Rick & Morty has not had the most impressive track record when it comes to fleshing out love interests for its title characters, but Morty’s string of potential paramours proves that the series is improving and growing across its five seasons. When Rick & Morty debuted in 2013, few viewers could have predicted how popular the Adult Swim series would go on to become. Initially a spoof of sci-f TV conventions and family sitcoms, Rick & Morty followed the silly, often surreal, sometimes gory misadventures of the titular duo.
Each week, troubled scientific super-genius Rick Sanchez and his dim-witted but well-intentioned grandson Morty would head off on a quest that began as a standard sci-fi story, but eventually turned into something sillier and stranger. As early as the third episode of the series, “Anatomy Park,” a Jurassic Park parody grew out of what was at first a Fantastic Voyage riff — and that’s without even mentioning that the episode was a Christmas special, too. As Rick & Morty continued, the show kept this unpredictable, inventive approach to storytelling at the forefront, but occasionally received criticism for sidelining minor characters as a result.
For example, throughout the series, most of Morty’s love interests on Rick & Morty have barely even been side characters, with many existing only to keep an unrelated plot ticking over and give the main character motivation to keep the story progressing. That being said, when taken as a unit, Morty’s love interests over the seasons illustrate the progress that Rick & Morty has made in establishing rounded characters. With season 5 improving the problematic Jessica, Morty's character-less crush, in its fast-paced premiere, it is worth looking back on Rick & Morty’s history of thinly-sketched romantic interests to see how the show’s progression occurred.
Season 1’s Love Interests Are (Literal) Sex Objects
As early as the aforementioned "Anatomy Park", Morty’s love interests were a pitiable bunch in season 1. Most of Jessica’s dialogue came in the form of Morty fantasizing about speaking to her, while "Anatomy Park"’s barely-glimpsed Annie was presumably doomed to an off-screen death and never mentioned again. However, perhaps the most telling use of a love interest in this season is the sex robot that Morty accidentally impregnates in "Raising Gazorpazorp" (season 1, episode 7). Existing only to facilitate the plot of Morty dealing with the titular young monster, the sex robot is a literal object with no role to speak of beyond plot function. This indicates the broader attitude that season 1 had to Morty’s love interests. Whether it’s a literal object of desire like the sex robot or a flat, character-less figure like Jessica, season 1 used love interests only to further Morty’s stories.
Season 2 & 3’s Improvements (Aren’t Much Better)
Season 2 and 3 of Rick & Morty saw some improvements to the status quo as the series began to explore more thoughtful and moving storylines on occasion. Granted, most of the more introspective episodes went to Rick, whose love interests like Unity let the series question whether the self-involved egomaniac would ever be able to find happiness. However, while Rick and his lost loves were the center of attention, Morty’s love interests at least some dialogue in these seasons. That alone was a step up from season 1, but it was still slow going. For example, "Look Who’s Purging Now” (season 2, episode 9) sees one potential love interest tell Morty “I have a boyfriend” at the close of their adventure, a blunt response that, while funny, only underlines just how much she has not been fleshed out as a character before this punchline that ends their subplot.
It is a familiar punchline used by both Jurassic World and Vampires Vs The Bronx wherein an entitled character assumes they can claim a woman as their love interest as they have helped “save the day,” only to be rebuffed and brought back to reality when they attempt to do so. However, in the case of "Look Who’s Purging Now"’s apparent love interest Arthricia, the joke serves to illustrate that Morty only had a love interest in this episode to explain his willingness to the purging. Despite being the provider of some cool kills, Arthricia isn’t much of a character in her own right. Similarly, season 3’s Jacqueline exists just to show how well Morty’s idealized life is going with no character traits of her own, although again the fact that this "Rest and Ricklaxation' (season 3 episode 6) character has any dialogue is still an improvement of sorts... until the next season proved a compelling love story doesn't always need it.
Season 4 Gave Morty A Human Connection
With "The Vat of Acid Episode" (season 4 episode 8), Rick & Morty season 4 seriously stepped up the characterization of Morty’s love interest, albeit without giving this one a name or any dialogue. Morty’s most fleshed-out, fully realized love interest was the nameless heroine of this outing, who survives a near-death experience and grows closer with Morty thanks to the pair’s shared trauma. Still, even her poignant story with Morty was limited to a brief montage (moving as it was), proving the show has a ways to go in creating believable love interests for Morty.
Season 5 Fixed Earlier Missteps
In typically absurd Rick & Morty fashion, Jessica couldn’t just get a few moments to humanize her character in the story of Rick & Morty’s season 5 premiere. Instead, thanks to a series of absurd plot mechanics, she became an all-knowing Time God, in what almost felt like a rebuttal to critics who claimed that the series was incapable of writing a well-rounded love interest for Morty. Here, Morty’s love interest is not only able to speak for herself but becomes an existentially aloof entity who appears to know everything — but one who does get a sincere moment of human connection with Morty, despite this tongue-in-cheek plot.
Morty himself grows to see her as a real person and not merely an object of desire by the end of the episode, eventually even accepting that he and Jessica simply never had the right moment and embracing the bittersweet reality of that. Season 5 of Rick & Morty promised many revelations and surprises, but this culmination of Morty’s infatuation with Jessica highlights the show’s gradually improving approach to romantic subplots. It is funny, and classically Rick & Morty, to make Jessica the most enlightened character on the show after years of never hearing from her, but the decision nonetheless fleshed out her character and made Morty’s love interest a rounded, believable figure for the first time in the show’s five seasons.