Spoilers

I finished season 8 of Rick and Morty this afternoon, leaving me with just the remaining 8 episodes so far of season to watch (I am not sure when new episodes are released on HBO Max. It would be fun to catch up to the current run before it wraps up the season).

I was not as much of a fan of season 8. I found most of season 8 to be average to slightly below average. It wasn’t bad per se, but I just did not think the plan for the season worked as well as previous seasons.

Then, among the first 4-5 episodes, I found a few of them to be in the same vein as season 8… disappointing. It did not make me feel confident about the whole season.

Among those first five, “Summer of All Fears” was one I did not love. It was a Summer-centric episode and, historically, those have not been my favorite. I also was not a huge fan of “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly” which featured a story with other Ricks, specifically a Wild West version that reminded me of Clint Eastwood from Unforgiven. While I love that movie, this one bugged me. Another trend I am not a fan of is when we follow a character that is not our Rick (and I know that can be convoluted).

However, I did like the Space Beth episode “Valkyrick” a lot. The whole trope of a heist movie spelling out the plan of the heist as we see it on the screen was shown here, but the images on the screen showed the heist falling apart because of too much of a dependence on “Cisco.” I really loved that section of this episode.

“The Last Temptation of Jerry” was another of the first episodes that I thought was really funny, if not sacrilege. the whole Easter bit with the rampaging Easter Bunny was really funny and co-opting the Tim Allen Santa Clause plot was great too.

Episode five, “Cryo Mort a Rickver,” was another that did not impress me, though I found it better than the previous episodes that I thought were lacking.

Then, things turned around for the show, and the rest of the season felt like big hits.

I liked how Space Beth and Beth turned themselves into little girls who were anything but sweet. I liked the episode where Jerry gets lost on the road thanks to another Jerry. It was cool to see Morty’s son Junior make a return, which I think I called back when Junior was originally created.

The finale with Rick trying to purge the memories of his wife Diane from his mind so he could be more emotionally open was a very good episode. I loved the ending where Rick pretended to have killed “Memory Rick” and “Memory Diane” but instead set them up in a memory storage device. The finale was difficult to follow at times, but there is no doubt that it was a strong finish.

Then, episode seven was one of my favorite episodes of the series. “Ricker than Fiction” saw Rick and Morty watching the latest movie from one of their favorite franchises, “Maximum Velocitree,” but they responded with anger and vitriol. The dialogue was great as they were clearly mocking those people online who claim things like a certain movie “ruined my childhood” or some idiotic statement like that. They went to Warner Brothers to complain and came across James Gunn (yes, voiced by James Gunn himself).

They got into an argument with James Gunn and Rick decided to fix the next script to make it better. Rick designed a machine called the Movie-Lizer which can create a movie if given a script. It also allows the user of the machine to change the script easily. This is obviously a commentary on AI and its intrusiveness in the movie industry. Rick and Morty get sucked inside the Movie-Lizer and find themselves in the story, which they have to try to fix before it is too late. This is such a meta episode, but it is also remarkably funny and clever.

I loved the guest star voice of James Gunn who ran across Zack Snyder, who was also an actual voice for this episode. This unbelievably meta and hilarious encounter made me respect Zack Snyder way more. He was really funny and was allowing the script to give him crap.

The second half of the season was considerably more consistent and engaging than the beginning and “Ricker Than Fiction” is probably in my top 10 of all time.