The Star Trek Secret Behind Rick and Morty's Ultimate Adult Swim Villain

Season 9 of Rick and Morty blasted back onto Adult Swim and immediately pulled the pin: Evil Morty is back in play.

Evil Morty returns, now positioned as Rick's 'Q'

Evil Morty first popped up in Season 1 as the rare antagonist who could actually keep up with Rick's science-fueled chaos. The Season 9 premiere brings him roaring back, and while Rick ultimately turns the tables by the end, Evil Morty winds up stashed in what the show frames as a kind of time prison. Translation: he is not gone, he's parked.

Showrunner Scott Marder told ScreenRant the team deliberately leaned on Star Trek for how to use him this time. Specifically, they looked at Q from The Next Generation — that omnipotent troublemaker who could snap his fingers and wreck Picard's day — as the template for a recurring, untouchable chaos agent who can push Rick around in ways basically nobody else can.

"[We wanted to] find a Q-type character that could be this chaos agent for Rick. He's kind of holding all the cards. He's in a rarefied air that very few people can push Rick around. So, that kind of led us down a road on a premiere that began giving us an idea of where the season could go."

What the premiere sets up (and what the cast says about it )

• Harry Belden, who took over Morty and Evil Morty after Justin Roiland's exit, says the power dynamic in the premiere is not ambiguous: "Rick definitely isn't doing this of his own volition." Evil Morty is blackmailing him. Still, Belden notes the villain actually values Rick as a mind he can spar with — someone he can bounce theories off in a way he can't with just any other Rick — which makes their scenes feel like a different, weirder kind of partnership.
• Spencer Grammer (Summer) calls the comeback a solid payoff and loves that the episode ultimately reasserts a classic Rick trait: he is always five moves ahead. In her words, he plans everything, and he will outmaneuver Morty — even Evil Morty. She also jokes that she wants a full-on Shawshank riff of Evil Morty tunneling out of that Time Prison with a spoon. On the performance side, she shouts out how distinctly Belden separates Morty from Evil Morty while playing against himself.
• Net result: Evil Morty has been repositioned as the show's season-long big bad energy — a Trek-y wildcard who can yank the story in any direction — and even though he's boxed up for now, the door is wide open for him to pop back out sooner rather than later.

The read on where this could go

If you're hearing 'Q' and thinking 'ongoing thorn in Rick's side who shows up to reroute the plot whenever he wants,' you're on the right track. The premiere feels like a mission statement: Evil Morty is no longer just a clever mirror for Morty — he's the guy holding the remote, and Rick hates that. Expect more chess, fewer fistfights, and at least one smug grin from behind metaphorical prison glass before the season is over.