Rick and Morty – ‘The Wedding Squanchers’

A wedding completely upends the Smiths’ life in the Rick and Morty series finale. ‘The Wedding Squanchers’ goes big, delivering lots of laughs and serious character work in one of the show’s most important episodes yet.

The family are enjoying breakfast together when they receive an invitation from an intergalactic courier – Birdperson an Tammy are getting married, and the Smiths are invited to the wedding. Rick is very reluctant to go, but the family talk him into it, especially after he accidentally mails Jerry across the galaxy. A nice day soon goes to pot, and the Smiths are forced to flee for their lives. On another planet, a secret family discussion makes Rick come to some big conclusions about his role in the family.

Much of ‘The Wedding Squanchers’ hinges on its second act twist. In a superb piece of world-building, we learn that Tammy was in fact a deep cover agent for the Galactic Federation, and the whole wedding was a ploy to trap a number of wanted terrorists. It leads to some surprisingly emotional moments – an uncomprehending Birdperson is executed by his wife, and it’s likely that Squanchie died in a heroic sacrifice. Few shows could imbue the deaths of joke characters with such gravity. And it also builds our understanding of Rick – it turns out that he fought in a war for a principle, and that his return to his family was simply an attempt to hide away.

It never loses sight of the laughs or the heart

After escaping the Federation, the Smiths tried to find a new home, in a perfect example of how the show combines sci-fi with humour. One world has a screaming sun, and another sees Rick terrified because everything is on the cob (it’s unexplained, and all the funnier for it). The final planet, introduced with a brilliant perspective gag, is a small world. And the size of the planet leads to a painful sequence – Rick, at the centre of the planet, hears a family conversation. Jerry wants to give Rick up and return home, while Beth can’t face him leaving again. For all its cynicism, there’s an undercurrent of heart here – Rick gives himself up not because he can’t win, but rather because it may make his family keep losing.

‘The Wedding Squanchers’ leaves us with a huge cliff-hanger, and it’s going to be interesting to see how the show resolves it when it finally returns. But it’s a great episode to go out on – it’s funny and dark, it really builds the show’s world and it hits a lot of earned emotional beats. It encapsulates why Rick and Morty is such a brilliant show – it’s inventive and really clever, but it never loses sight of the laughs or the heart.

Best lines:

‘I want you to stand in the corner and face the corner and talk to nobody’ – Beth – ‘Maybe. I. Will’ – Jerry tries to maintain dignity in the face of a total lack of dignity

‘It’s unwise of me to share these details, but I’ve become inebriated’ – drunk Birdperson in no way differs from normal Birdperson, and that makes it much funnier

‘Being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets’ – Rick explains his view of the universe

Rick’s wedding speech notes are a single line, followed by (trail off), (crumple up notes) and (adlib)

One-off character:

One of the gags at the wedding features a humanoid photographer, who stares at people as he tells them he’s not. It pays off nicely, too, when the same model appears in a Federation prison.

Post-credits scene:

Mr Poopybutthole is in his house, watching the series finale and speaking with the audience about how good it was. He feeds his pet cat and receives a pizza order, harassing the delivery man for his thoughts. He’s thrown onto the ground, and he tells us that we may have to wait for at least a year and a half to see how the Rick cliff-hanger will be resolved and what will happen next. It’s a perfectly self-aware way to wrap up the season, although let’s hope the wait will not be nearly as long as Mr Poopybutthole suggests.