The season 8 premiere of “Rick and Morty” is a dark, twisted affair, and at first, it seems like it’s all Rick’s fault. In past seasons, Rick has wreaked havoc by forgetting to label all the dangerous stuff in his garage, but this time he’s ruined things by falling asleep at the wrong moment. It’s a shame, because his plan for disciplining his grandkids — throwing them into a Matrix-esque simulation designed to teach them not steal Rick’s phone charger — was pretty decent parenting by “Rick and Morty” standards. Sadly, he fell asleep and accidentally let them live 17 years in there within a couple of hours. 

Advertisement

However, similar situations have happened on the show already. In season 2, Morty spends an entire lifetime in the VR game Roy, and it’s horrifying when he wakes up and realizes the past 50 years of his life never happened. In season 6, Morty plays Roy again, but this time the game malfunctions and his consciousness is fractured across all of the game’s digital society. Once again, several decades of Morty’s life fly by here, but “Rick: A Mort Well Lived” is happy to brush the implications of this aside. 

Season 8’s “Summer of All Fears,” meanwhile, dives right into the question of how these sort of experiences would affect someone. When Morty and Summer awaken from their 17-year stint in the matrix, they’ve changed and grown. Summer has the mind of a confident, educated, semi-mature woman in her mid-30s, and Morty has the mind of a hardened Vietnam veteran. 

Advertisement

But their time in the matrix was even darker than it first appears: Not only was Morty pushed to kill himself over and over again in a war against Osama bin Chargen, but it turns out this war was a sham orchestrated by Summer herself. Summer knew how much mental damage she was inflicting on her brother, but that never stopped her from putting him through it anyway.

Was Summer in the wrong for torturing her brother for years on end? Well, yes. But to be fair, she was doing it for a good cause. She believed this manufactured war was the only way for her and Morty escape the matrix, and for all we know, she was correct. We have no idea how much longer Rick would’ve been asleep for, and we know that an hour in real life equals several years within the simulation. Rick probably would’ve lived long enough to get the kids out of there before they withered away into severe old age, but Summer had no way of knowing that for sure. 

Advertisement

But unpacking the ethics of Summer’s actions come second to unpacking the implications this has towards her future. Summer was ruthless in this episode, channeling her inner-Rick far more than we’ve ever seen this version of Morty do. It’s a character arc that raises the question: We’ve dealt with Evil Morty and Evil Rick already, but what about Evil Summer? Where is she in this show’s multiverse?

By the end of this episode, Summer has had her memory of adulthood wiped and has returned to normal. But although she doesn’t remember what happened, we still do. We’ve seen what she’s capable of, so what more are the other Summers capable of? The show’s established that there are infinite realities out there, so what about the realities where Summer doesn’t get her mind wiped at her end? How exactly does that reality play out?

Advertisement

Evil Summer is such a compelling concept, because her presence on the show has always been understated. Rick and Morty take up the main focus, so most of Summer’s defining moments occur in B-plots or the occasional spotlight episode. Whenever Summer does get her chance to shine, she almost immediately proves herself to be both competent and ruthless. She manages to out-“Die Hard” a “Die Hard” fanatic in “Rick: A Mort Well Lived,” and she effectively leads a whole planet of face-huggers into a golden age in “Promortyus.” She’s someone who could, if she wanted to, cause massive problems for the entire world around her. So why hasn’t the show given her the chance?

Advertisement

Fueling the Evil Summer theory further are the little apparent hints for it sprinkled into the series. There was “Night Family” in season 6, which revealed that Summer harbors a deep resentment towards Rick in her subconscious. Then there’s that promo for season 7, where Summer raises the idea of a “Citadel of Summers” where she “summon[s] a Summer battalion to crumble the intergalactic patriarchy.” The line was a joke, sure, but it shows that the idea of a Citadel of Summers is at least on the writers’ minds. As the show treks on, it seems like only a matter of time before the writers decide to take the Summer Citadel seriously and realize it’s actually TV gold. 

But the main reason Evil Summer remains such a compelling idea is because it simply seems fun. Even just in this season 8 premiere, the diabolical place Summer takes us is delightful to watch. Much like how Rick was more fun when he was a careless drunken jerk in season 1, Summer’s more fun when she’s allowed to put her morals aside and go full wicked. The first episode of season 8 gives us a small taste of how compelling an Evil Summer arc could be, and we hope that by the season 8 finale, we’ve gotten the full meal. 

Advertisement