Rick and Morty GIF and a Graf: The Intergalactic Narc

The first season of Rick and Morty sneakily had two finales: one that broke the fourth wall and referenced the end of the season, and another one that teased a larger part of the multiverse within the show that co-creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon never intended to revisit. Which is why it’s hard to pin down last night's second season finale "The Wedding Squanchers." Over the course of this second batch of 10 episodes, Rick (Roiland) has attempted suicide in the wake of romantic rejection, begged his grandson to shoot him, and now abandoned his family to turn himself in as a space prisoner after his best friend is gunned down by his wife-turned-government-agent (see above). Is this the new status quo that will pick up, as Mr. Poopybutthole states in the post-credits scene, "in like a year and a half, or longer" when the show returns? Rick and Morty has a slippery relationship to its own continuity, and it's not a serialized story beyond a few recurring characters—like Bird Person (also above), who first appeared in last year's finale—so it's not quite clear whether this will get waved off at the start of next season, or if it will be a part of the ongoing story. There’s a cliffhanger in terms of Rick's fate and another about what will happen to the Smiths now that Earth is a part of this Galactic Federation. All that could heavily influence what happens in Season 3, but—as that post-credits scene demonstrates—when it comes to fan expectations or narrative demands of the genre, Roiland and Harmon just don't give a squanch. And that's what makes R&M great.