Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for the Rick and Morty season 5 finale.
Rick and Morty season 5 closed by detonating the multiverse, and in season 6 the show must go even bigger. Season 5, episode 10 “Rickmurai Jack” revealed the extent of Evil Morty’s plans and shed light on Rick’s tortured backstory. Revealing that the multiverse has been entirely the construction of a Rick Sanchez, Evil Morty destroys the Central Finite Curve, designed by the Ricks as a wall between their meticulously constructed multiverse and other realities. Season 5 ends with Evil Morty stepping into a brand-new universe of possibilities, finally at peace and able to be his own man.
With 50 episodes remaining from Adult Swim’s 2018 70-episode renewal, the possibilities for future series of Rick and Morty now seem endless. The multiverse has been a key element of the show since the beginning and has arguably introduced these concepts to a wider audience in time for the big Hollywood studios to explore them via Marvel and DC movies. By ending Rick and Morty's multiverse at the end of season 5, the Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon-created series can now go bigger as they look towards the future.
Given the significance of the Central Finite Curve, dramatic revelations and cliffhanger ending of Rick and Morty season 5, the series now has to go bigger than ever before. With all that's happened concerning Rick's backstory and Morty's personal growth, moving away to more simple, linear storytelling would feel incredibly regressive. As such, future seasons need to be even more ambitious and boundary-pushing, lest the show begin to feel like it's already reached its dramatic potential.
Evil Morty’s victory over Rick in the season 5 finale is a big moment for the series. It comes at the end of a two-part story that sees Rick and Morty’s fragile bond come apart at the seams. Having spent time away from each other with crows, and a mentally unstable criminal respectively, Rick and Morty confront their toxic relationship. In detonating the Citadel of Ricks and breaking free from the Central Finite Curve, Evil Morty is doing what Prime Morty hasn’t been able to do – reject Rick and live an independent existence. More important than that, however, is that Evil Morty has finally broken Rick’s controlling grasp over reality. This provides some great dramatic potential for future series.
Rick Sanchez is a control freak of megalomaniacal proportions, and Evil Morty’s actions allow the series to challenge this character trait. By removing the Citadel of Ricks and breaking beyond the Central Finite Curve, Rick and Morty season 6 can introduce Rick to a chaotic universe that is wildly out of his control and genius calculations. Despite Rick’s aversion to “serialized storytelling”, a series with 50 more confirmed episodes must keep things fresh, and challenging him in this way would certainly fulfill that brief. Now that he’s confronted his own mistreatment of Morty, and by extension Beth and Summer - but probably not Jerry - Rick may have to rely on his family more than ever.
A chaotic universe beyond Rick’s control will also give the writers free reign to be more creative than ever before. Chaos has always been at the heart of Rick and Morty and season 5's finale allows the show to fully embrace it. Audiences have become very comfortable with the series’ high concept storytelling, and are likely to follow them willingly into wherever the show goes next. The logical next step for this would be to explore the Omniverse. The Omniverse is the umbrella for every possible Rick and Morty multiverse, metaverse, realm, and bubble universe. It’s a far bigger concept than the series has tackled so far, and would make Marvel and DC’s journeys into the Multiverse look small-scale by comparison. One possible scenario is a Rick Sanchez, separated from his Citadel and Central Finite Curve, looking to regain some control. He, or another rogue Rick survivor could set their sights on controlling the Omniverse, and by extension every possible reality. It’s a possibility that demonstrates that, despite detonating their multiverse, Rick and Morty has a lot of creative life still in it.