If you ask a casual fan about the best half-hour of television in the last decade, they’ll probably mention a dragon or a meth cook. But if you ask a Dan Harmon devotee, they’ll just say "The Ricklantis Mixup." Or maybe they'll call it Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 7. Honestly, it’s the same thing, but the title swap was the first of many bait-and-switch moves the creators pulled that week. It’s a masterpiece. Truly.
Remember the hype? Everyone thought we were going to Atlantis. We didn’t. Instead, we got a gritty, multi-layered political drama set entirely within the Citadel of Ricks. It’s an episode that feels less like a cartoon and more like The Wire meets Training Day, only with more belching and existential dread.
The Citadel of Ricks: A Society Built on a Lie
The genius of Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 7 lies in its world-building. We’ve seen the Citadel before, but always as a joke or a background setting. Here, it’s a living, breathing, dying city. It’s a place where "the smartest man in the universe" is actually just a guy working a 9-to-5 at a wafer factory. It’s depressing. It’s real.
Think about the Rick who works on the assembly line. He’s just as smart as C-137 Rick, supposedly. Yet, he’s trapped by the same bureaucratic gears that grind down everyone else. The episode shows us that when you gather thousands of the "most special" people together, nobody is special anymore. They just become the working class. This isn't just a sci-fi trope; it's a biting commentary on how systems of power consume individuality.
The episode follows four distinct storylines:
The "Training Day" riff with a rookie Rick cop and a jaded, corrupt Morty cop.
A group of Morty schoolkids (The Morty-Blows) looking for a mythical portal.
The factory Rick who finally snaps and takes his boss hostage.
The political campaign of Candidate Morty.
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Each of these threads could have been its own episode. Somehow, the writers crammed them into 22 minutes without it feeling rushed. That’s a feat of engineering.
What Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 7 Got Right About Power
Politics is usually boring in animation. Not here. Candidate Morty—later revealed as the terrifying Evil Morty—is one of the most effective villains in modern fiction. He doesn't have a giant laser. He has a silver tongue.
He wins the election by appealing to the common Rick and Morty. He tells them what they want to hear: that the division between the Ricks and the Mortys is artificial. It’s the "us vs. them" rhetoric we see in real-world elections every cycle. The moment he takes power and executes the shadow council? Chilling. The music choice, "For the Damaged Coda" by Blonde Redhead, became an instant cultural touchstone. It was a haunting callback to Season 1, proving that the showrunners were playing a very long game.
Most shows forget their lore. Rick and Morty uses it as a weapon.
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The Tragedy of the "Simple Rick"
There’s a specific sequence in Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 7 that sticks in my throat. Simple Rick. He’s a Rick who found happiness in his daughter rather than science. The Citadel literally kidnapped him, hooked him up to a machine, and turned his feeling of "pure joy" into a flavored wafer topping.
It’s dark. Like, really dark.
It highlights the core tragedy of the Rick-concept: happiness is a commodity to be exploited. If you aren't being "useful" to the system, the system will find a way to harvest your soul. This isn't just "edgy" writing; it's a sophisticated look at late-stage capitalism through a funhouse mirror. The factory Rick who kills Simple Rick and then gets rewarded with his "job" is the ultimate cynical punchline. He thought he was rebelling, but he was just auditioning for a different role in the same machine.
Technical Brilliance and Why It Ranks So High
On IMDb, this episode consistently sits near a 9.8 or 9.9. Why? Because it’s a self-contained epic. You don’t even need our protagonist Rick (C-137) to be present for the stakes to feel massive. Justin Roiland—regardless of the later controversies surrounding his personal life—performed a Herculean task here, voicing nearly every single character in the episode. Each Rick and Morty had to sound distinct enough to carry a narrative weight.
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The direction by Dominic Polcino is also worth a shout-out. The way the camera moves through the slums of the Citadel feels claustrophobic. It’s a stark contrast to the bright, adventurous colors of the "Atlantis" adventure we never got to see.
Misconceptions About Evil Morty’s Rise
A lot of people think Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 7 was just about a "bad kid" taking over. That misses the point. It was about a failed state. The Citadel was already rotting. The Council of Ricks was incompetent and elitist. Evil Morty didn't "break" the Citadel; he just walked through the door they left unlocked.
The episode suggests that the "smartest" people are often the most susceptible to populist movements because their egos prevent them from seeing themselves as part of a "mob." They think they're too smart to be manipulated. They weren't.
Lessons from the Citadel
If you're looking for the "point" of it all, look at the Mortys. The "Morty-Blows" kids realize that the "wishing portal" they’ve been looking for is just a garbage dump. It's a metaphor for the show itself: searching for meaning in a universe that is fundamentally a dump.
The only way to win is to stop playing the game. But as the ending shows, even that’s nearly impossible when the game has a new, much more efficient manager.
Next Steps for the Rick and Morty Fan:
- Watch for the Background Details: On your next re-watch, ignore the main dialogue and look at the signs in the background of the Citadel. The "Morty Academy" posters and the Rick-themed storefronts tell a much larger story about the economy of the multiverse.
- Track the Music: Listen to how the score shifts from the cinematic, orchestral themes of the Rick Cop storyline to the synth-heavy, ominous tones of the election.
- Compare to Season 5: To see the full payoff, watch this episode back-to-back with the Season 5 finale. It transforms the "Evil Morty" arc from a cool twist into a cohesive tragedy about escaping a "Central Finite Curve."
- Analyze the Script: For aspiring writers, study the pacing of this episode. It manages to balance four distinct tones (noir, coming-of-age, political thriller, and psychological horror) without losing the audience. It’s a masterclass in ensemble storytelling.