Conspiracy
As Rick and Morty prepare for their adventure, they stop to talk to Jerry, who is on the roof trying to set up the Christmas lights. Morty relays Beth’s concern that Jerry will kill himself in the process of hanging himself from the light. Jerry says he can hang the lights safely; Rick responds by accusing Jerry of lying. Jerry immediately falls off the roof, but before he hits the ground, Rick hits him with a beam that makes Jerry’s body lighter than air. He then hits Jerry’s shoes with a beam that makes them heavier than air, thus “neutrally levitating” Jerry. As Rick and Morty climb into the spaceship, Jerry celebrates his buoyancy, which allows him to jump high into the air and then slowly descend back down. Remembering the warning that the beam will eventually wear off, Jerry sets a timer to watch how long he will float neutrally.
In space, Rick and Morty are fighting over pee and centipedes when (somehow) the spaceship hits a “sharp thing in space” and blows a tire. Rick puts on his space suit and goes to fix up the apartment, giving Morty strict instructions not to follow. Morty immediately ignores these instructions, puts on his spacesuit and heads outside. Rick, who is fixing up the apartment, starts yelling at Morty to get back on the ship. While the two argue, the snake astronaut slithers in and bites Morty’s ankle. Morty kills the snake by smashing his astronaut suit with his cap, but it is clear that he has been seriously injured.
Soon after, Morty turns purple, a sign of the poison the snake injected into him when it bit him. Rick flies to the snake’s home planet, scans it, and synthesizes an anti-venom serum that instantly cures Morty. The scan also reveals that the snakes on the planet have created an advanced patchwork of industrial societies – there are 19 billion snakes divided into 10,000 nations, all on the brink of global war over race. Rick remarks that the concept of racist snakes is laughable and begins to fly away. Horrified that he killed an astronaut who might have been the snakes’ last hope for survival, Morty despairs that he is the reason “19 billion snakes have lost all hope! Rick replies that the snakes’ loss of hope is their own fault and reminds Morty that the snake astronaut bit his first alien contact.
On the ground, we see Jerry bouncing into town where he sees a group of friends of many different races playing basketball together. Jerry asks to join the game and offers a bet that “that white boy can jump”. The players take exception to Jerry’s use of racial epithets, pointing out that the basketball court is the only place in society untouched by racism. Jerry tries to make amends but ends up inadvertently implying that he is a Nazi. He decides to just try to shoot, but as he jumps, one of his shoes falls off, causing Jerry to fly into the sky as the basketball players look on, proud that their neighborhood is upstanding.
After returning from his space adventure, Morty continues to blame himself for the impending doom of the snake planet. Clinging to the body of a space snake, he holds a vigil where he comes up with an idea to restore hope to the snakes. She goes to the pet store and buys a snake about the size of a space snake to take her place, which she names Slippy. Morty proceeds to draw markings on Slippy similar to the ones the Space Snake had and then forces Slippy into the Space Snake’s astronaut suit, getting bitten several times in the process.
After returning from his space adventure, Morty continues to blame himself for the impending doom of the snake planet. He clings to the body of a space snake and holds a vigil where he comes up with an idea to restore hope to the snakes. He goes to the pet store and buys a snake the size of a space snake in her place, which he names Slippy. Morty proceeds to draw marks on Slippy that are similar to the ones Space Snake had, and then forces Slippy into Space Snake’s spacesuit, getting bitten several times in the process.
The professor talks to Slippy, first over the intercom and later by entering the room and talking to her directly. Although Slippy seems suspicious at first, she eventually comes to trust the professor. She wraps herself around the professor in an aggressive display of affection. Although surprised, the professor quickly reciprocates and the two make love while being watched by other serpentine military officials.
Back on Earth, Rick, Morty and Summer are playing Downbeat when Beth enters the room asking about Jerry. Morty, to Rick’s chagrin, reveals that Rick made Jerry lighter than air. Beth expresses concern that Jerry will fall from the sky and die; Rick replies that this could only happen if Jerry botched the shoes. Rick and Beth quickly realize that this is actually quite possible and rush to find and rescue Jerry.
Jerry is revealed to be flying through the sky while attempting to return to the ground. He has tied the legs of his pants together and is holding the torso area open so the pants will fill with rainwater. Beth calls Jerry on his cellphone and tries to convince him to tell her where he is so Rick can pick him up. Jerry tells Beth nothing is wrong and that he is just buying lights at the store. However, Rick notices that he is lying and freezes Beth using a special remote, and then tries to level with Jerry, but Jerry rebuffs Rick. As far as Jerry is concerned, his predicament is a “win-win”: if he survives and returns home, it will be without Ricks help, but if he dies, it will be entirely Rick’s fault. Rick decides to let Jerry try to get out on his own as he manages to lower himself enough to grab onto a tree. Before unfreezing Beth, Rick activates a special gadget in his lair, which created a disfigured, fungus-grown Jerry head, whom he uses to trick Beth into thinking that her husband was okay.
Meanwhile, Jerry walks into the bar, carrying a boulder into the bar, looking for the driver. The bartender and patrons tell Jerry that he can’t bring the boulder with him. When Jerry drops the boulder, it floats up to the ceiling; the bartender and patrons told him that wasn’t allowed either. The patrons end up kicking Jerry out of the bar, causing him to immediately take off into the sky again.
Back at the house, Morty is in his room when a snake-shaped robot teleports into his position. The robot tries to kill Morty, but a snake enters the room with a shotgun. The snake and the robot fight and Morty runs into the garage to warn Beth and Rick about the snakes. Beth and Rick are skeptical at first, but when snakes and snake robots start appearing in the room and try to kill Morty, they quickly get the message. Beth, Rick and Morty grab their guns and try to kill the snakes that keep attacking in increasing numbers. A humanoid snake robot arrives to tell the family, but Beth crushes it to death in a panic. Morty asks Rick why the snakes would attack him when he was just trying to help them. Rick angrily replies that by sending Slippy to disguise himself as the original astronaut, instead of leaving well enough alone, Morty unwittingly informed the snakes that there was something bigger and scarier to ally against. Now, instead of falling into the dark ages for a few generations, the chosen snakes create new technology like time travel in an attempt to kill him.
In other words, none of this chaos would have been possible if Morty had simply done what Rick said in-universe and stayed in the car.
True to Rick’s words, sometime in the future of the Snake Planet, the war ends up costing the lives of 17 billion snakes. Soon after, a new Terminator-style war rages between the snakes and the machines. The surviving snakes from the previous war were able to partially defeat the machines because Morty somehow helped unite them.
Back on Snake Planet, Rick and Morty land on a planet where the war between snakes and machines is in its earliest stages. Rick and Morty fight their way into the Snake Pentagon where they defeat both robots and snake soldiers. He briefly sees Slippy threatened by several robot time-traveling snakes and protected by the time-traveling snakes, making her a central source of conflict that may decide the fate of the planet.
They then reach the “Snakenet” center where a time machine is under construction. They kill the scientists building the time machine, but realizing it’s not even a quarter done yet, Rick makes a mental note of the time travel plan in a format the snakes understand, or in his case, “commit more to Morty’s current ‘whore -UPS ‘ “. As he said, future versions of Rick and Morty show up with a book full of time travel instructions written in snake language, portable time machines, and snake costumes. Future Morty, who has a black eye, rudely insults current Morty, and future Rick insults current Rick .Future Rick and Future Morty then leave.Donning their snake costumes, Rick and Morty travel back to 1985 and leave instructions for time travel at Snake MIT before returning to the present, hoping that the snakes’ own self-discovery will be their undoing.
After they leave, the snake student and his peers read the time travel instructions and use them to build a time machine. They send a student back to the 19th century to prevent the assassination of the snake Abraham Lincoln and send him a letter telling him to hide and prevent his assassination. The student returns victorious, only to find that the domino effect of Lincoln’s protection has altered the timeline and caused his present to be taken over by the Serpent Nazis.
Taking no chances, the student grabs the chainsaw and steps back into the time machine. In 1938, Snake Adolf Hitler gives a speech in Snake Berlin. Then he goes inside to take a shower. A number of Snake Time Travelers appear – some trying to kill Snake Hitler, others trying to protect him, or just fighting each other while Snake Hitler stares at them in confusion. The time travelers start killing each other, leading to pandemonium.
On Earth, in Jerry’s presence, Beth makes a brief call to ask for help. When he doesn’t answer, he leaves a voicemail promising to come home with “the best Christmas lights ever! Grabs a jet that sticks when neutral buoyancy wears off. A snake-human hybrid robot approaches Jerry and offers to save his life; Thinking the robot is from Rick, Jerry kicks it off, causing it to fly into the plane’s engine. The plane is hurtling towards the ground – Jerry jumps away at the last moment, grabs a tree and climbs to safety.
Back on Earth in the present, time-traveling snakes and snake robots rain down on the suburbs, still fighting to the death. Summer & Beth work hard to kill them but to no avail. Morty worries that the time travel only made it worse, but Rick assures him that things will work out in their favor because he knows what’s going to happen next.
In the fourth dimension, Shleemypants receives a phone call informing him of the incident. Along with another cop, they travel to the snake planet and go back in time until they find the first snake that used the tools. They proceed to bludgeon that snake to death, preventing the snake civilization (as we know it) from further developing. Present on Earth, all the attacking snakes and snake robots suddenly disappear, those that didn’t fall writhing in pain before involuntarily eating their own tails. Since it counted as one of Morty’s adventures, Rick pulls out the card, but this time he rips it up and declares that there are no leeway for what happened.
Jerry reveals himself to be on the roof and claims he was there the whole time. He immediately falls and breaks his leg. Rick heals the leg halfway and claims the remaining fifty percent is on him. He then remarks to Morty that Jerry is a piece of shit, but Morty doesn’t challenge the statement Rick, Morty and the family go inside to have eggnog, only for the two to be reunited with their future selves who rudely remind them that they need to make snakes costumes and translate time travel instructions into snake language. Both Rick and Morty are resigned to it.
In the post-credits scene, they complete the instructions and the time machines and travel to the snake planet to deliver the instructions, but before that Rick punches Morty in the eye and reminds him to stay in the car next time. This solves the loop of causality and explains Morty’s black eye.
