After nearly eight years, five seasons, and several internet-wide controversies, including a divisive debate surrounding a 10-story-tall mutant tall child of questionable circumstances and a nationwide panic over a McDonald’s dipping sauce, the day we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived – Rick and Morty has officially revisited its Back to the Future roots with a brand new teaser. On Friday – which coincidentally, is a day after Adult Swim celebrated its 20th birthday – the Twitter account for the Cartoon Network programming block dropped a new clip to tide us over ahead of the cartoon’s season 5 finale on Sunday, offering a glimpse at the lives of a live-action Rick and Morty in universe C-132.
Featuring the pair stepping out of a glowing green portal into a real-life version of their iconic garage, the clip starts with a riff of Han Solo’s iconic line in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.“Morty, we’re home,” says our Rick, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, a.k.a Doc Brown from Back to the Future, adding in a belch for good measure.
“Aw, jeez,” adds Morty, played by It‘s Jaeden Martell.
Now for those of you that aren’t avid members of Rick and Morty‘s fandom (firstly, congratulations), Back to the Future has long played a role in the iconic cartoon. Co-creator Justin Roiland, who also voices Rick when he’s not being portrayed by Lloyd, has cited the films as his inspiration for Rick and Morty, basing the series off of a short he made entitled The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, a parody of the beloved movie franchise, according to E! News.
Although the short-lived crossover has sent fans into a frenzy in just 14 seconds (a feat I’m sure we can all relate to), the now-viral clip seemingly left more questions than it actually answered. Will we learn more about the flesh-inhabiting variant of the iconic pair in the season’s final two episodes or is the teaser another one-off clip? What does it mean that IRL Rick and Morty appear in universe C-132, when the show’s primary locale is a mere five universes away in C-137? Most importantly, will the series’ fandom ever realize their wildest dreams of witnessing a real-live version of Pickle Rick, a joke that is most definitely not extremely old, and overrated, although to be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty, because the humour is extremely subtle, as without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head, yada yada, you get the point.
Top Image: Adult Swim
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