Evil Morty's plan revealed in Rick and Morty Season 4 Part 2 trailer

Major Rick and Morty announcements have now become an annual April Fools' Day tradition with Wednesday's early morning surprise-release of the Season 4 trailer for "The Other Five" episodes confirming a May release date. Unlike the first half of this season, the back-half is chock full of cameos from various characters like Snuffles and Tammy. The trailer all but confirms that Evil Morty will return as the primary antagonist, and the trailer offers several clues as to what his long-term plans are for the rest of Rick and Morty Season 4.

While we don't actually see Evil Morty appear in the trailer for the remaining Rick and Morty Season 4 episodes, there are enough context clues to guarantee his return by the time the season finale airs sometime in late May or early June. Just like the initial Season 4 trailer, this one is edited with a chaotic assortment of clips that make it hard to tell which scenes are from what episodes, but there's still a lot we can glean.

Evil Morty's plan should make you, Morty, and Rick very scared.

Evil Morty's new army

Every time you see multiple Ricks assembled, you can safely assume we're dealing with the Citadel, the society created by a myriad of alt-reality Ricks who hail from realities surrounding the Central Finite Curve. After winning a democratic election late in Season 3, the Morty everyone calls Evil Morty eliminated any threats to his reign and assumed a new role as a dictator. Because a legion of Ricks is front-and-center as the trailer opens, we know this is Evil Morty's doing.

To the right is clearly a squadron of Meeseeks. The army to the left appears to be some kind of large alien species that's hard to make out. Recall that Morty has a biological son that's half-Gazorpian, the monstrous alien race whose males are prone to bouts of unparalleled destruction. These don't look like Morty Jr. specifically and instead look exactly like the concept art for basic male Gazorpians. They could still each be a Morty Jr., but that hardly matters.

Between the destructive capacity of a Gazorpian army, the brilliance of a Rick army, and the virtually immortal task-oriented Meeseeks army, Evil Morty already seems unstoppable.

Evil Morty's secret plan

The only other scene that's definitely related to upcoming Evil Morty plots happens midway through the trailer when a nude Morty, having recently broken out of a golden vat of liquid, flees from three officer-looking Ricks. Every coordinated, uniformed group of Ricks so far in the series has worked for the Citadel, so this must occur at some sort of facility operated under Evil Morty's regime.

Recall that the main idea behind the universe of The Matrix is that robots enslaved the human race and trapped them in similar-looking pods to harness their bodies as an energy source. The titular Matrix is a digitized simulation used to occupy their minds. A group of rebels led by Morpheus reveals the truth to Neo. He then wakes up in the real world and frees himself from his disgusting incubator. The same thing seemingly happens to Morty (or at least a Morty).

Many fans may have forgotten that in Evil Morty's Season 1 debut episode, "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind," Evil Morty tortured and enslaved a huge number of Mortys as a means to cloak his facility. The imprisoned Mortys have a cult that worships The One True Morty, a prophesy that not only closely resembles the prophecy of Neo as The One in The Matrix, but that's mentioned frequently in spin-off properties like the Pocket Mortys game. If Season 4 goes full-on Matrix, then Evil Morty could be using Mortys as a power source now, and this his how Rick C-137 uses his Morty to infiltrate the new Citadel's regime.

How Rick and Morty can defeat Evil Morty

We've previously theorized that it has to be the protagonist Morty that takes down Evil Morty rather than Rick, and there are several tidbits from the trailer that support this epic twist. Morty is the real hero here, so wouldn't it be so much more satisfying for him to be more important than Rick?

The cover image of the trailer (shown above) shows a clip that occurs 28 seconds in when some kind of orb device is shocking Morty and causing him to levitate. Not only is it reminiscent of the "Morty's Mind Blowers" scene where a psychic slug possesses Morty, but a series of visions flash by like what the Death Crystal did in the Season 4 premiere. Assuming all of these context clues are related, it's possible Rick uses this device to transfer Morty's consciousness into another Morty, similar to what he pulled off in the Season 3 premiere (another episode that focuses on the Citadel, by the way) by transferring his mind into different Rick bodies.

There's no telling how all of this might intersect with Summer's lightsaber duel with Tammy, or how the remnants of the Galactic Federation factor in for that matter, but it's clear that a huge war is coming. Are Snuffles and his army of intelligent robo-dogs also involved? We'll have to wait a month to find out.

Rick and Morty Season 4, Episode 6 will air May 3, 2020 on Adult Swim at 11:30 p.m. Eastern.