Rick and Morty Season 7 has reached the final two episodes of its run for the year, and the penultimate episode of the season has surprisingly seen Rick become a Pokemon Master! Rick and Morty kicked off a new episodic adventure for the duo as they not only found out that the afterlife does indeed exist, but wanted to head to a version of the afterlife where they would be able to tap it for infinite energy. This inspires Rick to head to Valhalla, and the only way he could do so is by using a monster he had trapped within a Poke Ball.
While Pokemon has been referenced here and there in the Rick and Morty franchise over the years (with the Pocket Mortys game from Adult Swim being the biggest example), Rick and Morty Season 7 Episode 9 takes this the furthest it’s ever been as Rick not only uses a Poke Ball multiple times (and outright calls it a Poke Ball despite it being a much different, legally distinct color) but uses it to catch some wild things as he uses it for Bigfoot and the Pope before the episode comes to an end.
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Rick and Morty: Rick Becomes a Pokemon Master
Rick and Morty Season 7 Episode 9, “Mort: Ragnarick” sees Rick seek out Valhalla in order to mine it as a source of infinite energy. To get there, he reveals that he’s captured Bigfoot as a Poke Ball and has been teasing the monster to a point where it’s going to want to kill him. Thus using the Poke Ball to send out Bigfoot, he’s killed quickly thereafter. The Poke Ball then comes back towards the end of the episode as Rick uses it to capture a defeated Pope (with an 8-bit theme to help celebrate). Rick then jokes he should call it a “Pope-y Ball” as a result of trying to get ahead of the pun, and it’s kind of awkward as he realizes that no one else was really going to make that joke (before Morty cops to the idea).
The main Pokemon parody comes after the credits, however, as Rick is seen battling in an underground ring against an Ash Ketchum like character who uses an orange dinosaur like monster. Sending out the Pope to battle, the underground ring is raided by the FBI before Rick can battle even further and test more of his Pokemon skills.
Would you want to see more of Pokemon in Rick and Morty in the future? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!
