Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Rick and Morty season 6!
Rick and Morty season 6, episode 5, “Final Desmithation” continues one of the show’s weirdest trends, once again using incest as a major story element. Rick and Morty is known for pushing the line on what’s allowed, featuring stories centered on all kinds of taboo topics, but incest has become a frequent theme throughout the show’s more recent seasons. Although this episode is far from Rick and Morty‘s first foray into incest storylines, “Final Desmithation” takes this bizarre trend and makes it even weirder.
“Final Desmithation” opens on the Smith family eating at a Panda Express before heading on a family trip to the zoo, with the family members reading the paper from their respective fortune cookies. Although most of the Smiths get generic fortunes, to everyone’s surprise, Jerry’s says that he will have sex with his mother. Because of this, Rick and Jerry stay behind while the rest of the Smiths head to the zoo, allowing Rick to run some tests on the probability of Jerry’s fortune coming true. Due to his findings, the duo begins to investigate, eventually infiltrating and taking down the Fortune 500 fortune cookie company, preventing Jerry from having incestuous sex with his mom at the very last second.
Rick and Morty season 6, episode 5 is the fourth Rick and Morty episode in the past two seasons to have a heavy focus on incest, which is a pretty strange topic to revisit so frequently. This episode comes just after “Bethic Twinstinct,” in which clones Beth and Space Beth get into a romantic and sexual relationship, with the episode hinging around Summer and Morty’s disturbed reactions to this duo. Even before that, though, Rick and Morty season 5, episode 5, “Rickdependence Spray” revolves around Morty’s giant mutated sperm accidentally fertilizing the giant egg of his sister, Summer. Later, in season 5, episode 7, “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion,” Morty and Summer’s giant incest baby once again appears, revealing the consequences of “Rickdependence Spray.” That’s four episodes that revolve around incest throughout seasons 5 and 6, turning this weird trend into a pattern – but the most recent example makes it even weirder.
Rick & Morty Season 6 Episode 5 Makes The Incest Trend Even Weirder
Previous incest stories were already weird, but “Final Desmithation” doubles down on how bizarre the show can be. At least previously, the Giant Incest Baby was created by sperm and eggs that were outside of Morty and Summer’s bodies, meaning that the episode featured no sex between the siblings. “Final Desmithation,” though, very nearly shows Jerry’s maternal sexual encounter, with an exposed Jerry and his mother flying towards each other just before Rick stops them. Previously, Rick and Morty‘s incest stories only focused on the products of incest or the relationship between clones, with the latter spawning debate about if it is even incest. “Final Desmithation,” on the other hand, solely revolves around Jerry almost having sex with his mother, making the episode by far the weirdest example of Rick and Morty‘s weirdest trend.
With Rick and Morty‘s frequent use of incest, its always possible that an even weirder story could come down the line. With the number of episodes Rick and Morty has left, there is a lot of room for the show to outdo its bizarre story pattern. As it stands, though, Rick and Morty season 6, episode 5, “Final Desmithation” is the strangest entry in Rick and Morty‘s weird incest trend.
New episodes of Rick and Morty season 6 release Sundays on Adult Swim.