3x04 Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender

[7.8/10] It’s occasionally hard to know how to unpack an episode of Rick and Morty. The show has so many layers to it, of irony, of parody, of character, of story, of theme, that’s hard to separate each into discrete groups and consider what exactly the episode is trying to say. I consider it a feature, not a bug, but it does sometimes make the show hard to write about.

That said, there’s a few things (I think) we can take away from the episode. The first is that, as evidenced by this episode and the series finale of Community, Dan Harmon does not particularly care for The Avengers and its related films, now the baby of his old friends The Russo Brothers. “Vindicators 3” does a nice job of parodying these films with the Vindicators themselves, poking fun at oddly specific or impractical problems with convenient or unnecessary solutions, and through Rick more directly commenting on them.

The show has fun playing around with colorful superheroes and mixing them into R&M’s sad sack world where people more readily die and friends and families are more apt to turn on one another than be united by the latest adventure. Bringing in Gillian Jacobs certainly helps the proceedings, and the escalation as the heroes keep getting picked off in Drunk Rick’s amusing Saw-like series of death rooms fits the weird creativity of the show.

Now I’m a fan of the MCU movies, so I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the criticisms of the episode, but I also think that’s kind of the point. The mouthpiece of the show (and to some degree, it’s creators) is Rick, and while Rick rails away at the formulaicness and lack of complication to the Vindicators (and by extension, The Avengers), the show also acknowledges that everybody loves them and hates him, and that it’s not unfounded.

One thing I appreciate about this season of Rick and Morty is how the show’s been committed to exploring its protagonist as a bad guy, and filter it through the lens of the people around him coming to realize that. Morty is his companion through all this excitement (and his sandwich shop punch card to pick an adventure is a nice touch) and seeing Rick not only rain on his parade and excitement about working with The Vindicators, but realize that his grandfather is the one keeping him from more of these sorts of adventures, that he’s being treated as guilty by association, is a very interesting tack.

Hell, I love the fake out of this one, where the group supposes that Morty is the only thing Rick thinks is worthwhile about The Vindicators, and the episode plays up a tearful drunken confession, only to reveal that it’s Noob Noob, the Mr. Poopybutthole-esque underling at The Vindicators’ base, whom Rick was blubbering about. More and more, we’re getting indications that Morty’s questioning how much his grandfather cares about him, how much he wants this insane man to be in his life anymore, and I’m more more and intrigued by it.

Of course, the whole thing naturally (and amusingly) ends with a big party and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style rap about the heroes, but the scars are still there. As much as Rick derides The Vindicators (and by extension the du jour superhero movies) as insignificant relative to him and what he can do, they’re something that other people appreciate, something that makes him seem less uniquely brilliant and superlative, and maybe that’s what really bothers him. Rick is the type who always has to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, and Morty’s starting to realize he’s tired of it.