Review
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty season 8, episode 3.
Rick and Morty’s latest episode is named after a classic Clint Eastwood western, but it’s a perfect parody of a completely different one. Rick and Morty season 8, episode 3, “The Rick, the Mort, and the Ugly,” takes its title from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the final chapter in Sergio Leone’s iconic Dollars trilogy. The threequel sees Eastwood’s Man with No Name racing across the war-torn American frontier to reach a fortune in Confederate gold before his two rivals get there first. But the episode doesn’t parody that plot.
Instead, the episode takes its cues from a different western classic starring Eastwood. It takes place in the aftermath of the Citadel’s destruction, and shows what happened to all the surviving Ricks and Mortys who lost their home when the trans-dimensional city-state was blown up. The clones who have no original reality to return to have been stranded in a lawless wasteland within the Citadel’s space. Homesteader Rick, the Rick who’s drawn out of his peaceful retirement to return to his life of violence, is a delightful homage to one of Eastwood’s best characters.
Rick & Morty Season 8, Episode 3 Is A Great Parody Of Unforgiven
Homesteader Rick Has A Similar Arc To William Munny
At the beginning of “The Rick, the Mort, and the Ugly,” our Rick and Morty land in the Citadel’s space and see all the displaced Rick and Morty clones trying to scrape together an existence after losing their home. That’s the last time we see our Rick and Morty until the end of the episode, as it quickly shifts its focus to the clones. This is one of the only Rick and Morty episodes to focus on different Ricks and Mortys, which is always a gamble, but it ended up being a great little standalone story.
Homesteader Rick is trying to lead a quaint, peaceful life ing the destruction of the Citadel. But when a gang of villainous Ricks shows up, he’s forced to go back to his old life of violence to exact vengeance. This is a spot-on spoof of William Munny, Eastwood’s character from his revisionist western masterpiece Unforgiven. Munny is a notorious ex-gunfighter who now works on a farm. He’s pulled out of retirement and reluctantly takes up arms again to avenge a sex worker when she’s attacked by a client.
Homesteader Rick is one of the best versions of Rick that the show has introduced. He’s as badass and capable as Rick C-137, but unlike Rick C-137, he has a conscience.
Unforgiven deals with a lot of the same dark themes as Rick and Morty’s latest episode: class, redemption, and the cycle of violence. Homesteader Rick is one of the best versions of Rick that the show has introduced. He’s as badass and capable as Rick C-137, but unlike Rick C-137, he has a conscience. Like Munny, he wanted to leave his violent past behind him, but still answered the call when his gunslinging skills were requested.
Rick & Morty Already Named A Different Episode After Unforgiven
Season 7, Episode 5, "Unmortricken" Already Took The Name
Since the show began, Rick and Morty episodes have often been named after famous movies. “Ricksy Business” is a play on Risky Business; “Mortynight Run” is a play on Midnight Run; “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind” is a play on Close Encounters of the Third Kind; “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” is a play on Big Trouble in Little China. “The Rick, the Mort, and the Ugly” is named after a different movie than the one it parodies, because there was already an episode named after Unforgiven last season.
Rick and Morty airs new episodes on Adult Swim every Sunday.
Season 7, episode 5, “Unmortricken,” was the landmark episode in which Rick finally tracked down Rick Prime and exacted gruesome vengeance. Much like Unforgiven itself, it explored the notion that revenge doesn’t solve anything. In fact, violence can be so demoralizing that a person actually feels worse after they’ve gotten revenge than before. Rick and Morty’s writers are clearly big fans of Unforgiven; they’ve now told their own version of Eastwood’s revisionist gem twice.
