Rick's got a nemesis in this preview of tomorrow's Rick And Morty premiere
The sacred treaty betwixt land and sea has been broken, and Mr. Nimbus ain't happy
One of the more handy things about Rick And Morty lead Rick Sanchez, narratively speaking, is that he’s got functionally infinite backstory to mine. As a decades-plus veteran of inter-dimensional adventure and misadventure, there’s literally no situation you could drop Rick into where he couldn’t credibly have some past knowledge, old friend to call on, or, as the case may be, nemesis to avoid.
Hence the dilemma that crops up in the new cold open for the show’s fifth season, which is set to debut on Adult Swim tomorrow night. As usual, the show zigs and zags all over the place—including giving a more-competent-than-usual Morty a win that we will be very shocked to see persist to the end of the episode—before crash-landing on a premise, i.e., the introduction of Rick’s “nemesis,” the aquatic, pompous, and under-clothed Mr. Nimbus.
As an obvious stand-in for Marvel’s equally swimsuit-clad Namor The Submariner, Nimbus so far serves mostly to remind us that Rick is basically Reed Richards without any pesky ethics, in-laws, or buddies to hold him back. He’s also apparently scary enough to provoke actual panic in the typically unflappable super-scientist, which is always a fun tone for the show to hit—nothing underscores the threat posed by a problem better than to see Rick losing his shit in the face of a guy with a mobile clamshell and a trident.
Rick And Morty’s fifth season debuts with “Mort Dinner Rick Andre” tomorrow night at 11 p.m.; meanwhile, you can catch back up on our recap coverage of the series right here. (And while you’re doing that, we’ll be looking back through the archives, trying to figure out if Rick has ever touched the ocean before; it feels like the sort of thing the show’s writers would have meticulously checked, but you never know).