One 'Rick and Morty' Season 4 episode could be a favorite for Summer fans
Morty's big sister does some "scathing" things this season.
Morty’s big sister only occasionally gets a leading role in Rick and Morty. More often than not, she’s just background noise — which literally happens at the end of the Season 4 premiere — but in a new interview with Summer Smith voice actress, Spencer Grammer, published earlier this week by Syfy Wire, Grammer reveals that Season 4 will have Summer take a leading role in a hardcore way.
Anyone who loves episodes like “Rickmancing the Stone,” where Summer becomes a queen in a Mad Max apocalypse, mercilessly killing zombies, will find even more to love in some upcoming episodes.
“Summer has a level of intelligence and such a conviction in the things she loves that you can kind of get behind her,” Grammer said in the interview, hinting at how despite seeming “basic” or vapid as she obsesses over popularity and her cell phone, Summer is still Rick’s granddaughter. She’s brilliant in her own way and is perhaps the most self-aware character in the entire series.
“There are more episodes coming up in [Season 4] that actually illuminate that more … I think she’s more dedicated in her conviction of things she does or doesn’t like,” Grammer said, also teasing that Summer will say and do some “scathing” things this season so shocking that they just might divide fans.
More scathing than that time she did this to Morty?
In Season 3’s “Rickmancing the Stone,” Summer shot an apocalyptic warlord right in the face. Before that, she took charge in the Season 3 opener to ultimately aid Rick in defeating both the Galactic Federation and the Citadel. The early Season 2 episode, “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” might’ve been the first time we saw a more complex version of Summer as she grappled with the morality of a hive-mind entity enslaving an entire race of alien people. Often, when Morty and Summer both tag along as sidekicks, she outshines her brother in every way, and the show feels a little bit more fun as a result.
On the flip side are weaker episodes like “Raising Gazorpazorp,” where Summer is stereotyped as a clothes-obsessed woman when she encounters a matriarchal alien society. Or there’s “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy,” where insecurities drive Summer to use Rick’s Morphizer-XE device to enlarge her breasts, but things go horribly wrong and she winds up an inside-out giant. Even in Season 4’s “The Old Man and the Seat,” Summer became so obsessed with a dating app that she fought her mother.
If you prefer a darker, more complex version of Summer (and you should), Grammer promises things will get better for the character later in Season 4. When asked about Summer’s confidence — something that every other member of the family lacks — Grammer rationalized that Summer recognizes a kind of genetic superiority to her brother and grandfather.
Some of the best episodes of 'Rick and Morty' are when Summer gets to be badass.
“It’s not really anything against Rick and Morty per se,” she said. “It’s just that she knows deep down that women are, genetically, better.”
From a genetic standpoint, everyone has four chromosomes at conception, and when a chromosome is lost, that person becomes male. Half-jokingly, Grammer referred to women as “a more complete gender” as a result of this certified scientific fact. Whether or not this perspective is canon for Summer, it does sound like the perfect blend of science and superiority that makes Summer seem more like Rick’s granddaughter and less like Jerry’s daughter, which is something that Rick and Morty never does effectively.
Grammer hopes that in future seasons, Summer might even become more like her grandpa, and perhaps even better than him.
“I really want her to become more and more like Rick,” she said. “I would love that. Just more and more — just more. More sociopathic, more selfish. I want her to stop caring what [Rick] thinks about her.”
It won’t happen in Season 4, but Grammer “would love for her to suddenly become super, super, super smart and create something that Rick didn’t even think of.” If Morty can take over the world and become a genuine threat in Season 4’s “Edge of Tomorty,” or develop into Evil Morty in at least one alternate reality, then mathematically, there has to be an Evil Summer out there in the multiverse, right?
We can’t wait to see that episode.
Rick and Morty airs Sunday nights on Adult Swim at 11:30 p.m. Eastern.
