Did “Rick & Morty” Predict the Pandemic?
We’ve seen countless memes about all of the things The Simpsons predicted: everything from smartwatches to 20th Century Fox being purchased by Disney. The Hollywood Reporter even has a full list of how The Simpsons family have seen the future.
So how exactly did everyone’s favorite nihilistic cartoon, Rick & Morty predict the virus sweeping the nation…and the world?
First, let me start by saying Rick & Morty is one of my favorite shows. It’s dark AF and totally irreverent. As a nerd, I’ve always leaned into intellect to resolve emotional situations. Plus, I love all things space, sci-fi and I have a pretty dark sense of humor.
Rick & Morty has also captured the pathos of being a man in American society. From an early age, we’re taught no feeling is ever really okay to be expressed. If you’re too happy you’re gay or people think you’re an idiot. If you’re too sad you’re a wuss or people will just ghost you. Anger becomes the catch-all emotion that society lets us express. That, or depression.
Fathers don’t hug their sons. Expressing love through the lens of toxic masculinity can feel more like a neg or an emotional slap than actual kindness. All of this makes more of our emotions confusing and distorted. The socially acceptable response is to put it into your body by leaning into sports or hitting the gym. Or you distance yourself completely with books and hyper intellectualizing everything.
Pero like…Why Rick Sanchez?
Rick’s ultimate flex is he’s literally the smartest man in the universe. This is proven by the countless aliens, governments, and even rats that get the smackdown from his smarts. He kills without mercy and goes after what he wants but his fatal flaw is he’s a miserable S.O.B. It’s in part because he’s totally disconnected from his emotions.
Before I explain how Rick & Morty predicted the Pandemic let me just point out the show has never addressed why he has a Latinx/Spanish last name. As a Puerto Rican, I’ve always looked for Latinx people on TV. Representation matters so I will take Rick as vaguely Latinx and run with it because God knows there are not many of us on television.
Like Rick, I leaned into my intellect to escape the trauma of my life. I was a chubby nerd with an abusive father, allergies and asthma, and a sad origin story. My grandmother grew up in a hut with a mud floor and her family couldn’t afford shoes so she was only able to complete the third grade. She was then a single mom who raised my mother who also was a single mom.
When I was born, my mom saw how white I looked and insisted I only speak English. This was to give me every opportunity but it did cut me off from my family. Imagine trying to talk to your family when you can, at best, make simple small talk. When I look at successful Puerto Ricans like J Lo, Rita Moreno, or Lin-Manuel Miranda I wonder if they understand something I do not. But I digress…
Emotions were my fatal flaw, too. I didn’t know how to feel anything other than dissatisfied. I was depressed all the time. Part of the reason was, I didn’t know how to be happy. It was not modeled to me. Whether it was the bullies at school, my bully of a father, or my family that was so focused on surviving they didn’t know how to check in on how I was feeling I just leaned into books.
I think the reason so many people have depression is not because of their issues. It’s because they don’t know how to feel their feelings. Depression is a state our body enters in response to overwhelming emotional stimuli. Your body is telling you, “Enough!”
The complexity of my emotions made me depressed. Having a dad who “loved me” but was abusive was hard to understand as a child. Knowing my mother was working two jobs to keep me alive but unavailable was hard for me to make sense of. How could I be mad at people doing their best? Add to that all the other pressures all kids go through it was too much. So parts of me shut down.
Alexithymia is the term for emotional blindness. Like with so much of human emotions in America these days, it’s pathologized. But let’s be honest, how many people truly know how they feel at a given moment?
If you ask someone how they’re doing they may say I’m “good” “fine” or “depressed.” But how do we express emotions in a country where 49% of the population is told expressing their feelings makes them less of a man?
What I love about Rick & Mory is not just the crazy improvised moments, twisted jokes, or sci-fi adventures. I love how it touches on that deep feeling of nihilism that is really just a mask for not knowing what the hell you’re feeling. Arguably, while Rick Sanchez is the world’s smartest man when it comes to portal guns and interdimensional travel he knows eff-all about interhuman relationships.
So how did this show predict the pandemic?!?
Remember Unity?
In episode 3 of Season 2, Auto Erotic Assimilation, Morty and Summer meet one of Rick’s exes. It’s a hive mind that has taken over a planet. Everyone lives in peace because they’re all connected by….wait for it… a virus.
Wait, what?
The episode starts with Rick, Morty, and Summer singing “love, connection, and experience.” They stumble upon Unity and Rick and the hive mind reconnect.
Rick’s trauma, addiction, and unsatisfied urges drive Unity from her goal of unification to pleasing Rick, who, spoiler alert, can never be pleased. As Unity does space drugs, she loses control of the planet and a race war emerges. Hmmm, doesn’t that also sound familiar?
Now while the episode did not flat out state a Pandemic would sweep the planet set to the backdrop of a racial outcry of injustice. It did touch on a lot of the themes of the Pandemic: both socially and emotionally.
Was Covid-19 here to bring us into unity? There was a time when people came together to celebrate doctors and medical staff. People came together to protest racial injustice. All of those celebrities sang “Imagine.”
In my journey of emotional healing, I’ve gotten a little more “woo woo.” I teach a spiritual stand-up comedy, class, I do psychic readings, I love crystals. But I’ve also always been a die-hard pragmatist and believer in science. That belief just has expanded to include metaphysics.
I believe on the other side of those cold hard facts masking unexpressed emotion is a candy shell of fear that keeps us from expressing what’s in the very center, something greater: love.
I was able to beat my depression by feeling my friggin’ feelings. I used therapy, healthy living, getting enough sleep, and self-care sure. But I also learned how to feel. When I found the difference between sadness and depression I was able to be sad for a short amount of time vs. being depressed all the time.
When I was mad I said something rather than repress, suppress, or avoid it. My anger was a message from me to set or assert a boundary. And, as hard as it can still be when I’m happy I try to enjoy it. I still may only feel happiness at a 7 out of 10. But I keep raising my ceiling of happiness.
When I learned the difference between joy and happiness I realized something amazing. You can be joyful all the time. It’s like the opposite of depression. In depression, everything has a dark cloud. With joy, everything has a light. It’s the difference between people who have a break-up and swear off love and someone who writes a song about the beauty of a broken heart.
Many have mocked New Age philosophy for years but wouldn’t a Pandemic that hit the entire planet usher in a New Age? Isn’t the main difference between us and sci-fi series like Star Trek the fact that we are simply not united as a planet but instead cling to our petty differences.
So while the world is ravaged in war over arbitrary lines and petty grabs for power. I like to think that we can be better. If you’ll indulge me one spiritual belief to share with you. I believe that art is, for lack of a better word, magical. When artists get inspiration from wherever it comes from they cut to something universal. When we share our stories or our fantasies we share some secret of the human condition.
So I do believe that on some level in the same way the group of writers of The Simpsons will stumble on something that comes to be. The creators of Rick & Morty stumbled onto a prediction of what was coming. And I hope that we can learn to let go of our trauma, drama, negativity, and depression and seek a little Unity.
