Fans are still waiting for the arrival of Rick and Morty season 4, but their absence isn’t keeping the show’s stars from poking fun at the plot of Avengers: Infinity War and its snap-happy villain, Thanos.
After releasing a shorter than expected third season, fans were faced with good news and bad. Rick and Morty signed on for 70 more episodes, but when those will actually begin to roll out on Adult Swim… is anyone’s guess. Thankfully the comic book version of Morty Smith and his out con control grandfather is helping to tide fans over. And in the case of Rick and Morty #48 calling out Marvel’s most recent blockbuster for an “anticlimactic,” possibly even “idiotic” finale.
While fans obviously know how often Rick and Morty steals from plenty of shows and movies, as that’s basically the premise of the series, they haven’t set their sights on superhero cinema too often (instead favoring more iconic, classic works of science fiction or fantasy). But in Issue #48, the duo put Infinity War in their crosshairs.
The short story “Hit Me, Space Baby, One More Time” by Kyle Starks, Marc Ellerby, and Sarah Stern begins like many episodes of Rick and Morty: with Morty existing in a seemingly perfect fantasy land completely unrecognizable to his real life. His father is a successful businessman, his mother is a classic adoring housewife–Jessica is even his steady girlfriend. When Morty realizes that Rick is confined to a wheelchair because he sacrificed himself to save his grandson, he knows something is wrong. It’s then that Rick snaps Morty awake, and explains the truth: Morty has become a cosmic god.
Apparently grabbing onto a mystical flower that grants cosmic powers over reality, Morty has evolved into a ‘space baby’ form, right out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. With their enemies fast approaching, Morty vanquishes their entire army by turning one of his “Aw Gee"s into literal, giant letters, crushing them into oblivion. When Rick points out that Morty’s mastery of reality means he could have wiped them out of existence with a simple snap of his fingers, Morty points out that actually would have been worse, because… how anticlimactic it would be to use his powers in so mundane a fashion. Thanos snaps his fingers, but Rick and Morty fans demand a bit more.
And they aren’t done throwing shade at Thanos yet. When everything returns to normal, and Morty–like Thanos–decides to hand over the powers of a god once his mission is finished, his family can’t help but point out all the missed opportunities.
The family raises some valid points that have also been leveled at Infinity War, and the arguable stupidity of Thanos’ plan to halve the universe. When Thanos only had an army of Chitauri to re-balance overcrowded worlds, sure, murdering half the population randomly made some sense. But with the powers of a god, able to rewrite reality throughout all Creation… Thanos just did the exact same thing. Rather than creating a “paradise” by doubling resources and food, doubling the number of habitable worlds throughout the universe, or curing equine influenza, Thanos pulled something that Morty would accidentally manage. Bolstering the case that both may qualify as “real stupid idiots” in Rick’s eyes.
But hey, Morty did remember to give himself a new robot girlfriend before relinquishing his godlike powers. Which is more than Thanos got for his trouble.
Rick and Morty #48 is available now at your local comic book store, or direct online from ONI Press.
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