Even in the Rick and Morty universe, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Charlie Day can’t stop himself from burning the trash.
In tonight’s penultimate episode of Rick and Morty Season Eight, “Morty Daddy,” Adult Swim’s flagship series continued its trend of bringing in guest stars from across corporate lines as it introduced Day to the series in his role as Salvatron, the self-aware sentinel robot who digs through Rick’s trash for anything worth saving while vaporising the rest with lasers.
Fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will understand that, for Day, Rick and Morty asking him to play a character that is literally a professional trash-picker and trash-burner is practically typecasting.
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Spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans who haven’t yet watched “Morty Daddy,” which marked the second time thus far in Season Eight that Rick and Morty has introduced an Always Sunny star to their universe playing an antagonist role that’s perfect for them, just to immediately kill them off.
In “Morty Daddy,” Morty reconnects with his estranged son, Morty Jr. (the alien sex robot one, not the mutant sperm incest one), who asks Morty for help in finding his birth “mother.” Unfortunately for Morty Jr., back in the Rick and Morty Season One episode “Raising Gazorpazorp,” Morty accidentally kept the circle of life spinning when he impregnated a sexbot from an alien pawn shop that turned out to be a fertility android from the planet Gazorpazorp, where the males are all hyper-aggressive killing machines and the females are highly intelligent superbeings.
To rescue “Gwendolyn,” as Morty named her so many seasons ago, the father and son must travel into the portal that is Rick’s garbage chute, which takes them to a trash dimension filled with Rick’s discarded and hilariously ill-advised and sentient inventions. Reining over the trash planet is Salvatron, played by Day, who has learned not to consider what comes through the portal as “salvageable” and who immediately tries to incinerate Morty and Morty Jr. Eventually, the familial duo manage to organize a trash bot uprising and overthrow Salvatron, thus presumably removing the possibility of a repeat performance from Day.
Just a few weeks ago, Day’s Always Sunny co-star Danny DeVito made his Rick and Morty debut as a mad, zoophilic scientist, and his very brief tenure on the show also ended in his introductory episode with the horrific death of his character. Anyone who knows how jealous the Paddy’s Pub Gang gets will understand that Rick and Morty will now have to give Rob Mac, Glenn Howerton and Kaitlin Olson the opportunity to die on Adult Swim, otherwise they’ll end up like every other side character whose lives the Gang destroys.
In fact, Rick and Morty missed an opportunity here to easily strike Mac off the list by making him one of the trash bots — maybe he could have been a discarded exercise bike with a “fist” where the seat should be.