Rick and Morty – A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort Review

Rick and Morty’s sixth season reached its penultimate episode. This time Rick and Morty end up in an adventure involving Medieval knights and political tensions across the Solar System.

When waiting in line for a popup food truck, Morty’s chivalry gets noticed by two members of the Knights of the Sun. They offer Morty a chance to join the order but the catch is Morty needs to cut off his penis. This spirals with Morty destroying a brief system and accidentally starting a war spanning the Solar System.

“A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” was standard fare for Rick and Morty. It has a typical setup where Morty’s basic level of human decency leads him to get into trouble. This happened in “Meeseeks and Destroy,” “Mortynight Run,” and “Rattlestar Ricklactica” because these were adventures that ended in death and destruction. Due to “A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” having a typical setup for a Rick and Morty episode, it risked being a repetitive experience.

This issue of repetitiveness wasn’t helped when Morty accidentally started a war. This wouldn’t be the first time Rick and Morty started a war. Summer accidentally started a race war in “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” and in “Rattlestar Ricklactica” Morty caused a Terminator scenario. Even in “Rick: A Mort Well Lived” there was a religious war and had a war montage. The most notable part of “A Rick in Mortur’s Mort” was the use of Pink Floyd’s “Goodbye Blue Sky” and any excuse to play a Pink Floyd song is justified.

How “A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” tries to overcome the repetitive issue was shown by different character reactions and interactions. When the Knights of the Sun followed Morty to Earth, Morty set out to get rid of them using science and logic. He disproves their religion by revealing the Spectre of the Sun wasn’t the reason why the planets revolved around the Sun. It was fun to hear Rick praise Morty for destroying his first religion. However, in classic Rick and Morty fashion, Morty’s actions end up making things worse.

The other change in characterisation involved Rick. Rick started the episode his usual cranky self because he refused to stand in line with Morty and berates his grandson for considering the Knights of the Sun offer. Yet Rick changed his approach. After Rick and Morty leave the Sun because Rick promises to be more supportive. This was done for comedic effect since Rick had a more relaxed attitude when he was with Morty and told Morty he did well when clearly he wasn’t.

There was a more serious side to Rick being more supportive: Rick realising he can’t run from his problems. Morty suggests that he and Rick switch universes when the war erupts, but Rick rejects this. Rick has come a long way. Even in the first episode of Season Six Rick and his family abandoned a universe after Mr. Frundles destroys Earth. Rick and Morty’s solution was to fake their deaths, like in “The Vat of Acid Episode” but it was still a step in the right direction.

“A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” had a South Park quality to it. South Park is known for having crude humour and absurd situations and “A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” had that. It would be easy to imagine Stan or Kyle facing a similar situation as Morty and pointing out how ridiculous penis removal for the sake of tradition is. “A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” also shared a philosophy with South Park since Morty came to the conclusion that traditions may be stupid, but they are important.

“A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” isn’t going to be considered vintage Rick and Morty. It does recycle a few too many ideas from previous episodes. At least some of the ideas were repackaged and some character growth was on display.