Rick and Morty Season 5 Breaks Hearts With Rick’s Failed Confession

Rick and Morty broke hearts with Rick’s surprising failed confession in Season 5’s newest episode! The fifth season of the Adult Swim animated series will unfortunately be taking a break for the rest of the month before coming back for the final two episodes of the season, and one of the reasons it stings particularly bad this time around is that the eighth episode of the season gave us the most canonically heavy episode of its run thus far. Not only that, it was our best look at Rick and Birdperson’s shared past in the series yet.

Rick and Morty Season 5 Episode 8, “Rickturnal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort” saw Rick diving into Birdperson’s mind in order to save him following their fight in Season 4, and this revealed not only how the two of them came to be friends in the first place, but revealed that Rick had much deeper feelings for Birdperson than his best friend had for him. It’s a level that’s not quite romantic, but one that broke hearts when Birdperson could not reciprocate following Rick’s confession.

During one of the memories, fans see Rick and Birdperson fighting in “The Battle of Blood Ridge,” one of their final efforts against the Galactic Federation (that you can check out in the video above). Rick is so happy during his time with Birdperson that following this battle that he actually asks Birdperson to run away with him. He reveals the secret of the multiverse, and that none of their efforts really matter.

While Birdperson questions why Rick would even fight with him if nothing mattered, Rick lays himself on the line and admits that Birdperson is the one that matters to him. Birdperson shoots him down coldly, and Rick clams back up and tries to hide the fact that he wanted to have something closer with him. Then we see Rick clarifying to his younger self that he’s doing all of this for Birdperson even after a rejection like that because he loves him.

Rick’s admitted his love for Birdperson before, but now that we have gotten a concrete example of just how deep that love was (romantic or not), this cold rejection, and the fact that Birdperson still goes on with his life away from Rick after all of this is over, hits that much harder. But what did you think of Rick’s confession to Birdperson? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!