Rick & Morty Season 4 Episode 9's Post-Credits Scene Explained
Rick & Morty season 4, episode 9's post-credits scene reveals just how Rick, known for his complicated love life, made love to a planet.
Warning: SPOILERS for Rick and Morty season 4, episode 9, "Childrick of Mort".
Rick and Morty season 4, episode 9 ended with a post-credits sequence that answered a question the episode's story raised but never addressed; how did Rick Sanchez come to make love to a planet? While the revelation that Rick could or would do such a thing was hardly surprising; it was odd that none of the rest of the Smith family ever raised the question in the episode proper.
Rick and Morty season 4, episode 9, "Childrick of Mort" presented Rick's biggest lover ever; a sentient planet called Gaia who contacted Rick as he was leaving on a camping trip with the rest of the Smith Family. It seemed that Gaia was pregnant and thought Rick might be the father. Rick was perfectly willing to ignore this complication, but he ultimately agreed (after pressure from Beth) to try and build a Utopian civilization for Gaia's children. Yet in all of the chaos that followed, one question was forgotten; how did Rick come to hook up with an sentient planet in the first place?
The answer came in Rick and Morty season 4, episode 9's post-credit sequence, which featured a commercial for a service aimed at sentient world lovers called Planets Only. Boasting "entire systems of steamy, lush globes," Planets Only claimed to allow subscribers exclusive access to "barely habitable celestial objects... drifting through the void, just for you." Despite nominally being a matchmaking business, the commercial had the aesthetic of the sort of party-line one might see advertised on late-night TV.
Certainly Rick was embarrassed enough about what kind of business Planets Only truly was to close his computer when Summer entered the room while he was watching their ad. He also claimed to be watching it ironically, to make fun of it when Summer called him on it, when she came back to find him on the site again and told Rick she had watched him watching it for a full minute. It seems unlikely, however, audiences will ever see Rick's love of smart worlds referenced in future episodes of Rick and Morty, given the show's attitude towards reoccurring gags and characters and the question of how legitimate any continuity might be. But it is interesting to see how Rick's relationships have evolved over the years.
What few details are known about Rick Sanchez's love life outside of his relationship with Beth's mother is equal parts disgusting and horrifying. The series to date has been filled with numerous side jokes hinting at Rick's kinky side. It's known from the Rick & Morty season 2 episode "Auto Erotic Assimilation" that he once dated hive-mind known as Unity, who allowed Rick to exploit millions of her host bodies to satisfy every lustful idea he had. It was also heavily implied in a musical number in the season 4 episode "Never Ricking Morty" that Rick Sanchez and his fellow freedom fighter Birdperson may once have been an item. Of course, having a relationship with a planet certainly tops all of that.