Rick & Morty’s Meeseeks Episode Got Another Ending Outside Of Adult Swim

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A group of Meeseeks standing together stressed out in Rick and Morty

Adult Swim

In the “Rick and Morty” episode “Meeseeks and Destroy” (January 20, 2014) — a fan favorite, although maybe not one of the best — Rick reveals a miraculous widget called the Meeseeks Box, a device that can manifest a helpful blue alien named Mr. Meeseeks. The eager extra-terrestrial serves as a temporary personal helper, tasked with aiding their summoner in a single, simple task. Once the task has been completed, Mr. Meeseeks breathes a sigh of relief and promptly ceases to exist.

When given the Meeseeks Box, Summer (Spencer Grammer) asks that Mr. Meeseeks help her become more popular at school, and the alien delivers an inspiring speech. Beth (Sarah Chalke) asks that she be made a “more complete woman,” and Mr. Meeseeks takes her on a date and says encouraging things. But Jerry (Chris Parnell) asks that Mr. Meeseeks help him improve his golf game, which sounds innocuous enough on the surface. Unfortunately, Jerry is so abysmally bad at golf, and so preternaturally ill-equipped to accept advice, that Mr. Meeseeks seems unable to help him.

Mr. Meeseeks begins to panic. If he can’t help Jerry, he will not fulfill his life’s purpose and will continue to live, and that’s his worst nightmare. Mr. Meeseeks soon begins summoning other Mr. Meeseeks to help him. By the end of the episode, there are dozens of Mr. Meeseeks all trying to help Jerry, all becoming increasingly distressed that they may never complete their task. Eventually, they come to the conclusion that killing Jerry is the only solution. After all, a dead man would have the lowest golf score of them all.

Jerry’s army of Meeseeks finally vanishes when he, at a local restaurant, demonstrates his golf improvements by hitting a tomato with a pipe. The Meeseeks have fulfilled their function.

It seems, though, that (at least in a non-canonical sense) one of the Meeseeks survived this ordeal. “Rick and Morty” fans may turn to the comic book “Crisis on C-137” #4 to see what happens to a Meeseeks when it continues to live. Dear readers, it’s not pretty.

One Meeseeks survived…

Mr. Meeseeks standing among Beth, Summer, Jerry, Rick, and Morty in the garage.

Adult Swim

In the lore of the comic — authored by Stephanie Phillips and Ryan Lee — the one surviving Meeseeks became despondent. All the other Meeseeks mercifully died when Jerry improved his golf swing, leaving the survivor confused. What was its unfulfilled task? Mr. Meeseeks eventually comes to the conclusion that his task was to kill Rick (ousted and fired co-creator Justin Roiland).

In the lore of the comic, the extended life of Mr. Meeseeks — now calling himself Master Meeseeks — allowed him to grow and mutate. By the time readers caught up with him, Master Meeseeks was 10-feet tall, and had many eyes all over its oversized head.

The Meeseeks scene in “Crisis on C-137” didn’t last very long, as Rick outwitted the killer alien. Rick explained that the reason Master Meeseeks didn’t vanish was because he was actually given a different task, apart from helping Jerry’s golf swing. Rick explains (improvising) that Master Meeseeks was tasked with tracking down and killing all of Rick’s enemies, but he was mistakenly also ordered to forget that task and help Jerry with his golf swing first. As such, Rick tricked Master Meeseeks into believing that it had two tasks, and only one was fulfilled at the end of “Meeseeks and Destroy.” This explanation was good enough for the Master, and he promptly went about killing Rick’s enemies in the room. Once that chore was taken care of, the blue alien finally vanished.

It’s a cute wink to fans, even if it is only one that readers of “Rick and Morty” comics will ever see. Other Mr. Meeseeks made a few cameos on the TV series after “Meeseeks and Destroy,” although he was never featured very heavily.