Rick and Morty Season 9 Episode 2 SPOILER Recap: “Ricks Days, Seven Nights”

Rick and Morty continues its ninth season with the second episode, “Ricks Days, Seven Nights.” After finally taking down Evil Morty for good in last week’s premiere, where will Rick and Morty’s adventures take them now? What new crises could they be tackling? And will Rick take that vacation he said he wanted at the end of the last episode? All this and more in our full spoiler breakdown of “Ricks Days, Seven Nights.” This is your final warning if you haven’t seen the episode yet, so let’s jump right into the good stuff.

What happens in Rick and Morty Season 9 Episode 2 “Ricks Days, Seven Nights”?

Credit: Adult Swim

We open on a wintery night when an RV spins out in the middle of a quiet road surrounded by forest. Its layered-up driver gets out of the RV to patch up a tire and refill the gas tank, eventually showing his face to be that of an uncharacteristically pleasant Rick. Rick then pulls up to a local bowling alley, where pictures of him with a group of people we’ve never seen before hang on the walls. These friends warmly greet him as Ted, apparently a PVC salesman from two states over who regularly visits during the winter.

After a night of bowling and beer, Ted and one of his friends, a man named Antonio voiced by guest star Oscar Nuñez, stop by the liquor store to pick up a six-pack. As they’re about to check out, a robber storms in, threatening the cashier, Ted, and Antonio at gunpoint. The robber shoots Ted only for robot arms to spring out of Ted’s body, deflecting the bullet and incapacitating the robber. Having no idea what this could mean, Ted runs back to his RV in a panic. He cuts himself open to see what he’s made of, finding more cybernetics as a hologram of Rick explains the situation.

Credit: Adult Swim

As it turns out, Ted is actually Rick on the vacation hinted at in the previous episode. Specifically, he’s currently on his annual two-week trip to Beloi 6E, a planet resembling Earth in the early 1990s, wherein he wipes his memories and removes every non-survival technological implant in order to take a break from the pressures of being the smartest man in the universe. With Ted now being aware of Rick’s tech and backstory, Hologram Rick offers Ted a choice, wipe this moment from Ted’s memory so he can get back to his vacation or restore all his memories and become Rick again.

Ted rejects both options and returns to the now-closed bowling alley, where the owner, a woman named Margerie, comforts him and offers him a place to sleep for the night. The next morning, Ted wakes up next to Margerie and vows to never leave again, wrecking the RV. That night, he goes ice fishing with his friends, promising to stick around for the long haul this time, only for the festivities to be interrupted by an egg-shaped pod sent by Rick. Morty calls Ted on his leg phone, urging him to get in, but Ted refuses, destroying the pod.

Credit: Adult Swim

Ted explains everything to his friends, who vow to help him stop Rick from taking him away. They then ask Margerie to let them rig up the bowling alley with weapons and traps to stop Rick’s forces, to which she reluctantly agrees, closing early and leaving the boys to their business. A fleet of Rick Drones arrive as Ted and the others begin blasting away with bowling pin cannons, electrified nets, and other such technological wizardry, but their most crucial asset, the sprinklers, aren’t working properly. They get overwhelmed by the drones until Margerie shows up unexpectedly, pulling the fire alarm and activating the now-gasoline loaded sprinklers.

Ted lights a match and sets the entire fleet ablaze, but Margerie dies in the carnage. Now determined to get revenge on Rick, Ted uses leftover tech from the drones and the RV to construct a rudimentary spaceship that one of the friends, a former pilot named Big Mike, flies them to Earth in. Ted has a minor epiphany upon meeting the rest of the Smith family and asks his friends to leave them be. The group discovers Rick’s futuristic tools and Ted, per their request, gives all of his friends’ robot arms and some other assorted cybernetic implants.

Big and Little Mike, Antonio, and Bowser all have a great time showing off their cyborg abilities at a local bowling alley, but Ted just isn’t feeling it anymore, sending them back to Beloi 6E with the portal gun. As a depressed Ted floats in the pool, naked and alone, Beth tries to get Space Beth to talk to him, but he shoots a portal at the bottom of the pool, draining the water before Space Beth can go swimming, apparently the only reason she’s here, and sending Ted on a drunken bender across the cosmos that eventually lands him back on Beloi 6E.

Upon returning to the planet, Ted discovers that his beloved bowling alley has been demolished and replaced with a department store named L-Mart. He runs into Big Mike, Antonio, and Bowser standing by a grave he believes to be Margerie’s but turns out to be Little Mike’s as he ran himself through with his own robot arm. Big Mike lashes out at Ted, blaming him for Little Mike’s death, but Ted freezes time and leaves before anything can happen.

Back in the garage, a bitter Ted shreds all of his Beloi 6E keepsakes and nearly shreds Morty, this being the final straw that convinces him to push the red button and go back to being Rick. Morty attempts to feebly reassure Ted that his life as Rick is better and happier before Ted finally pushes the button. He stares at the wall for a second before walking out of the garage. Morty asks “It didn’t work, did it?” to which Rick sadly responds, “It did.”

We wrap things up with a post-credits scene where another Vacation Rick persona is on a planet of fish people about to get married. Before he can kiss the bride, Summer objects to the union while Morty summons an egg pod that scoops up Rick, thus preventing this from turning into another “Ted” scenario.

Is Rick and Morty Season 9 Episode 2 “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” worth watching?

Credit: Adult Swim

On the rare occasions where Rick and Morty goes melancholic, it’s usually reserved for the end of the season rather than the second episode. But while the tone shift is unexpected, it doesn’t stop “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” from being a surprisingly powerful character study. Ted is obviously a reflection of Rick’s own psyche, but he also feels like a fully formed character in his own right and the subtle distinctions Ian Cardoni makes when voicing Ted compared to voicing Rick are very impressive. And the episode fully commits to making you feel for Ted’s journey. His existential horror, the deeper significance of his friendships, and the depression he feels once he realizes that he can never truly go back.

To that end, my one major issue with the episode is the post-credits scene wrecking the mood of the legitimately effective and somber ending to turn the whole scenario into a bit. On its own, it’s a funny scene, but it takes away from the larger whole for seemingly no reason other than every Rick and Morty episode needing to meet some kind of unspoken “joke quota.” But this is admittedly nitpicking and the core story is still a very strong second outing for Season 9.

Rick and Morty Season 9 airs Sundays at 11pm on Adult Swim, with new episodes streaming on HBO Max and Hulu starting June 15.

Rick and Morty Season 9 Episode 2 SPOILER Recap: “Ricks Days, Seven Nights”