggests that he’s been waiting in the wings for two seasons for the perfect moment to upend the political system in the Citadel. Now he’s in a uniquely strong position to get back at Rick C-137.

How will Evil Morty find our Rick?

The season 3 finale description is: “Rick confronts the president.” Before the season’s over, we’re going to see Rick and Evil Morty squaring off somehow. But how, and why?

Before S03E07, both the Citadel and Evil Morty might have assumed that our Rick was dead, because his old body was destroyed when he was being held prisoner by the Galactic Federation. Before he died, he swapping bodies with several aliens and Ricks, and now he’s sneakily inhabiting another Rick’s body. So it’d be impossible to find him, right?

Not exactly. The Citadel must be on the lookout for the terrorist that destroyed their home in S03E01, and at the start of episode 7 our Rick told the Citadel’s representative that he was the culprit. In doing so, he’s given his whereabouts to the Citadel; presumably Evil Morty will now have this knowledge, and he might connect the dots to conclude that the Rickest Rick – his arch-enemy – was the same guy behind the attack. Rick’s sign-off at the end of S03E07 is clear dramatic irony: “That place will never have any bearing over our lives ever again,” he says. Yeah right.

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So wait – is Evil Morty actually evil?

In S01E10, ‘Evil’ Rick told ‘our’ Rick that he was compiling a list of Ricks from most evil to least evil – though of course, he was under Evil Morty’s control in doing so – and some fans have suggested this means Evil Morty isn’t evil at all.

They say he was just using this technique to track down ‘evil’ Ricks (ie ones that didn’t care about their Mortys) and was just killing the ones that didn’t pass his test. Using a machine that decoded Rick’s memories, it was shown that our Rick was the first instance in the spectrum of evil-to-good Ricks that cared about his Morty – making him the ‘Rickest Rick’ and possibly making Morty the ‘Mortiest Morty’.

If this is the case, Evil Morty’s motivations for the remainder of the season are unclear, though his villainous actions in S03E07 suggest he might just be a ruthless, manipulative, power-hungry Morty that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. And somehow that’s even more terrifying.

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What do you think of Evil Morty? What’s he going to do next? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The post ‘Evil Morty’ fan theories: why Rick & Morty’s greatest villain has been in hiding for two seasons appeared first on NME.