Rick and Morty S4E1: Morty's Blind Faith

“To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head.” Such are the words of an anonymous copypasta-writer. Physics? Please. It's existential philosophy you need to honor the brilliance that is Rick and Morty. But do not worry... I'll walk you through it.

Rick and Morty Season 4 is an excellent example of the show playing and presenting and proposing the ideas of existentialistic nihilism. The first episode of the season especially borrows its themes from everyone’s favorite doom thinking Frenchman, who was daring enough to claim that hell is other people, while questioning why he considered the chair he was sitting on a ‘chair’: Jean-Paul Sartre.

For Sartre, life itself had no inherent meaning. The only reasons for living another day are the ones we create ourselves. Humans are born without purpose. There is no reason for living which comes with a terrible cost: freedom. Sartre even called it a cruel condemnation. It is a terrible tormen. An everlasting anguish. An entrapment in purgatory.

The conviction to freedom comes from the possibility of everything. No meaning means that are also no reasons to act a certain way. Sartre’s philosophy pities those who work-eat-sleep-repeat, for they are living in bad faith. They uphold this toxic cycle of emptiness. A continuous dragging of life. A never-ending, meaningless quest for reason. They have yet to wake up to non-society-taught options to lead a life. They chose to stay asleep out of ignorance, angst or ease. They sleep through life.

This is what Sartre called living in bad faith.

We see the consequences of living in bad faith in the first episode of Rick and MortySeason 4. In this episode we see Morty finding a crystal, which when held, shows one how they will die. Things escalate quickly as Morty uses the death crystal to go towards his preferred way of leaving our mortal world. Through the episode we see Morty killing Rick, refusing to revive him, and murdering countless others as he blindly follows the path shown by the death crystal. Towards the end of the episode Morty is nothing more than a zombie. A from-Akira-stolen vessel. A body with no will, freedom, nor humanity left.

Morty’s damnation is Sartre’s critique of living in bad faith taken to an extreme. Morty has become blind to the possibilities that life has to offer. Morty wants to die in the arms of his crush Jessica, and to get there he evens turn down the opportunity to go skinny-dipping with this dream girl. He has become obsessed with the idea of certainty and grown fearful of the dread that comes with freedom.

It is easier to live life blind to all its opportunity. For when life is something that happens to you, instead of making it happen yourself, everything that are you unsatisfied with can be blamed on anything but yourself. But this is a lie.

Existence is the condemnation to freedom.

According to Sartre, misery is everyone’s own making through ignoring the possibilities that there truly are. Since there is no inherent meaning to anything, there is nothing stopping us from abandoning everything and living in the woods. Only ourselves. Our misery is our own fault. Obedient are we all to our own freedom which is our own responsibility.

Morty’s zombified human vessel by the end of the episode becomes a metaphor for people choosing to live life unsatisfied and blind to the possibilities around them. It is not until Rick has stolen the death crystal from him, that Morty comes to life again. His certainty is gone, and misery is returning to him as he regains freedom. However, at least now Morty has the choice. The freedom. The responsibility to be as miserable as he wants to be.

Rick and Morty Season 4 is brilliant because it serves as a reminder that we are all slowly withering away as we participate in a meaningless existence, too afraid to recognize life as insignificant, and, as a consequence we will never truly live the life we want.