Rick Potion No. 9

"Rick Potion #9" is the sixth episode of Rick and Morty. It premiered on Adult Swim on January 27, 2014, was written by Justin Roiland, and was directed by Stephen Sandoval. In the episode, a love potion goes wrong, creating a virus that begins to infect the entire world population, making everyone fall in love with Morty. The episode has been well received, and was seen by about 1.7 million viewers when airing.^[1]

Plot

Morty likes a girl at school named Jessica, but can never talk to her. So, he asks Rick for a love serum to make her interested in him. Upon Morty giving Jessica the serum, because she had the flu, the serum goes airborne, and spreads throughout the whole planet, making everyone not directly related to Morty fall in love with him. To counteract the DNA used in the original serum, Rick makes an antidote from Mantis DNA. This antidote proceeds to make the world's population become Mantis people that now want to eat Morty after mating with him.

While this is going on, Jerry feels jealous over Beth being called in late for work. Jerry goes to the hospital she works at, and, after killing one of Beth's infected coworkers, the two rekindle their marriage.

Hiding from the infected population, Rick makes a third virus to try and undo all the previous ones. But as the virus was created from various DNA sources, it only further mutates the world's population into barely humanoid blobs that Rick calls "Cronenbergs." Rick decides the situation is beyond repair and instead finds another dimension where a version of himself and Morty had created a successful antidote, but also died the same day. Once Rick and Morty enter their new reality, the latter visibly traumatized by the transpired events and his counterpart's death, they bury their alternate selves in the backyard before assuming their place with none the wiser.

In the post-credits scene, Jerry, Beth, and Summer being the sole normal humans left in the ruined world, a Cronenberg version of Rick and Morty appear from a dimension where Cronenberg Rick accidentally turned the whole world into normal people.

Cultural references

The title of the episode is a reference to the song "Love Potion No. 9". When Rick and Morty are taking the place of their dead alternate selves, the song "Look on Down from the Bridge" by Mazzy Star, plays.

Reception

Zack Handlen of the AV Club gave the episode of B+, liking the deconstruction of the creepiness of the love potion trope.^[2] Joe Matar at Den of Geeks liked the episode, saying that while it wasn't as funny as the previous episode, it had a wonderfully dark ending, and liked Jerry's action hero subplot.^[3] David Roa of Dead Screen loved the ending, saying that "while it was very Deus ex machina, it was still satisfying." He compared it to how people treat the planet, and just move to a new location after destroying where they live.^[4] The reviewer from Junkie Monkeys said that the episode was his second favorite up until this point, behind only “Anatomy Park”.^[5]

Justin Roiland has called this his favorite episode of the first half of the first season, both because he thought it was paced well, and due to that fact that he loved how insane it got in the end.^[6]

References

External Links

• Rick Potion No. 9 at the Internet Movie Database