Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Rick & Morty season 5, episode 3, “A Rickconvenient Mort.”
A promo for an upcoming episode of Rick and Morty presented a gender-swapped version of ’90s icon Captain Planet. The promo did not give a name to its mysterious silver-skinned heroine, who shows up to fight a supervillain driving a motorcycle that makes acid rain. However, based on the title of the episode, “A Rickconvenient Mort,” it seems likely the irreverent animated series will be skewing the classic environmentalist superhero and heavy-handed attempts to drive home the importance of protecting the natural world.
Running for six seasons from 1990 to 1996, Captain Planet was an edutainment program dedicated to teaching children about conservation. The show centered around five teenagers, chosen by the Earth goddess Gaia, to act as champions of the environment, whom she dubbed the Planeteers. While empowered with magic rings that allowed them to control the four classic elements and “the power of heart,” the Planeteers could also combine their powers to summon Captain Planet to face those threats they couldn’t handle alone. While the show was praised for its educational content and encouraging young people to do what they could to combat pollution, it also drew criticism for being liberally biased and for its villains having no motivations other than destroying the Earth purely for evil’s sake. It was also dismissed by many kids at the time as being overly cheesy, due to Captain Planet’s habit of making bad puns almost every time he spoke.
The promo for “A Rickconveient Mort” delivers a number of nods to the classic Captain Planet cartoon. The preview begins with Rick and Morty being forced to seek shelter thanks to a literal shower of acid rain. This is revealed to be the work of a rat-like being on a flying, smoke-belching motorcycle, who boasts to no one in particular that “my acid rain will destroy all things green and natural, or my name isn’t Diesel Weasel!” This is a dead-on parody of Captain Planet’s villains, who had names like Verminous Skumm, Sly Sludge, and Hoggish Greedly.
As Rick and Morty hide in Rick’s flying saucer car, a woman who resembles Captain Planet, with a largely red costume and green hair, flies into view. The outfit also resembles Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel costume from the MCU movies. The unnamed hero then declares, “Your acid rain is an acid pain… in the butt, Diesel Weasel!” A nonplussed Rick Sanchez comments that she’s in need of a new dialogue writer, echoing the thoughts of some of the ’90s kids forced to endure Captain Planet’s cheesy fight banter.
It’s unclear just what role this Captain Planet parody will play in the upcoming episode of Rick and Morty. Given Rick’s track record of immoral behavior, it seems likely he’ll come into conflict with this new hero when they find something environmentally objectionable about Rick’s experiments. On the other hand, given Rick’s general dislike of superheroes and the self-righteous, it seems just as likely Rick may step in to educate the heroine as to why her black-and-white view of environmentalism isn’t true.
