'Rick and Morty' Season 3 Episode 9: Beth, Clone or Not?

The latest episode of "Rick and Morty" season 3 shines a spotlight on Beth and what it finds is not the least bit pretty. "The ABCs of Beth" peels away the seemingly normal facade of Beth and reveals the long-hidden darkness in her character. Spoilers ahead.

The episode sends Beth and Rick on a journey to Froopyland, a dimension that Rick created for his daughter when she was a child. Their goal is to find Beth's childhood friend Tommy, who has been lost for years in her sugary fantasyland. Froopyland looks like a candy-colored paradise, but looks can be deceiving, and it's not long before Rick is getting his arm torn off by a vicious baby bird.

Things only get worse when they are captured and brought to Tommy, who reigns over the land's strange creatures. Tommy turns out to be a mad cannibal king, who has sex with creatures and then devours their offspring. This is the show parodying the more shocking and gross scenes of "Game of Thrones," it seems. Tommy's minions put on a horrible play whose story alleges that Beth tried to murder Tommy in Froopyland.

Rick abruptly exits Froopyland in the middle of the adventure, bringing Beth with him. Beth says they should do the right thing and go back for Tommy, but Rick begins to unload on Beth, telling her she was a child sociopath. He said he created Froopyland to protect other from her by keeping her busy. Rick then reveals a whole box of unsettling inventions that child Beth had asked him to make her, which included a parent trap, fall-asleep darts, a lie-detecting doll and a sentient switchblade.

Beth returns to Froopyland on her own to get Tommy, but after finding it almost impossible to apologize to him, she ends up unleashing a bloodbath. Beth comes back home with Tommy's severed finger. Beth has what Paste Magazine calls a "nihilistic epiphany." She acknowledges to Rick that she is her father's daughter, and like him, she is a terrible person, possibly evil.

Rick advises her to take off and leave everything behind. He offers to create a clone to take her place and handle her responsibilities for as long as she's gone. When Beth appears at the end of the episode, she seems cheerful and oblivious, and she says to Rick, "I love you, Dad." It's an unsettling transformation.

The episode raises a number of questions. Did Beth try to murder Tommy? Is she a sociopath? Signs point to both being true. Beth may not be a complete sociopath, but she is someone who can kill without remorse. And did Rick clone Beth? Again, this appears to be a yes. But it's possible that this will never be revisited by the show, just as "The Simpsons" never seriously revisited Principal Skinner's true identity that had been revealed in "The Principal and the Pauper."

You can watch the "Rick and Morty" season 3 episode 9 stream on Adult Swim online. Next week, "Rick and Morty" will be airing the season 3 finale episode "The Rickchurian Mortydate."