Rick and Morty was a revolutionary addition to the adult animation genre when it premiered back in 2013. It brought a familiar trope like Back to the Future and explored alternative realities, alien worlds, and some truly fascinating blends of fantasy and sci-fi, with Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty at the forefront.
As season 9 comes to a close this week, we look back at the show so far and how each season holds up to the standards it created. Since we have yet to see the season 9 finale, which releases on July 26, 2026, we are only ranking the previous 8 seasons. We will see rewatchabilty, the ratio of jokes, and narrative risks taken by the show to rank the seasons.
Here are all the Rick and Morty seasons ranked.
8. Rick and Morty Season 4 Had Only a Few Redeemable Episodes
The fourth season of Rick and Morty is unfortunately its weakest, which is surprising because of how amazing season 3 was. While a handful of episodes are good, like ‘The Vat of Acid Episode’, which shows Rick’s own bad decisions and how he has to relive them, most of the others do not push the narrative as much.
The season was released in two halves, and the overall season arc does not come together as well as other seasons in the show. While the season finale, ‘Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri,’ gives a neat lead-in to the next season, season 4 is uneven.
7. Season 6’s Incredible Premiere Episode Trumps the Rest of the Season
When you reach the top early, the only other way seems to be down. Season 6 faced that problem when its premiere episode, ‘Solaricks,’ hit it out of the park. The episode directly deals with the aftermath of the Citadel’s destruction in season 5. While the season 5 finale already explained the Central Finite Curve and Rick’s tragic backstory, ‘Solaricks’ capitalizes on those reveals by sending everyone back to their original universes and properly establishing Rick Prime as the ultimate villain.
The episode saw the show take its own mythology seriously, which happens rarely, as it is structured to be inconsequential. However, the rest of the show is not on the same level, and this inconsistency is why season 6 ranks so low. It again goes back to prioritizing wild premises instead of a payoff.
6. The Justin Roiland Recast Transition Is Still Rough in Season 7
Despite recording the lines of most of season 7, Justin Roiland was dropped from Rick and Morty after he faced allegations of domestic violence (which were later dropped). The show had to find replacements for both the main characters (and a host of other characters) soon, and the rush is seen in the quality of season 7.
Newcomers Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden stepped in as Rick and Morty, with Jon Allen taking over Mr. Poopybutthole. The premiere, ‘How Poopy Got His Poop Back,’ leans on that transition directly, while ‘Unmortricken’ finally digs into Evil Morty’s backstory. The season is the show’s worst-rated season (RT – 77%). It is not that bad, though, and hence the ranking.
5. The New Actors Find Their Footing in Rick and Morty Season 8
Coming a full year after Season 7, Season 8 benefits from Cardoni and Belden settling more comfortably into their roles. The season opens with ‘Summer of All Fears,’ which traps Morty and Summer inside a punishing virtual-reality simulation over a stolen phone charger, and ‘The Last Temptation of Jerry’ turns Easter into a full Space Christian mythology built around Jerry.
‘The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly’ digs into the aftermath of the Citadel’s destruction with a group trying to rebuild it, giving the season some real narrative follow-through. It’s a more consistent, confident stretch than the recast’s debut, even if it rarely reaches the show’s manic highest highs.
4. Season 5 Is a Great Return-to-Form After The Previous Season
As mentioned before, season 4 was the weakest of Rick and Morty. But its follow-up was a gracious return-to-form, and even did some things better. For starters, it began to expand on more of its mythology, and previous episodes began to have consequences. The two-part finale is the best example of this.
Along the way, the season also delivers standalone gems like ‘Mortyplicity,’ in which the family builds decoy versions of themselves to handle danger, and ‘Amortycan Grickfitti,’ a body-horror riff on teen movies. Between the mythology payoff and the quality of the one-offs, it’s one of the show’s most satisfying complete seasons.
3. Season 1 Sets up the Show for Future Greatness
While it would have been better to keep season 1 at the top, the quality of other entries in the list is why the freshman season sits at number 3. Rick and Morty began as a buddy-cop-style sci-fi adventure story that quickly became an existential commentary on the nature of humanity. It is very Star Trek meets Back to the Future.
Many episodes in the series revealed what would be beloved patterns in the show. ‘Rick Potion #9’ and ‘Rixty Minutes’ establish the show’s willingness to let bad decisions carry permanent, unglamorous consequences, while ‘Meeseeks and Destroy’ and the penultimate ‘Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind’, which first introduce the multiverse-spanning Council of Ricks and the Morty who will become Evil Morty.
2. The Second Season Amps up the Show’s Brilliant Premise
The first season set it up; the second season knocked it out. Rick and Morty season 2 amped up all the gags, irreverence, pop culture references, and more that were set up in the first season, taking it to the next level. Classics like ‘Mortynight Run,’ ‘Total Rickall’ (in which alien parasites implant fake memories of nonexistent family members), and ‘Get Schwifty,’ alongside the finale, ‘The Wedding Squanchers’.
The season also sharpens the show’s signature tonal balance, placing genuine pathos right next to absurdist gags, better than almost any subsequent stretch.
1. Rick and Morty Season 3 Gave us Pickle Rick
The ‘Pickle Rick’ episode alone should give Rick and Morty season 3 the top spot in the list. But apart from the innovative and cultural phenomenon, the third season genuinely has bangers all around. ‘The Rickshank Rickdemption,’ in which Rick breaks out of Galactic Federation prison and crashes the alien economy, is incredibly made.
‘The Ricklantis Mixup’ pulls off one of the most structurally daring episodes in animated television. It’s the season where ambition, joke density, and emotional weight all line up at once, and no season since has quite matched it.
| Rank | Season | Rotten Tomatoes – Tomatometer | Popcornmeter (as of July 20, 2026) |
| 1 | 3 | 96% | 95% |
| 2 | 2 | 91% | 97% |
| 3 | 1 | 97% | 97% |
| 4 | 5 | 86% | 67% |
| 5 | 8 | 93% | 68% |
| 6 | 7 | 77% | 52% |
| 7 | 6 | 91% | 88% |
| 8 | 4 | 96% | 86% |
Which Rick and Morty season do you think is the best? Comment below.
Rick and Morty is available to stream on Hulu.
