Rick And Morty Season 9 Episode 7 Recap And Ending Explained 

The ongoing season of “Rick and Morty” continues to leave a lasting impact on viewers with each of its brilliant episodes, with the latest one, “Mortgully: The Last Rickforest,” making learning about biological evolution wacky and fun. Visually and aesthetically pleasing, the episode utilizes philosophical beats to simultaneously adds innovation and comment on the differing perspectives of both the series leads.

Spoilers Ahead

How Did Rick and Morty Get Imprisoned by the Tree Warden?

As the episode begins, Rick and Morty are seen flying to a dense vegetation-covered planet orbiting a black hole. Their aim is to extract the high-value sap from the core tree from which the planet-wide forest has grown. However, the core tree, a sentient entity later termed the Tree Warden, is not just a helpless evergreen that is going to sit back and let these greedy, exploitative sapiens destroy its flora. The Tree Warden captures Rick and Morty, drags them under the ground, and dissolves their biological bodies to extract the core essence of their life/ consciousness. These core consciousnesses are then transported to a giant hollow earth construct created in a separate subterranean world, which is completely regulated by the Tree Warden himself, where Rick and Morty begin their journey for reformation as single-cell organisms. As it turns out, Tree Warden’s sap has attracted numerous other alien species to the planet, and all of them have suffered the same fate. It doesn’t take Rick long to realize they need to evolve by consuming the cellular materials of other inmates and through mitosis. Thankfully, the evolutionary process requires less time in this biosphere created by Tree Warden, which means they can grow into complex, evolved creatures in a short span of time. Rick surmises the only way to get out of this prison is by breaching the surface, and to do so, they need to evolve into creatures who are capable enough. However, the biggest challenge is that Rick doesn’t have his tech at his disposal, and dying in any creature form of the evolution cycle results in their core essence returning to their basic form, an amoeba-like thing. 

Initially, Rick and Morty try the conventional fish-amphibian-mammal evolutionary route, which fails when Morty dies, prompting Rick to kill himself, and the both of them to go back to basics. They plan to fly up to get to the surface world by evolving as birds, but are killed upon getting close to the central root of the Tree Warden, which transports the core essence of the inmate beings into this biosphere. Eventually, they evolve to the level of primates. Rick tries the violent survival of the fittest method to dominate over a bunch of big apes in order to build his own army, aiming to come up with a way to escape. In the midst of this, monkey Morty dies, but unlike previous reincarnations, monkey Rick doesn’t follow suit to return to single-cellular form. He commits to his idea of building a diversified, enslaved animal army of alien inmates, and practically abandons Morty.

Morty’s Failed Emancipation

While Rick believes violence and coercion to be the ideal way to approach this situation, Morty adapts a different method after getting acquainted with a peaceful alien and his friend group. Morty genuinely starts enjoying the diversified lives this evolutionary cycle has to offer, and like his pacifist friend, believes that acceptance of their fates will convince the Tree Warden to free them from their reincarnation cycle. On the other hand, Rick exploits his enslaved animal army to find a way to scale the central root of the Tree Warden, only to fail at every attempt. Trying to cut, burn, or destroy Tree Warden by attacking the central root proves to be totally ineffective, much to Rick’s chagrin. 

While Rick has been caught in the inescapable pattern of violence, Morty finds himself caught in the loop of nonviolence, as he realizes that no matter how much he appreciates the different lives he has lived, there is no way out of this biosphere prison. The show points out how Morty’s pacifist friend has actually been afflicted with institutionalization syndrome – a scenario where inmates condition themselves so much to survive prolonged incarceration that they believe their captive existence is liberating and hope for miraculous liberation. Morty learns from his friend that no one actually opts to become a plant unless they have truly given up on their life, and decides that’s what he is going to do next. The culmination of Morty’s conflicting experience through several life/evolution cycles is to become the ultimate life-giver, a tree, and he takes rebirth as a plant cell. Soon, Morty grows into primordial greenery, then evolves into complex tree lifeforms, and growing into a full-fledged forest, finds true fulfillment by providing sustenance to other inmate alien-animals. Hope or desire for freedom doesn’t drive him; Morty has found his emancipation in the true sense of the term by becoming the very essence that sustains this evolutionary cycle, by becoming part of nature itself. Plant Morty grows and, unknowingly, finally breaches the surface world by climbing up through the central root.

The Tree Warden didn’t stop him, probably because he didn’t anticipate an inmate would actually seek reformation by becoming one with nature itself. Morty assumes this was the true goal all along, and believes that now that he has learned his lesson, the Tree Warden will finally release him. However, the Tree Warden turns out to be a scumbag who has no intention of reforming and liberating his prisoners. The perennial, inescapable life cycle provides him sustenance, and he wants to keep the inmates captive forever. The system survives on conflict and the alien inmates killing one another in the name of continuing the life cycle. The Tree Warden punches plant Morty back to the subterranean world, and it’s back to basics once again. Rick, who has been observing Morty’s choices all along, takes his own life to join him. He didn’t abandon Morty, he deliberately didn’t drag him to his violent world to see how Morty’s method fares, and trusted his grandson’s decision. A welcome change to the control freak, exploitative Rick whom we know – perhaps the life cycle loop taught him a thing or two as well. Reuniting with Morty, Rick sympathizes with him by mentioning the game is rigged from the get-go, and together they come up with an ingenious plan. 

Did Rick and Morty Beat Tree Warden?

By calling upon all the alien animal inmates by doing a version of Rafiki’s Pride Rock call from “Lion King,” caveman Rick and plant Morty reveal their plan to starve the Tree Warden by motivating the inmates to no longer engage in violence against each other. Instead, inside an enclosed environment of a cave, plant Morty sustains all the captives on his own. As life flourishes inside the cave under Morty and Rick’s guidance, the Tree Warden grows weaker, and the dense vegetation of both the surface and subterranean world dies off without nutrition. 

An angered Tree Warden visits the cave, when Rick sets off the next part of his plan by shaking the entity and breaking him off of the central root. The Tree Warden is decapitated, and after trying to ignite conflict between the different species in vain, he dies. Sunlight/ black hole light bleeds through the opening to the surface world, conveying that the inmates are finally freed. However, there is this question about how to get back to their original bodies, which Rick and Morty haven’t figured out just yet. They ask the inmates to keep on believing with their eyes closed, and then take this chance to slyly escape the planet, abandoning them to their fates in the process. Returning to their reality, Morty and Rick get back to their original bodies using Rick’s tech thingamajig. At the Smith household, Morty takes Summer’s biology book to take a look at the evolution chapter – hoping to find some similarity to his recent experiences, but is weirded out instead. 

What Happens in the Mid-Credit Scene?

In the mid-credits scene, Rick and Morty are seen leaving a space diner, when they come across one of the fellow animal-alien inmates who has regained his original form, and pretend not to know him to evade accountability for leaving all the inmates they’ve left stranded. The inmates were able to escape the planet, and somehow, they too found a way to return to their old bodies. This particular alien married another fellow inmate of the prison world, and it turns out they are still happily married in their original form. 

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