Rick and Morty fans finally got the answers they were looking for in the crowd-pleasing hour-long finale of Season 5 on Adult Swim.
After an adventure with two crows, Rick and Morty returned to the Citadel which saw the return of Evil Morty, and then proceeded to reveal Rick's entire origin story for the first time.
The hour-long finale turned out to be the 50th episode of Rick and Morty and fans now face another long wait until Season 6 of the sci-fi comedy cartoon returns to Adult Swim.
What happened in part one of the Rick and Morty finale?
Setting up the serious events to come, Episode 9 of Season 5 "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall" sees Morty and Rick go their separate ways and endure difficult adventures.
Morty appears to be journeying on his own, using Rick's portal gun to clean up some of the messes that he and Rick and made in the past. However, while trying to replace the green portal fluid with Mountain Dew, he accidentally spills some on his hand which is the catalyst for his episode arc.
Rick walks in to catch Morty in the act and follows through on his threat to replace him. A gameshow-style wheel drops down from the ceiling and after spinning it, two crows are chosen as Morty's permanent replacement as sidekick. "Morty you're fired."
Reeling from the mistreatment, Morty finds a new friend to talk to. The portal fluid opened up in his hand leads to another person, Nick who once spilt Rick's portal fluid on his thigh. Morty and Nick bond, and Morty ventures out to find his new friend who it turns out is in a psychiatric hospital where he endures weekly beating and face lickings from the guards. Morty helps him break free and now the "Portal Boys" team up for their own adventures.
Back in Rick's story, he's trained his two crows effectively and encountered an aviary planet of giant intelligent crows. This leads him on a path of total mental understanding with his crows and leads to a fresh perspective for the usually glib scientist.
In the hunt for more portal fluid, Nick and Morty break into Rick's garage and start destroying everything. Jerry even joins them briefly but instantly turns into a puddle -- a fitting metaphor for the punching bag of a character. Rick and the crow race see the damage left behind, and the crows are not impressed by Rick's Wheel of Anything Better than Morty joke that paired him with his two crows. They leave taking Rick's new companions with them.
In an effort to save his crows, Rick launches himself up to the extremely "on theme" crow space ship to save his two friends. After getting captured, Rick and Morty share a sweet phone call where it's revealed how disastrously their individual adventures are going. By this point Nick has shown his true colours and gone on a killing spree on an alien planet.
As Morty escapes Nick, they start fighting and Nick threatens to kill Morty. In an incredibly brave move, Morty cuts his own hand off using a nearby passing train, then takes the portal hand, drops it in Nick's thigh portal and he folds in on himself out of existence.
Rick's adventure turns around when the two crows have the chance to betray him but instead save his life, helping him kill the elder intelligent crows instead.
Returning home, Rick encounters an injured Morty and uses his tech to grow his hand back but stops short of reuniting. With a new sense of perspective, Rick tells Morty he's changed and is going to leave home and venture out with his new crow friends. He gifts Morty his portal gun and they share a teary goodbye. Rick seems less upset when we hear him wailing about his new franchise "Rick and Two Crows" as they plan to do "a thousand seasons."
What happens in part 2 of the Rick and Morty finale?
In a rare move for the show, but adequately tying in the hour-long episode concept, "Rickmurai Jack" continues where "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall" left off. Rick is now fully immersed in his crow world, fighting their battles and changing the show's tone into a full on anime adventure series.
While traveling, a 40-year-old Morty visits him, asking him to come home after years of adventures but Rick still refuses. Rick gets betrayed by his two crows and before he's forced to watch them immensely enjoy the body of his enemy Crow Scare, he returns home to the Smith family.
It turns out Morty had lied to Rick to emotionally blackmail him by taking an aging serum he'd purchased at the Citadel of Ricks. They return to reverse the effects, but it means our Rick, Rick C-137 returning to the Citadel for the first time since he destroyed it in Season 3. Evil Morty, who we first saw in Season 1 Episode 10, is now the president of the Citadel (as established in Season 3 Episode 7) and requests a dinner with Rick C-137 and Morty. It's revealed pretty quickly that this Morty is evil and he scans Rick's brain to get information he needs.
Using the brain scan, our Morty sees proof that Rick, previously as leader of the citadel, scientifically created more Morty's and tampered with Beth and Jerry's lives to create more Morty's too. Rick is about to leave but stops just in time as Evil Morty has tampered with his portal gun (as he had in Season 1 Episode 10).
Morty takes the scanned brain readings and delves deeper into Rick's backstory, showing viewers his apparent true origins in the process. It shows that Rick C-137 is from a universe where his wife and daughter Beth were killed by a visiting Rick from another dimension. After years of misery and drinking, Rick C-137 sets out for revenge, traveling across the universe and killing Ricks attempting to find the one that murdered his family. During his quest he eventually create the Citadel of Ricks, but grows weary of it and returns to a timeline where Beth is still alive but his wife Diane had already died.
It turns out Evil Morty's masterplan is to simply escape the "central finite curve" which Rick created where every universe in its existence is one where Rick is the smartest man in the world. In Evil Morty's attempts to escape, he killed thousands of Ricks and Mortys, and destroyed the Citadel in the process.
Our Rick and Morty attempt to stop him but are unsuccessful and barely escape with their lives, but they are accompanied by a slew of underground Mortys.
Evil Morty breaks free from the central finite curve into a new universe, he breaths a sigh of relief, steps out of his ship, fires a gold coloured portal gun, and steps through it.
