Warning: Contains spoilers for Rick and Morty season 6, episode 3.
While Rick & Morty always toys with sci-fi conventions, season 6’s most recent outing featured a particular clever reinvention of a classic genre quandary. Rick & Morty has spent five seasons turning sci-fi clichés on their heads and with season 6 the series shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. While early episodes of Rick & Morty season 6 haven’t featured anything as show-shaking as the villainous Evil Morty returning after he destroyed the Central Finite Curve, the show’s first few outings have still upended expectations at every turn.
For example, Rick & Morty’s season 6 premiere saw the show reveal that the tough, cooler version of Jerry who survived the apocalypse back in season 1 ended up a lonely, tragic figure, proving that his fate wasn’t as promising as it seemed. Meanwhile, “Rick: A Mort Well Lived” (season 6, episode 2) pushed the definition of what constitutes a movie parody as Summer attempted to “do a Die Hard” despite the fact that she had never seen Die Hard. As such, it is no surprise that episode 3 involved a deconstruction of a popular sci-fi staple.
For years, sci-fi movies and TV shows have asked the viewer, if you met your clone, would you fight them or sleep with them? However, Rick & Morty season 6 complicated this question in “Bethic Twinstinct” (season 6, episode 3) with Space Beth and Beth’s affair. This bizarre plot line saw Beth sleep with, consider leaving Jerry for, and eventually engage in a threesome with Space Beth, who is technically her clone (or potentially, the original Beth from whom Beth herself was unknowingly cloned). Thus, Rick & Morty complicated this clone question by asking if you choose the latter, is it cheating to sleep with yourself? Jerry certainly thought so at first, although the episode’s ending took things in a surprisingly novel direction to resolve the conflict.
Is Beth’s Space Beth Affair Cheating?
It is tricky to tell whether Beth sleeping with Space Beth constitutes cheating. Since Space Beth is (as Beth notes in the episode) defined by her differences from Beth, they definitely exist as separate characters in a way that not all clones do, meaning this likely counts as an affair. However, since no one knows whether Space Beth or Beth is the original, Jerry may have also been sleeping with the “wrong” woman for years, meaning he’s arguably also guilty of cheating. Ultimately, the conclusion that the three characters come to is probably the best outcome possible for this messy setup.
When Jerry, Beth, and Space Beth eventually all become involved in the affair, it is at least clear that everything is above board in terms and moving towards a polyamorous relationship. While this arrangement might not work for everyone, it is a safe, sane, and consensual answer to the classic can you sleep with your own clone problem as it is posed by the Rick & Morty episode. The only issue now is working out a way for the rest of Rick & Morty’s characters to avoid overhearing the result.
