Here’s the Character ‘Rick and Morty’ Fans Think Will Be the Show’s Final Boss

Even the Rickest Rick isn’t too smart to lose to a Doofus Jerry.

Spoilers for Rick and Morty fans who haven’t watched Season Seven — there’s a bit of a power vacuum in the Central Finite Curve in terms of villains. Rick Prime is dead. “Evil” Morty is more of an Antihero Morty, and he’s made it clear that he’d rather avoid Ricks entirely than kill them off — even though he totally could, now that he has the Omega Device. The Galactic Federation is ancient history, the Council of Ricks is kaput and Mr. Nimbus was never that great of a nemesis in the first place. For the first time since the show began over a decade ago, most Rick and Morty fans enter this off-season with no clear picture of who the overarching antagonist could possibly be in the next 100 years of Rick and Morty, but the most devoted ones have a guess pulled out of the extended franchise’s loose canon.

The ongoing Rick and Morty comic book series makes a concerted effort to maintain the continuity of the Adult Swim show, and with the TV series fresh out of animated antagonists, one pulp plotline could very well source the most formidable foe yet. As many online Rick and Morty fans have pointed out, Dan Harmon would do very well to co-opt a comic character as the TV show’s final boss and make the multiverse’s biggest threat neither a Rick nor a Morty, nor even a Space Beth or a Night Summer — no, the most dire threats are the one you don’t detect, and what kind of Rick would ever fear Jerry?

The Season One episode “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind” is best remembered for being Rick and Morty fans’ introduction to the Citadel and the concept of Rick variants in the show’s universe, but it also debuted a disrespected side-character who proved to be an important player in the eventual comic spin-off series. Doofus Rick, the bowl-cutted, low-IQ whipping boy of the Rick squad sent to apprehend Rick-C137, formed a close relationship with Jerry Prime during his time occupying the Smith house. And when said Jerry steals Rick’s portal gun in Rick and Morty Issue #21 to visit the only Rick who could bring himself to be openly cordial to the lowest-status member of the Sanchez-Smith family, Jerry accidentally gave his most ambitious self access to the multiverse.

In the comic, Jerry Prime visits the “Doofus Dimension” where, contradicting the only rule of the Central Finite Curve, Doofus Rick is a run-of-the-mill ignoramus who never married Diane and, critically, never had a daughter named Beth. In this version of Earth, the wealthiest, most powerful and most ruthless man in the world is none other than Jerry Smith who, upon discovering his doppelganger, quickly apprehended Doofus Rick and Jerry Prime before passing through a portal back to Jerry Prime's dimension, thus launching his plan to subjugate every universe under his domination.

During his arc in the comic book, Doofus Jerry defeated Rick-C137 in single combat and became leader of the Counsel of Ricks before he was, seemingly, killed and eaten by a gigantic worm summoned by Doofus Rick. Doofus Jerry was able to accomplish all these feats because of how badly the many Ricks underestimated him on the basis of his being a Jerry — a Doofus one, no less — and, even in the main series, Rick’s hubris is consistently one of the most dangerous elements of the Rick and Morty universe.

Doofus Jerry could very well be the biggest threat left in the disjointed Rick and Morty canon, and should he ever return from the dead and cross over into the show’s universe, hardcore Rick and Morty fans will know not to underestimate him like that doofus Rick.