WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Rick and Morty Season 5, Episode 1, “Mort Dinner Rick Andre,” which aired Sunday on Adult Swim.
Although Morty has been more successful dating other women in Rick and Morty, the girl he’s pined for the most is his high school classmate Jessica. But despite his best efforts throughout the series, the nerdy Morty is never able to become more than friends with her. However, that changes in the Season 5 premiere, “Mort Dinner Rick Andre,” when Rick and Morty appear to be doomed to die after another grueling space adventure.
Accepting that he’s about to get killed in a crash, Morty calls Jessica and tells her he wishes she got to know her better. He’s then shocked to hear her say she wishes he said those things sooner before asking him out on a date later that night. Morty, with a new lease on life, quickly fixes the crashing ship, allowing it to land in the ocean.
After returning home, Morty’s date with Jessica is going well, until he offers her wine. It turns out the bottle he retrieved was placed through a portal in another dimension in order for it to age a few centuries for Rick’s guest, Mr. Nimbus. When Morty enters the portal to get the wine, he meets a kind dog-like creature named Hoovy, who offers to assist him. However, after spending a few moments on Earth, decades pass for Hoovy, forcing him to meet a tragic end and setting off a chain of events that make Morty the despised “Dark Child” of his descendants.
After a few encounters with Hoovy’s descendants in an effort to get the wine, things finally seem to be going well for Morty and Jessica. That is until another dog-like creature descendent named Adam enters the real world to destroy Morty, having trained his whole life to fight him. Jessica steps in to save the day and stabs Adam’s special suit with a wine bottle opener, but as he’s forced back into the portal, Jessica gets thrown in with him. Morty goes through to save her, but he finds himself in a world dominated by robotic dog-creatures and is captured. A robot created to study Morty reveals to him that Jessica was frozen in time for centuries and hidden away. Fortunately, Morty is able to escape by kicking the robot in the groin and acquires the key to Jessica’s freedom.
Soon after, Nimbus rescues Ricky, Morty and Jessica from that universe, and Morty jokingly asks Jessica if she still had time to watch a movie, since not much time had passed in their world. In a thoughtful tone, Jessica tells Morty about all the things she witnessed during her time frozen, including glimpsing into the eyes of God, before explaining to him they should just stay friends.
Jessica then proclaims herself a “Time God,” and while most cartoons tend to revert their characters to the way they were before a life-altering experience, Rick and Morty has proven to be the exception. One of the biggest examples of this is Tammy Guterman’s transformation from a high school friend of Summer’s to the leader of the Galactic Federation. Tammy’s husband Birdperson also went through a character change when he became the robotic Pheonixperson and went from Rick Sanchez’s ally to enemy. And then, of course, there is Beth, who decided to make a change in her life and become “Space Beth,” though it remains unknown if that version of the character is the original or a clone.
With that in mind, it’s unlikely Jessica will ever be the same again. While it doesn’t appear as if she has any supernatural abilities yet, the knowledge she obtained during her centuries frozen in time will make her one of the smartest beings in the entire galaxy and a potential adversary for the titular duo.
Rick and Morty stars the voices of Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammar and Sarah Chalke. Episodes of Season 5 airs Sundays at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Adult Swim. Seasons 1 through 4 are available to stream on Hulu and HBO Max.
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