Last weekend’s episode of Rick and Morty finally got around to the classic sci-fi trope of literally splitting the heroes into good and bad halves. Except it wasn’t quite as simple to define Toxic Rick and Morty as “bad,” since Toxic Rick cared more about Morty’s life than his counterpart and—freed from his insecurities and his conscience—Morty became his own kind of monster before he was forced to take back his toxins. Now, the creative team behind the series is explaining their choices in “Rest and Ricklaxation.”
For this clip, series creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland were joined by writers Mike McMahan and Ryan Ridley as they each shared their thoughts on the episode. “What are the toxins? They’re the emotions,” said Ridley. “The things you don’t like about yourself. If you remove the toxins, that doesn’t leave you as a better you. It leaves you as a weird, different bad version of you.”
One of the reasons that this went so badly for Rick and Morty is that they had internally defined what was toxic about themselves and the alien machine acted accordingly. That’s why neither the toxic Rick and Morty nor their counterparts were truly complete without each other. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t hilarious watching them try to destroy themselves.
There won’t be a new episode of Rick and Morty this weekend, but there will be a marathon of the six episodes from season 3 starting at 11:00pm EST/PST on Sunday, Â September 3.
What did you think about the inside look at “Rest and Ricklaxation”? Burp your responses in the comment section below!
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Images: Adult Swim
