| “ | Morty: What's your stupid, 21st century, watered-down fortune cookie say, Dad?
Jerry: "You will have sex… with your mother". |
"Final DeSmithation" is the fifth episode of the sixth season of Rick and Morty. It is the 56th episode of the series overall. It premiers on October 2, 2022. It was written by Heather Anne Campbell and directed by Douglas Einar Olsen. The episode is rated TV-14-DLV.
Synopsis[]
When Jerry's fortune cookie reveals a fate worse than death, Rick decides to get to the bottom of the dessert's shocking prediction.
Plot[]
The Smith family are dining at Panda Express, and discuss the next day's trip to the zoo. Jerry complains about the place giving him diarrhea, although the others point out that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't eaten the food meant for the animals. When the meals over, the family are given their fortune cookies, with Summer pointing out they only comes true when the cookie is eaten first. Although the rest of the family is given generic meaningless ones, Jerry's fortune reads "You will have sex with your mother", much to everyone's shock and his dismay.
Jerry starts getting paranoid that the fortune might come true, despite the fact he obviously would never have sex with his mother. Beth implores him to ignore it, while Morty and Summer find it hilarious and begin to poke fun at him with it. Jerry's nerves get worse when his mother starts calling him more since he's trying to ignore her and begs Rick to investigate or use science to make it impossible. Rick refuses stating that using science to make something impossible usually ends up making it more possible.
Jerry tries taping up his genitals while Morty and Summer continues to play various pranks on Jerry (including hiding a stuffed doll made to look like Jerry's mom in his wardrobe which falls on him repeatedly making it look like it's performing fellatio). Jerry becomes so paranoid that he even starts dressing like Morty, since Morty's mom is Beth. Space Beth arrives to pick the family up for the zoo trip, but Rick asks Jerry to stay behind as he's been getting strange readings from Jerry's probability field regarding the fortune. The rest of the family leave, and Rick admits that he made that up the strange readings to get Jerry out of going to the zoo, and admits that as much as he dislikes Jerry he has the right to take this seriously. Turning on his device, Rick is startled to find that Jerry's fortune is registering and decides to run a test by getting two boxes with holes, writing Jerry's mom's name in one and asking him to choose one hole he would stick his penis in. Rick repeats the test several times, sometimes switching the boxes and is worried when Jerry keeps picking the mom box. Rick decides to do something he would never willingly choose to do... go to Panda Express. He reasons that someone is trying to get his attention (mentioning that all the restaurant had to do was get a liquor licence).
Arriving with Jerry and announcing his presence to the backroom staff, he finds himself in a shootout which he is easily able to handle killing most of the employees. However he finds that the Panda Express staff are actually running a meth ring (which obviously Rick doesn't mind due to his aversion to the concept of laws) and have nothing to do with the fortune cookies which they get from the usual distributor. Apologizing to the two remaining staff for murdering their colleagues (which they accept, saying it's part of the risk), Rick agrees to not turn them in to the cops in exchange for the truck that delivers the fortune cookies.
Taking the truck to the factory where the fortunes are made, they find them coming from a building which is way too extravagant for a company that makes something that's given away for free. Entering and dodging the retinal scans, they find hundreds of similar trucks and cameras everywhere. Rick changes his clothes to blend in by calling on the Eye of Thundera, then makes Jerry look like an assistant with a transformation sequence lifted from Sailor Moon.
While infiltrating the factory, the pair quickly realize the company is controlling fate for profit. Jerry wants Rick to blow up the factory, but Rick would rather take over the factory instead. Soon after, they run into two security guards, who use emergency fortune cookies to beat Rick in a fight. With no other choice, Rick jumps into an air vent to escape, using Jerry as a human shield. Jerry survived and is taken inside the vent as well. The CEO of the factory, Jennith Padrow-Chunt, sees photos of Jerry and detects an unresolved fortune, and tells the guards to get Jerry's mother to the factory.
While crawling through the air vent, Jerry expresses annoyance at Rick for using him as a human shield. Rick explains that since Jerry has an unresolved fortune, he literally cannot die until his fortune is fulfilled (in this case, until he has sex with his mother). The two eventually find their way into the room where the fortune cookies are being produced. At the center of the room is a huge alien strapped to the ceiling being fed glowing capsules and pooping out fortune cookies, while an old man puts fortunes inside of the cookies. Rick explains to Jerry that the alien is a Lockerean and that its species feeds off chaos. This particular Lockerean has a digestive issue that makes it strip randomness away from space-time, leaving behind super-dense pockets of energy in the form of fortune cookies that bend entropy towards definable outcomes. The old man introduces himself as Old Man Hucksbee, who explains Fortune 500's plan: to increase the value of real fortunes by mass-producing many worthless ones. Old Man Hucksbee has also apparently romanced the Lockerean and wants to escape the factory with it, so he put weird fortunes (including Jerry's) in the cookies in hopes that someone would investigate the factory, find them, and break them free. At that moment, Jennith Padrow-Chunt arrive with Jerry's mother as well as many armed security guards.
Jennith, knowing that Jerry is immortal until he has sex with his mother, pushes Mrs. Smith toward him, trying to get them to have sex. Jerry runs away while Rick fights the soldiers, who all have special powers due to all of them ingesting fighting fortunes. He uses their fortunes against them before jumping into a few boxes of fortune cookies to ingest some random ones, hoping to find something good. The first batch don't really have any notable effects due to having the mass-produced worthless fortunes, but Rick finds a box of "blanks", cookies without fortunes that make the effects-upon-consumption completely unpredictable. He settles on force-feeding the soldiers blank fortunes in order to combat them with randomness. Rick eventually realizes Jennith is immortal until her fortune comes true, which is that she will become the most successful businesswoman ever. He fulfils this fortune by hacking the Goldman Sachs finance company, stealing trillions of dollars and purchasing everything Jennith's company offers, before emptying all her accounts and sending the money back to Goldman Sachs. Enraged, Jennith swallows many fortune cookies and becomes a blob-like monster. Rick frees the Lockerean, who swallows Jennith and Old Man Hucksbee.
Unfortunately, the chaos is still not over yet, because while running away from his mother, Jerry trips over a chaos capsule and it turns into a black hole. Rick grabs the Lockerean, preventing it from being sucked in. However, he sees Jerry's mother getting her foot caught while being sucked toward the black hole. Jerry's pants also get sucked off and he is now getting sucked straight towards her, so Rick lets go of the Lockerean to grab a blank fortune and use a cybernetic implant to print "Jerry no sex mom" on it. At the last second, he swoops in and launches the fortune into Jerry's mouth, causing the black hole to disappear before their genitals make contact.
When Rick and Jerry arrive home, Jerry gives Rick the last real fortune cookie with a handwritten note that says "Thank you", Rick makes which lightly chastises him for wasting but appreciates the sentiment of. Jerry thanks Rick and refers to him as a friend, which greatly angers Rick, who earlier had eaten a fortune cookie with a fortune saying "You will make a new friend" from the batch of mass-produce cookies. By referring to Rick as a friend, Jerry accidentally destroyed Rick's immortality. Jerry tries to play off their friendship as a fate they can still control, but this causes Rick to slap him in the face, causing him to cry. After Rick apologizes, Jerry forgives him, and the two head inside.
In a post-credits scene, Morty, Summer, Beth, and Space Beth are in the zoo's gift shop. Morty is watching an ad for the zoo that was targeted to zebras. The humans in the zoo started eating the zebra food, leaving the zebras to starve, and then fighting and killing each other over it. Morty starts off confused about the purpose of the ad and why there was zebra food in the gift shop, before deducing that they were the ones in the zoo and that it was a human zoo.
Characters[]
Major characters[]
- Rick Sanchez
- Jerry Smith
- Joyce Smith
- Jennith Padrow-Chunt
- Lockerean
Minor characters[]
- Morty Smith
- Summer Smith
- Beth Smith
- Space Beth
- Sleepy Gary (mentioned)
- Old M. Hucksbee
Deaths[]
- Panda Express employees
- Fortune 500 soldiers
- Old M. Hucksbee
- Jennith Padrow-Chunt
- Lockerean
- Soldiers
- Adults at the zoo
Locations[]
- Parmesan dimension
- Earth
- Smith Residence
- Panda Express
- Fortune 500
- The Zoo
- Earth
Episode notes[]
Trivia[]
- The episode's original title was "Final Destination" when announced.
- It is hinted in this episode that Rick has a crush, as "your crush will call you" is one of the fortunes he received after jumping into a box full of fortune cookies. Multiple people have called him later on, including Dr. Wong in "Analyze Piss," and both President Curtis and Unity in "Air Force Wong." Most likely, it was Unity being referred to by the fortune given their past relationship, and that it called Rick and left voice mails multiple times after being worried about his search for Rick Prime. However, what casts doubt on this speculation is the fact that their relationship had already ended by the events of "Auto Erotic Assimilation," and Rick might not have feelings for his ex anymore.
- In celebration of Season 6, Pocket Mortys' weekly updates coincided with new episodes, including new avatars for players to collect. With the release of this episode came Jerry’s Mom as an avatar, plus Operation Morty and Businesswoman Morty to catch.
Series continuity[]
- Rick's old space cruiser returns, as the new one was destroyed in “Night Family”.
- Jerry mentions how Sleepy Gary ruined his gag reflex, a character who previously appeared in “Total Rickall”.
- Rick wearing sunglasses in his disguise resembles Cool Rick from "The Ricklantis Mixup".
Cultural references[]
- The episode's title is a reference to the film franchise Final Destination.
- Jerry's fortune, "You will have sex with your mom", is a reference to the Ancient Greek play Oedipus Rex.
- Rick references the Eye of Thundera from Thundercats and the phrase he says to acquire a suit, “give me suits beyond suits” is a reference to “Give me Sight Beyond Sight” which is a phrase said by Thundercats protagonist, Lion-O to have the Sword of Omens reveal to him whatever is being hidden.
- Jerry's clothing transformation references the character transformations from Sailor Moon. Rick evens says “Make Up” to activate Jerry’s transformation which is the same phrase the characters use to transform.
- Jennith Padrow-Chunt is a parody of Gwyneth Paltrow as they are both white, blonde-haired women with similar sounding names who are both entrepreneurs and founders of lifestyle brands, Gwyneth Paltrow’s being a health and beauty brand called Goop which has been criticized heavily for peddling pseudoscience, ironic as Jennith Padrow-Chunt’s organization literally operates on pseudoscience.
- Rick utilizes robotic tendrils that sprout from his back that are obvious nods to Doctor Octopus.
- Rick’s arsenal of many other devices and weapons built into his body is reminiscent of Inspector Gadget (who Rick directly compares himself to in Rickmurai Jack) and Cyborg of DC Comics.
- Rick references Nintendo and him criticizing the fortune cookie organization for not using their power to “get Nintendo to make a portable VR headset” is a nod to the Virtual Boy and Nintendo LABO VR Kit, both of which being Nintendo’s attempts at creating VR headsets but neither are portable in the same sense as traditional VR devices.
- Old M. Hucksbee wrote fortunes that say that a virus will shut down the world if they don't help him, implying that he started the Coronavirus pandemic using fortunes.
- Rick uses someone that has "controls water" fortune to defeat someone that controls fire, which he compares to Pokémon, where Fire type Pokémon are weak to Water type attacks.
- One of the soldiers Rick transforms with a fortune cookie turns into a robotic dinosaur highly resembling G1 Grimlock from Transformers.
- Jennith Padrow-Chunt's transformation into a monstrous mass of flesh after eating several fortune cookies at once is a clear reference to Tetsuo’s transformation in the 1988 anime film, Akira.
- The song Rick's ship plays is the theme song from Taxi, due to the kids' prank.
- Rick mentions the television series, The X-Files, when commenting how Jerry got the world’s worst fortune.
- Rick jokes how Cookie Monster, a character from the television series, Sesame Street, is behind creating the fortunes.
- When Rick whistles while he hacks a panel to enter the Fortune 500 building, his whistles sounds like the noises of R2-D2 from the Star Wars franchise.
- Old M. Huskbee bears a resemblance to the character who controlled the oil reserves from the film, Waterworld.
- One of Jennith's soldiers dies "Liefeld style".[2][3][4]
Transcript[]
View a full transcript of this episode here.
References
https://comicbook.com/anime/news/rick-and-morty-season-six-episode-titles/
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