The Biggest Plot ‘Hole’ in the ‘Rick and Morty’ Finale Is the Post-Credits Portal

Rick and Morty Season Seven is officially in the books. It beats being in The Hole.

Season-ending spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty fans who missed tonight’s finale, “Fear No Mort,” a multi-layered deep-dive into the psyche of a certain interdimensional sidekick. After a mysterious man in a suit directs the titular duo to a terrifying hole in the bathroom of a Denny’s that has nothing to do with anonymous sex, the pair stumble through multiple realities’ worth of their greatest fears while attempting to sniff out fake-outs, reverses and meta misdirections before arriving at Morty’s most powerful anxiety — his reliance on his partner. 

This finale was a fitting payoff for the half of Rick and Morty that doesn’t get to spend half the season decoding his psyche with Susan Sarandon as the episode journeyed deep into Morty’s subconscious, all at the end of a season that many fans felt was desperately lacking breakthroughs for the Central Finite Curve’s most traumatized 14-year-old.

However, when compared to previous season finales, “Fear No Mort” was decidedly light in canon-shaking developments — except, of course, in the post-credits scene. At the end of the episode, Mr. Poopybutthole, the show’s long-standing season bookender and audience addresser, revealed that, in the Season Seven opener, “How Poopy Got His Poop Back,” he stole one of Rick’s portal guns. Mr. Poopybutthole then uses it to invade an alternate dimension where he hadn’t ruined his marriage, forcefully replacing the other version of himself who still had his life together and tossing the variant and the portal gun back through the hole. Get ready for an interdimensional revenge tour in Season Eight, oooh wee.

For a few seasons now, the Rick and Morty writers have been toying with the idea that portal travel, the defining invention of the Ricks and the inciting incident for Rick C-137’s evolution into the antihero he is now, can be used (or misused) by someone other than the smartest man in the Central Finite Curve. The U.S. president has his own blue variant of the traversal tool, Evil Morty has his golden gun, and after tonight’s finale, somewhere in the dimension that Rick C-137 and Morty Prime call home (for now), there’s a confused and probably enraged Mr. Poopybutthole wielding one of Rick’s signature green portal guns.

In “How Poopy Got His Poop Back,” Mr. Poopy Butthole's personal problems became A-plot material for the first time since his introduction in the celebrated Season Two episode “Total Rickall.” Given the character’s rising profile and Rick’s complicated relationship with going into other dimensions and taking the place of a different version of himself, it seems likely that Mr. Poopybutthole’s fast one will have ramifications in future episodes. Maybe this post-credits move will even pave the way for more appearances from the Predator Gul’Karna who is currently raising this universe’s Mr. Poopybutthole’s son as his own. Maybe this was a Mr. Poopybutthole Prime-level event and the first domino to fall leading to the creation of a Citadel of Mr. Poopybuttholes.

One thing is certain — based on Amy Poopybutthole’s suspicious squint at the end of the scene, this surreptitious swap isn’t going to be swept under the rug. The entire Poopybutthole family just tumbled down the interdimensional rabbit hole.