You know that feeling when you're watching a show and you think, "Okay, they've finally lost it"? That was basically the collective reaction when a literal astronaut snake bit Morty in the ankle during the middle of a space-flat-tire repair. Most fans call it the Rick and Morty snake episode, but the actual title is Rattlestar Ricklactica. It’s season 4, episode 5, and honestly, it’s one of the densest twenty minutes of television ever made.
It starts with something so mundane—Jerry trying to hang Christmas lights without dying—and ends with a multi-generational war involving snake Terminators, a snake Abraham Lincoln, and the Fourth Dimension Time Police. If you feel like you missed something, don't worry. You're not alone.
Why the Rick and Morty Snake Episode is Actually Brilliant
The writers, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, famously hated time travel as a plot device for years. They even had a box in Rick’s garage labeled "Time Travel Stuff" that just sat on a shelf gathering dust. It was a meta-joke. They thought time travel was a lazy way to fix mistakes. Then, they gave us 19 billion snakes divided into 10,000 nations, all on the brink of a race war.
When Morty kills the first snake astronaut (who was basically the Snake Neil Armstrong), he feels a weird amount of guilt. Instead of listening to Rick and just moving on, he buys a regular pet store snake from Earth, shoves it into a tiny space suit, and drops it onto the snake planet.
He thought he was saving their morale. Instead, he gave them proof of alien life.
The Evolution of Snake Jazz
We have to talk about Snake Jazz. It’s just "tss-tss-tss-tss" over a beat. It’s objectively terrible, yet Rick and Summer absolutely vibed with it. This is one of those tiny details that took over the internet. Why? Because it’s a perfect parody of how humans will latch onto literally anything "exotic," even if it’s just rhythmic hissing.
But there’s a deeper layer here. The snakes didn't just have jazz; they had a mirrored version of every human failure. They had snake racism. They had snake world wars. By introducing a "superior" alien life form (the Earth snake), Morty accidentally forced the snakes to unite through fear. That fear drove them to develop "un-thought-out technology" like time travel.
The Terminator Parody That Got Way Too Real
The middle of the episode is a frantic blur of The Terminator and Back to the Future tropes. You've got robot snakes sent back to kill Morty, and "resistance" snakes sent back to protect him. There’s even a "humanoid" snake that looks like a horrific fleshy monkey-thing because that's how snakes would imagine a friendly human.
Basically, the timeline gets so bloated with different factions trying to fix the "Morty problem" that the world just fills up with snakes. Here is how the chaos actually breaks down:
- The Snake Pentagon: The hub of their military-industrial complex where they try to "solve" the alien threat.
- Snake MIT: Where Rick and Morty have to travel back to 1985 to leave a book on time travel (written in "Snake Math") so the snakes can finish their machine faster.
- The Time Cops: These are the "testicle monsters" from season 2. Rick’s plan is actually to make the time travel so messy that these cosmic janitors show up and just delete the whole timeline.
It’s a nihilistic solution. To fix the mess, they just ensured that sentient snakes never existed in the first place. The Time Cops go back to the dawn of time and beat up the first snake that tries to use a tool. Problem solved.
Snake Math and Scientific Easter Eggs
If you pause the show at Snake MIT, the chalkboard isn't just random scribbles. It’s actually based on a real research paper about quantum mechanics. The show creators love doing this—hiding high-level physics in a joke about a reptile wearing a tiny sweater.
The language they use is also just the letter "S" repeated. It’s a bold move to have nearly five minutes of an episode consist of nothing but subtitles and hissing sounds. Most shows wouldn't trust their audience to stay tuned through that, but Rick and Morty thrives on that kind of "commitment to the bit."
What Most People Get Wrong About the Ending
A lot of people think the future Rick and Morty who show up with black eyes and a snake book are from a different dimension. They’re not. They are the actual Rick and Morty from a few hours in the future. They had to go through the "snake training" and the physical toll of a time loop just to close the circle.
When future Rick punches current Morty, it’s not just a gag. It’s a physical manifestation of how much Rick hates that Morty forced him to finally "do" a time travel episode. It’s a meta-commentary on the writers finally giving in to a trope they spent years mocking.
How to Actually "Get" This Episode
If you want to appreciate the Rick and Morty snake madness, you have to look at Jerry. While the universe is collapsing under the weight of serpentine time-paradoxes, Jerry is just floating through the air because he lost a shoe.
The episode contrasts the "High Concept Sci-Fi" of the snakes with the "Pathetic Reality" of Jerry. It suggests that both are equally meaningless. Rick isn't a hero for fixing the timeline; he’s just an exhausted guy who had to do a bunch of homework because his grandson couldn't let a dead snake stay dead.
To truly master the lore of this episode, keep these three things in mind:
- The Prime Directive exists for a reason. Every time Morty tries to be "nice" to a primitive culture, he accidentally triggers a genocide.
- Snake Jazz is a mindset. Sometimes the simplest, dumbest joke is the one that sticks.
- Time travel is a trap. It doesn't solve problems; it just creates more versions of the problem until the Time Cops have to step in.
If you’re looking to re-watch, pay attention to the background of the pet store. You can see a brief cameo of Snuffles (Snowball) from season 1. It’s a reminder that Morty’s "good intentions" have been backfiring since the very beginning. Next time you're tempted to help a space snake, just stay in the car. It’s easier for everyone.