Rick And Morty Season 9 Episode 2 Recap And Ending Explained: Did Rick Return To His Old Self?

The issue of existential dread explored with artificial intelligence, manufactured sentience has been a recurrent topic in the world of “Rick and Morty,” most prominently seen in the third season with the episode “Beth’s Existential Crisis.” The second episode of the ongoing season returns to the same topic to highlight Rick’s yearning for a stable, uneventful, quiet life, and adds a heavy dose of identity crisis into the mix to make things more interesting. Emotionally charged and quite mature while dealing with questions of free will, Rick’s expectations from life, and his perennial quest to fit in, “Rick’s Days, Seven Nights” is a brilliant watch through and through.

Spoilers Ahead

Ted’s Life: Rick’s Vacation Consciousness

The episode begins with Rick, in full homesteader mode, moving through the wintry wilderness in his RV, and one of the front tires of his RV gets busted while trying to dodge a deer crossing the road. Like an experienced driver, Rick swiftly fixes the tire using a tried and tested old school method and shares a glance with the deer before driving off. Not long after, he reaches a countryside bowling alley, Dream Lanes, where he meets with his friends – Bowser, Little Mike, Big Mike, Antonio, and the owner of the joint, Marjorie. They know Rick as a certain humble PVC product seller named Ted, who visits them during his two month winter vacations each year, and they have a jolly good time bowling and fishing. In reality, this tech-backward primitive world is several lightyears away from Rick’s current home planet, C-137, and Ted is Rick’s summer vacation consciousness, created as a completely independent, artificial sentience. Ted enjoys the company of his friends and shares an on-off relationship with Marjorie. Despite being a mad genius who can create anything and have everything at his fingertips, Rick chooses to live as a modest salesman who cherishes a grounded life, away from all the crazy shenanigans he usually gets up to. Ted is the representation of Rick’s yearning to experience the domestic, peaceful life he knows he never can. 

However, things take a strange turn when Ted gets confronted by a gun-wielding burglar, triggering the in-built defense mechanism in Rick’s body. Seeing the burglar getting zapped by tendrils sprouting from his hands, Ted freaks out and returns to his RV. Trying to test the defense mechanism, Ted tries to stab his hands, which triggers a failsafe mechanism as pre-recorded holographic messages of Rick start playing to explain the truth about Ted’s existence. Hologram Rick presents a mechanism to Ted to offer him two choices, he can either let things go on as usual, forget everything that happened, and press the blue button, or he can become Rick again by pressing the red button. Ted, too confused to realize what is happening, chooses neither, and leaves his RV. Ted reflects on the strange revelation that he is a being who exists for someone else’s entertainment, and while coming to terms with the truth about his identity, spends the night with Marjorie. The next day, he wrecks the RV, paying to need to Hologram Rick’s warnings and goes on with his regular life like nothing happened. 

Ted Returns To Rick’s Reality

Morty, who helped Rick record those failsafe holographic messages in the first place, realizes something has gone wrong during his grandpa’s summer vacation, and he calls Ted. Morty tries to convince Ted to return to his reality, but quite obviously, this artificial consciousness is in no mood to relinquish control to his creator and give away the life he has built. He refuses to enter the egg spaceship sent by Morty to bring Ted back to Rick’s reality, and his friends rescue him by crashing their car to destroy the eggship. 

Ted reveals everything to his friends, and together, they decide to take on Rick’s extraction fleet, consisting of specialized drones sent to bring Ted back. Ted still has Rick’s genius, and with the assistance of his friends, he is able to build a fortress of sorts in Marjorie’s bowling alley. Even though they manage to take down the first fleet of Rick drones, Marjorie meets a tragic end by getting caught in the conflict. A devastated, aggrieved Ted decides to use Rick’s tech to reach his reality on his own to take revenge, and his friends decide to join him as well. Ted initially refuses to let them accompany in fear of making them face a similar fate to Marjorie, but his kind, supportive friends aren’t willing to take no for an answer. Ted and his friends build a rocket using the RV, set up with Rick’s advanced technology, and Ted is able to pinpoint the location of Rick’s planet. 

Ted and co. are able to reach the C-137 Universe and directly crashland in Smith household. However, Ted’s vengeful mission gets abruptly halted when he realizes Rick has a family of his own, and recognizes Morty to be the one calling him back then. Ted also realizes the kind of life Rick had lived upon accessing his workshop and inventions.

Did Rick Return to His Old Self?

Meeting the Smiths, and seeing Rick’s life as a genius inventor, Ted finds himself conflicted upon realizing he has led two starkly different lives. He can no longer feel content being the simpleton Ted, especially after knowing he is part of this whole other reality, and naturally starts gravitating towards the identity of Rick Sanchez. It doesn’t help that when his friends request him to build them fancy gadgets, Ted further assumes Rick’s identity, but continues to reel from the loss of the life he willingly walked away from. Eventually, Ted sends his friends back home by accessing the portal, but the feeling of loss continues to torment him. 

To cope with the feeling of loss, Ted/Rick goes on a drunken journey through the multiverse, until he stumbles upon Ted’s reality at long last. The scientific advancement and gadgets provided by Ted have done more harm than good, as he realizes upon reaching one of his friends’ funerals. Ted is distraught further when his friends blame him for dragging them into his mess, and he leaves the reality for good. Rick stops time to keep one of his friends from attacking him, and sees the same deer he met long ago back then. The deer, who remains unaffected by Ted’s manipulation of the flow of time, represents destiny. Had Ted’s RV collided with the deer, perhaps the failsafe protocol would have been activated, and things could have turned out much different. In his desperation to become both Ted and Rick, he has not been either for quite a while. Returning to his reality, Ted decides to destroy any sign of his past life, including his picture with Marjorie, much to Morty’s dismay. Finally, Ted requests Morty to push the red button, in hopes of his inner torment ending. After pressing the red button, Morty becomes surprised upon speculating whether the mechanism has worked, as Rick appears to be just the same. Rick mentions the irony, the mechanism has worked, which means Rick has returned to his old self, but hasn’t been able to heal the wounds he sustained while living Ted’s life. 

What Happens In the Mid-Credits Scene?

The mid-credits scene shows Rick has ventured to yet another primitive reality, where aquatic sapiens species reside,  and is about to get married to a female member of the species with whom he has fallen in love. Summer and Morty arrive just in time to crash the party and take their grandpa home before things take a turn for the worse once again. 

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