Rick and Morty Season 7 Brings Back a Great Character — With Intriguing Results

Spoiler warning: The below article contains full spoilers for Season 7, Episode 2 of Rick and Morty, which aired on Adult Swim on Oct. 22.

Isn’t it nice getting a visit from an old friend? Well, in the world of Rick & Morty, sometimes that can mean things are about to hit the fan, someone’s coming to save the day — or even that something even bigger than the problem at hand is in the works. It seems as though that’s exactly what was going on in Season 7’s second episode, particularly in its post-credits tag featuring an appearance by none other than Memory Rick. 

So, what exactly led to Memory Rick’s mini-cameo? 

The second episode — titled “The Jerrick Trap” — revolves around a mishap in which Rick and Jerry’s minds get mashed together after a tragic accident in the garage. Following an argument about, what else, Jerry’s stupidity, the pair decide to swap minds to make a point. Rick, however, offs himself due to the sheer misery of being in Jerry’s mind, and Jerry accidentally kills himself by messing with the gadgets in Rick’s body. 

Then, the AI system in the garage gets to work on reanimating the pair — but considering their brains were swapped at the time of death, they both end up with half of each other’s minds in the fix. They spend the beginning of the episode trying to rectify that fact, at first naturally at odds with one another, but then find themselves needing to save Morty from an intergalactic crime lord which gives way to a buddy cop-style friendship. But of course, we all know Rick and Jerry are way more alike — and thus would make great friends — than they’d ever admit.

Naturally, the rest of the family ends up getting themselves kidnapped by the crime lords following Rick and Jerry’s win against those same gangsters while saving Morty. So the episode comes to a climax when Rick and Jerry fuse their bodies together to create a Human Centipede-esque being with eight legs, the all-powerful Jerricky, to rescue them. After saving his family, Jerricky plans to leave the family and continue living as this morphed being — but, in a moment that harkens back to Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Jerricky steps on Rick’s rake in the driveway, which smacks him in the head and snaps him out of a trance. 

“Morty, we’re still in here!” Rick reveals as he screams. “There’s a memory of myself as a 30-year-old. He kept our egos intact! He saved us! It was a whole action movie, Morty. Memory Rick — he’s still trapped in here!”

Who is Memory Rick?

Memory Rick, who dons a teal shirt with a black vest and long hair, first appeared in the series over two years ago, during the eighth episode of Season 5 titled “Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort.” In this episode, Rick is left home alone while the family goes on a trip, and in his boredom, he resurrects his best friend, Birdperson, using one of his inventions. 

During the finale of Season 4, Rick was forced to insert his own consciousness into Birdperson in order to save him from dying — which is where he meets Memory Rick, inside Birdperson’s own memories. He encounters a version of himself in his 30s with long hair, who is a direct result of Birdperson’s memory of him then, not necessarily his actual 30-something year old self. Memory Rick is adamant on saving Birdperson and is a crucial part of that effort as the pair weave through Birdperson’s memories, including the Battle of Blood Ridge, a major war effort and part of the R&M lore fought by Birdperson, Rick, and Squanch against the Federation.

As everyone tried to escape Birdperson’s mind, Memory Rick decided to take down Tammy, Birdperson’s girlfriend-turned-Federation double agent, and seemingly stayed behind to sneak into Rick’s mind and live as a sentient memory. Even after Rick agrees to give him a body, he declines and stays put. But ultimately, that ends up getting a little tricky come Season 7 Episode 2.  

In post-credits tag of “The Jerrick Trap,” we meet Memory Rick once again, sifting through Jerry’s useless mind trying to find a way out — because he got stuck there when the garage swapped their brains back. Plus, Jerry, even while depicted as a teen in his memories, sees all technology as being held together with springs, gears, and pulleys, so he reveals in voiceover that he’s having a hard time building anything that will help him get out. 

Funnily enough, the whole “action movie” plot Rick mentions with Memory Rick helping Jerricky doesn’t get shown to us — but maybe that’ll be part of Memory Rick’s future within the series. Which leads us to a big question…

What does Memory Rick’s cameo set up for future storylines?

Well, that’s the thing. We don’t know exactly. That’s the beauty of this hilarious sci-fi series — not only could it go anywhere, but the show has proven itself to be unafraid of really going there and doing the crazy thing no one would expect. 

So while we can’t say for sure where it’s leading, one thing is definitely for certain regarding Memory Rick’s resurgence: it isn’t just a gimmick or an easy callback to an old episode just for fun. Something is brewing, something that might not even be resolved — or even introduced — within this season. 

To be fair, Rick & Morty has been greenlit through Season 10, and the creative team is already well on their way with working on seasons that won’t air for some time yet. So it stands to reason that Memory Rick is going to be very important in the future — but we have yet to find out where he will return to complicate things further. At the end of the day, we wouldn’t expect anything less from a Rick.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.