The third trailer for season 5 of Rick & Morty teases with it even more insight into what surprises the upcoming outing will hold. Since debuting in 2013, Rick & Morty has become a huge hit for Adult Swim, and it’s not hard to see why the series has earned itself such a sizable fanbase.
Raunchy, ribald, and surprisingly smart at times (as well as gleefully dumb at others), Rick & Morty has spent the last four seasons parodying everything from HBO hit Game of Thrones to classic blockbuster Jurassic Park via its gory, silly spoof of family sitcoms and sci-fi tv conventions. Ostensibly the story of the titular super genius and his well-meaning grandson, Rick & Morty mostly uses its premise as an excuse to wreak havoc and mock genre fare from fantasy to horror, to sci-fi. Judging by its first trailer, Rick & Morty season 5 will offer more of the same, with goofy spoofs of Hellraiser, Voltron, and kaiju movies on the way.
However, just because Rick & Morty can be relied on to mock media properties of all forms doesn’t mean the series is particularly predictable, and many fans have been scouring the few glimpses of the upcoming season’s action for an idea of what surprises lie in store. So far, the promotional material has been stuffed with Easter eggs that could potentially help fans guess at the plot of coming episodes (although knowing the show, these could also be misdirects designed to mislead fans). The first trailer for season 5 offered evidence of a superhero parody and a horror spoof, while the second trailer for Rick & Morty season 5 proved the Smith family will work together more often this time around. So, what new reveals are hidden within the third trailer for Rick & Morty season 5, and what can they tell viewers who are eager to see the long-awaited series debut in late June?
Rick & Morty Get Arrested (By Something Bigger Than Cops)
This third trailer opens on the title characters being place under arrest, but the fact that they’re surrounded by an anti-portal shimmer makes it unlikely that this is standard earth cops doing the arresting. Luckily, the earlier Rick and Morty season 5 animatic trailer teased inter-dimensional travel methods that didn't rely on portal guns, so eagle-eyed fans already know Rick and Morty will be able to escape this scrape. However, this doesn’t answer who the ones doing the arresting are. Their awareness of portals could signal the return of the Galactic Federation, bringing with them a more mythos-centric season 5 after the largely lore-ignoring antics of season 4 (which occasionally made a mockery of the idea that fan-favorite characters or recurring stories would ever return in a meaningful way).
After the wild action-packed antics of the season 4 finale, bringing back the Galactic Federation as a threat to Rick could be a canny move for the series. Rick’s real enemy, order, has never been better symbolized on the series than in the Federation’s villainous bureaucracy. The new season will see less conflict between the Smith family members and more adventures wherein they team up and work together. With this in mind, it would be fittingly ironic for an episode to feature Rick corralling the Smith family together (i.e, enforcing some order) so they can team up and take down an enemy for the crime of… trying to enforce some order.
A Thanksgiving Special May Be On The Way
Speaking season 5’s apparent theme of the Smith family working together, although the season debuts in June, the sight of turkeys cocking guns and a massive bird being roasted by Rick after destroying the Lincoln memorial makes the odds of a Thanksgiving special seem pretty likely. This would not be the first time that Rick & Morty have put together a holiday special, with the show’s third episode being a Christmas special (as well as a Jurassic Park parody, and a Fantastic Voyage spoof). However, releasing a Thanksgiving-themed episode in mid-summer would admittedly be a bizarre choice even for Rick & Morty, so there is still a chance that the well-armed killer mutant turkeys have another explanation. Also making the odds of an early holiday episode slightly slimmer is the fact that Rick & Morty technically already have a Thanksgiving special, albeit in the form of a two-minute viral short.
Dogs Will Be Villains
Judging by the sight of Morty facing down a medieval castle’s worth of mutts aiming a set of crossbows at him, dogs will play a major villainous role in at least one outing of this season — as they did in the season 1 episode "Lawnmower Dog." What part these new dogs will play is unclear, although this does explain the sight of an armed dog chasing Rick through the Smith house in the second trailer for season 5. Knowing Rick, the odds are good that the title character is the one who wronged man’s best friend and it’s possible the Smith family are being pursued thanks to Rick's misdeeds, but how the eponymous pair managed to cross sentient pets is impossible to discern from the brief glance seen in this teaser. One clear thing is that — judging by the battlements seen in the clip — Rick & Morty will be spoofing fantasy tropes as the series did in the season 4 Game of Thrones spoof, as well as "Meseeks and Destroy" (season 1, episode 5).
Jerry Has A Job Interview
Jerry having a job interview may not seem like a big deal, but typically, when things appear to go well for Rick & Morty's resident luckless sadsack, it is evidence that something sinister is afoot in the background, whether it is that his new paramour is a Predator-style alien bounty hunter or his success at work was engineered by a race of alien scam artists intent on tricking Rick. And sure enough, in the third trailer for season 5 what seems like a pretty mundane occurrence seems to promise more mayhem. When Jerry mentions his upcoming job interview, seconds later a massive explosion splits the family’s sitting room. Could it be another case, like "M Night Shaym-Aliens" (season 1, episode 4) or "Total Rickall" (season 2, episode 4), of a reality that seems too good to be true masking something more insidious under its cheery surface? Only time will tell, but the explosive ending to the trailer does guarantee one thing for certain. Despite the ambitious meta-antics of season 4, season 5 of Rick & Morty will not be slowing down the action and comedy of the series quite yet.