Conspiracy
The episode opens with time still frozen from the end of season one. Outside the Smith residence, Morty and Summer are finishing up some last minute cleaning while Jerry and Beth are still frozen outside. It turns out that time has been frozen for almost six months. Before unfreezing time, Rick admits that “their” time may need time to stabilize back to “world time”. As a precaution, he tells Morty and Summer not to touch their parents at all, or their existence might come apart at the seams.
When time doesn’t freeze, Mr. Benson falls off the roof while both Jerry and Beth are very clearly confused that the whole house wasn’t destroyed. Rick insists that Jerry only saw the negatives and warmly greets Beth. Beth tries to hug her father and the kids, but they pull back, insisting that it’s because they miss them so much and a hug would destroy them (literally destroy it). To be safe, Rick bribes the two to go buy ice cream. He kicks a pile of unmarked bills to get them out of the house. Morty and Summer soon experience a bit of sibling rivalry over who is closer to Rick. When they push each other, it generates a direct rift in time, creating two parallel realities that exist separately from each other. Rick tells his grandchildren that their ‘uncertainty’ has caused time to split into two equally possible impossibilities. Rick says they’re not in any timeline, and to prove it, he opens the garage door to reveal the house floating in the middle of a black void surrounded by Schrödinger’s cats.
After getting ice cream, Jerry and Beth accidentally hit a deer. The deer is not killed, but badly injured. Beth takes it upon herself to help cure the deer. Beth takes the deer to a veterinary hospital and attempts to perform surgery. Before he begins his procedure, he notices a gunshot wound in his side. A hunter appears and says he was the one who shot him. He claims the deer is his and calls his lawyer to help him get ownership. The hunter’s lawyer shows up at the animal hospital and lets them know about Brad’s Law and how the deer legally belongs to the hunter. Beth ignores him and continues to work.
Rick uses the time crystal to try to fix the timelines together, but Morty and Summer’s continued insecurities prevent the fusion from working. Rick demands to know the reason for their uncertainty. He deduces that the two ‘want to be Grandpa’s favorites’, then sits them down in front of the blackboard and cruelly tells them both how little he cares for them and how little he values their contribution. His long speech clearly upsets both of them. Before Rick tries to fix their time together again, Morty makes a joke about his drinking habits, which directly leads to Rick becoming insecure. The time fusion fails a second time and Rick immediately thinks his ‘other self’ is trying to kill him to solve the problem.
Rick quickly creates a gun with his time crystal and tries to kill the other self. A shootout ensues with both Ricks across timelines trying to assassinate each other. Chaos results in time splitting a second time, leading to four separate realities. Morty knocks Rick from behind to calm him down. Morty and Summer put Rick in the dog crate. Rick wakes up in the crate again and proves that he is sure in all four timelines by speaking and leaving a message. They then receive three more voicemails at the same time. Suddenly, a Fourth Dimensional Being appears and berates Rick for trying to put time back together with just a crystal. He gives Rick, Morty, and Summer time stabilization collars, which then properly fuse their times back to their usual place. However, since Rick obtained the time crystal through illegal means, the being tells them that they will go to Time Prison for eternity.
After the creature calls for backup, Rick tricks it into grabbing its “weapon” Chris, throwing it away and killing it. Rick orders Morty and Summer to remove their collars. He forces himself to be insecure to divide his time again. The three proceed in between times to overpower the being, punching it across multiple timelines until it is defeated. As a result, time is now divided into 64 different options.
Beth’s operation continues with all the characters gathered around her. Jerry comes to the rescue by bringing in members of the Cervine Institute of Elk, Moose, Deer and Stag. Members can transport deer across state lines to top doctors and out of a hunter’s jurisdiction. The two drive back into the woods with members of the Cervine Institute, and Jerry reveals that the two men were not from the Cervine Institute, but were actually employees of Cold Stone Creamery. This allows Beth to continue her operation. He successfully patches up the deer, which revives and returns to the forest.
Rick, Morty and Summer try to put on the collars. Summer works it out immediately, but due to Morty’s faulty collar in one of the timelines (and Rick trying to fix it), all of Morty and Rick are still divided. Morty, with his collar broken, tries to pass the collar to Rick, but eventually becomes destabilized and falls into the black void. Rick lunges after him, but Morty drops his collar, so Rick gives Morty his collar. All the Mortys are then safely teleported back. With one Rick floating in a spaceless void, he accepts death and tells Morty to be better than him. But then Rick notices Morty’s collar floating underneath him. He claws at the collar and begs God to make everything work. He repairs the collar, immediately condemns God, and is then safely teleported back with everyone else. Rick and Summer celebrate at the Cabbage Patch Dance.
Beth and Jerry return as Jerry begins to make fun of the three’s time collars while Beth laughs. Morty asks Rick if it feels good to be the one being mocked, to which Rick agrees that it hurts. A pan at the end of the episode shows Mr. Benson under his house receiving roses in a wheelchair, suggesting that he still survived the fall. The post-credits sequence shows two fourth-dimensional beings speeding through Earth’s history to find Rick. They run into Albert Einstein, thinking he is Rick, and promptly beat him up, warning him not to mess with time. This leads to Einstein discovering E=mc2 out of spite.
