WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Rick and Morty Season 5, Episode 2, "Mortiplicity," which aired Sunday on Adult Swim.
Season 5 of Rick and Morty kicked off with a bang as Rick's family deals with an Aquaman/Namor wannabe and Morty messes things up with Jessica by dimension-hopping. However, while they seemed to have recovered somewhat from that ordeal, they're plunge into even more danger in the form of a new clone saga. As the bloody debacle concludes, it brings back Rick and Morty's most controversial clone: Space Beth.
"Mortyplicity" finds a series of Smith families on the run as they struggle to discern if they're decoys or the real folks. It's all part of an emergency protocol Rick created in case people hunted them down. The problem is, no one knows who's real, and it gets complicated with the decoys making decoys too, breaking all the rules Rick set down for them.
To make it worse, the families evade a series of squid people, with the twist being these are also decoys, so it's a never ending cycle of the Smiths killing the Smiths. This makes it confusing as to who's who, but the final moments reveal the whereabouts of the real family. They're in Rick's ship off-world, and oddly enough, Space Beth is with them. Even stranger, they seem to be happy with each other after visiting her and going on an adventure. However, when Rick mentions that the decoys have been killed, the Beths are alarmed, wondering what he's been up to.
It shows that Rick hasn't learned from his cloning experiments, even after the Space Beth drama. She debuted in Rick and Morty Season 4, Episode 10, "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri," with Rick not knowing if Space Beth was the clone or if the one at home is. It created a lot of drama, as Space Beth sought revenge against her deadbeat dad, but she soon found peace. In fact, both Beths didn't need to know the truth.
Now, it seems like peace could be shattered, reigniting the debate on who's the real Beth. Granted, Rick did that cloning session out of love, not necessity and survival like with these decoys. Still, this kind of experimentation will continue to annoy Summer and the rest of his inner-circle because they have no idea if any of them are clones or decoys.
It might even lead to Rick messing with his mind after the last wipe to figure out which is the real Beth at long last. He's wrestled with the guilt of mixing them up during the procedure, but this could be the impetus to solve one of Rick and Morty's biggest mysteries.
Rick and Morty stars the voices of Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer and Sarah Chalke. New episodes air Sundays at 11 p.m. ET on Adult Swim.
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