Warning! This article contains spoilers for Rick and Morty: Crisis on C-137 #4Arguably the most iconic episode of Rick and Morty is the one that featured Mr. Meeseeks for the first time in the series, and one comic reveals that this episode-in-question actually has a secret ending T.V. fans didn’t get to see.
Rick and Morty introduced Mr. Meeseeks in the season 1 episode, “Meeseeks and Destroy”. In the episode, Rick and Morty are going off on a fantasy adventure of Morty’s choosing, so Rick gives the other three members of the Smith family a Meeseeks Box. This box has the power to summon a being known as a Mr. Meeseeks, and the Meeseeks’ only purpose is to complete one designated task (preferably simple) and then cease to exist. However, if a Meeseeks can’t complete a certain task, it will remain alive forever, leading it to lose its mind in just a matter of hours–and this is where the drama of the episode starts. Jerry asks his Meeseeks to help him improve his golf game, and when the Meeseeks can’t, that Meeseeks summons more Meeseeks and so on–though all of them fail to help Jerry. This leads the Meeseeks to come to the conclusion that the only way to reach oblivion is by killing Jerry. However, before they kill him, Jerry succeeds in improving his golf swing and all the Meeseeks promptly vanish–at least, that’s what fans were led to believe.
One Mr. Meeseeks Survived Rick & Morty’s “Meeseeks and Destroy”
In Rick and Morty: Crisis on C-137 #4 by Stephanie Phillips and Ryan Lee, Rick and Morty are on the run from literally every enemy Rick has ever made across the multiverse. From the Vindicator’s Supernova to the king of the sea himself, Mr. Nimbus, there are no shortage of increasingly deadly villains who want to see Rick dead–and the person who brought them all together was none other than a Mr. Meeseeks. At the start of the issue, readers are given a flashback to the day Jerry improved his golf swing and helped all the Meeseeks reach their deaths–and while most of the Mr. Meeseeks were able to disappear, one of them survived. Not knowing why he was still alive, this Mr. Meeseeks decided that the only thing to do to ensure his own death is to kill Rick–but he’d need help, which is how Rick and Morty found themselves in this multiverse-wide crisis event.
While this Mr. Meeseeks may have survived “Meeseeks and Destroy”, Rick made sure to end his reign of terror once and for all in this comic. One interesting thing about Mr. Meeseeks is that their existence depends entirely on their perception of an accomplished task, not the Meeseeks’ actual accomplishment of said task. So, Rick told the Meeseeks that the reason he was still alive was that–before the events of “Meeseeks and Destroy”–Rick secretly gave Mr. Meeseeks the task of finding all of his enemies (which the Meeseeks did) and then killing them, followed by the order for the Meeseeks to forget that task and help Jerry with his thing. This explanation as to why he didn’t disappear in “Meeseeks and Destroy” was enough for this Meeseeks, and he then turned his attention on Rick’s enemies rather than the scientist himself. Obviously, this was a lie, and this Meeseeks was merely caught in some convoluted web of tasks stemming from Jerry’s ineptitude–but it worked all the same.
Not only was this Rick and Morty comic a fun adventure that featured the greatest villain in the series’ history along with the fan-favorite Mr. Meeseeks, but it was also a truly epic callback to one of the show’s most beloved episodes, while also letting fans see the episode’s secret ending that wasn’t shown on T.V.
Rick and Morty: Crisis on C-137 #4 by Oni Press is available now.