Potion #9 | 6. Rick

The episode ends with Morty staring into space, traumatized by the sight of his own grave, while "Look on Down from the Bridge" by Mazzy Star plays. It established that the show had real stakes and that "our" Rick and Morty aren't tied to any one home.

"Rick Potion #9" is the sixth episode of Rick and Morty’s first season, and it’s widely considered the moment the show shifted from a quirky sci-fi parody to something much darker and more complex. 6. Rick Potion #9

It’s the episode that proved Rick and Morty wasn't just about jokes—it was about the terrifying, replaceable nature of existence in a multiverse. The episode ends with Morty staring into space,

The story starts with a classic sitcom setup: Morty wants his crush, Jessica, to fall in love with him for the school dance. He asks Rick for a love serum, but there’s a catch—it hitches onto the common flu. What begins as a local disaster quickly escalates into a "Cronenberg" apocalypse, as Rick’s attempts to fix the virus result in the entire world’s population mutating into horrific, fleshy monsters. The Turning Point It’s the episode that proved Rick and Morty

The term became a staple of the show's vocabulary, referencing director David Cronenberg’s body-horror style.

Unlike most animated comedies of its time, Rick doesn’t "science" his way out of the mess. After failing to reverse the mutations, he simply gives up on that reality. In one of the series' most haunting sequences, Rick and Morty travel to a near-identical universe where they have just died in a lab accident. They bury their own alternate-self corpses in the backyard and take over their lives. Why It’s Significant