heepdeep:

Maybe it’s super obvious and that’s why I haven’t seen anything about this, but I’m 100% certain that non-toxic Morty purposely let Rick find him.

Immediately upon hearing from Jessica, he knows Rick is trying to trace the call, but he doesn’t hang up immediately. He makes a point of saying he was so in love with Jessica that she didn’t have to love him back. When she asks how he knows she doesn’t want to love him he quickly responds, “Because I’m not sick.” I’ll come back to this conversation in a bit, but I want to point out that when he goes to hang up the phone he looks right at it when he presses the button.

Look at this shit!

He PURPOSELY didn’t hang up. He continues to have a conversation with his girlfriend when she points out he hit the wrong button but…

There’s only one button to push??? There’s no way he could have screwed that up. And he looks at her knowingly and says, “Huh…how ‘bout that,” incredibly nonchalantly, still a slight smile on his face. Look, earlier in the episode he had no problem fleeing from Rick because he didn’t want to go back to the way he was. Even if it’s not typical toxic Morty panic, he can still express displeasure with a situation, but here he does not. He only smiles complacently, knowing what’s going to happen.

When Rick does show up, Morty says, “Do what you gotta do.” There’s no fighting back. Pure acceptance. Even if he was unable to fight back physically, this non-toxic Morty knew how to chat people up. He could get people to do what he wanted with his confident attitude. Even if it would be hard to do to Rick, if he wanted to stay the way he was, you’d think he’d at least attempt to convince him he was healthier this way. With Rick merged back the way he was, it was possible it would have appealed to a part of him at least.

But I don’t think non-toxic Morty believed that anymore.

I think he realized that those toxic parts of him were things he missed. He didn’t have any negative feelings, but he didn’t have much in the way of feelings anymore either. The only way you can really feel happiness is if you have low points (yeah, I’ve watched Inside Out, shut up) and Morty didn’t have anymore of those. He was in a constant state of confidence. He had no conscience either. Morty thought having a conscience was a fault and without that there was no right or wrong. No good or bad. He was in a constant state of uncaring neutrality. Compared to how he was that had to feel empty. Morty’s morality, although often coming back to bite him, was a huge part of who he was. I believe that’s why he brought up his blinding love to Jessica. I think he missed it. He missed caring so much that it didn’t matter whether or not his feelings were reciprocated. He certainly didn’t seem very attached to the woman he was with. It sounded like he was saying what she wanted to hear to be kind rather than because he was actually interested. When he merges there isn’t a part of him that tries to keep her around, even though she claims they were soulmates. Not even the non-toxic half tries to do anything about that. It’s just a flat, “Not anymore.“ He even seemed to have believed what Jessica said on the phone even though his toxic part wasn’t there for that. His non-toxic self retained that and he latched onto that when they merged. His feelings for her came back. Not great if they’re unrequited (although at the end of the ep she seemed happy he was back to normal), but it’s normal. He has feelings again!

To Morty, it’s better to have a conscience, his ‘sickness’, and be wrong and get upset than it is to have nothing and go through the motions.

I love what they did in this episode where what a person’s opinion of a healthy personality is can actually be damaging because you NEED faults. No one is perfect and that’s fine because being perfect is not at all what it’s cracked up to be and I like that message.