Rick and Morty season 9: finally a new lease of life for the series (review)

Like its very clever first episode, the series succeeds in restarting the machine at full speed, to begin a new era…

Might as well start at the end.

In a narrative pirouette of which he has the secret, Dan Harmon once again managed to surprise us with the first episode of season 9 of Rick and Morty.

Entitled “There’s Something About Morty”, this opening immediately marks a major turning point for the series. An episode so huge, so definitive in its stakes, that it almost acts as a possible series finale.

Spoiler alert!

Just as the Smith family finally seems to be experiencing some form of peace – or at least a lull – everything explodes when Morty discovers that Rick is secretly trading with… Evil Morty! The great antagonist of the series blackmails the old scientist and threatens to erase the entire Smith family from the multiverse if he refuses to go on adventures with him. Rick accepts and has been forming a totally improbable duo for some time with his worst enemy! We have to admit: Rick and Evil Morty look absolutely classy together. The two form the coolest pair of space warriors the series has ever imagined, combining crazy gadgets, absurd powers and totally over-the-top fights (up to a kind of crazy cosmic Kamehameha). Their alchemy works wonderfully when they face The Collective, a gigantic entity clearly eyeing Galactus and seeking to absorb all the universes… Their mission is still brilliantly accomplished… to the great despair of the real Morty, consumed by an almost pathetic jealousy.

Then the episode ends with this long-awaited final face-to-face between Rick and Evil Morty. Dan Harmon goes there wholeheartedly. Their extreme confrontation explodes everything until the old scientist traps the big bad of the series, inciting him to manipulate time. The Time Police then intervene and arrest Evil Morty, locked away for good. The End?

Rick and Morty might as well end, for good, with this season 9 opener. But it’s only the beginning. The start of a new era. Rick and Morty is being reborn.

In recent seasons, the series seemed to go in circles. By constantly subverting expectations, she had ended up becoming a prisoner of her own genius. The episodes piled up meta concepts, parodies and twists without always rediscovering the creative madness of the beginning. The series remained brilliant at times, but less essential. As if she survives more on her heritage than on her inspiration.

Season 9 changes that. Not by trying to redo the first seasons. Not by desperately searching for a new “Pickle Rick.” On the contrary. This year, Rick and Morty finds something more precious: the pleasure of chaos. The feeling that anything could happen at any time. That the series can still take its characters in unexpected directions without losing their completely broken humanity.

Above all, this new season finally seems to have found a balance between the great stupid sci-fi spectacle and the existential emotion which was the strength of the series at its peak. Behind the absurd jokes and interdimensional concepts, there is again a real melancholy, a real fatigue of the characters, a real fear of loneliness.

As Rick and Morty slowly approaches 100 episodes – it has already been renewed until season 12 – the series no longer gives the impression of being out of breath.

Rick and Morty season 9, to watch in France on HBO Max from May 25, 2026.