‘Rick and Morty’ Season 5 Finale: What Is the Central Finite Curve?

Adult Swim

The “Rick and Morty” season 5 finale on Adult Swim was phenomenal. But some fans are still wondering exactly what is the central finite curve. Here’s what we know so far.

This article will have MAJOR spoilers for “Rick and Morty” season 5 episodes 9 and 10. 

Evil Morty Explained the Central Finite Curve

Fans finally got to see Evil Morty again in season 5 episode 10. And as is often the case with Evil Morty, he ended the episode victorious again, succeeding in his plan despite Rick’s interventions.

Evil Morty explained that he was going to put an end to the central finite curve (or, more accurately, he opened a breach so that he could access universes outside of the curve.)

Essentially, the central finite curve is a multiverse “wall” of sorts. It only allows travel to dimensions where Rick is the smartest person in the universe. It walls off access to any universes where Rick isn’t the smartest. But without knowing that the curve exists, you’d naturally think Rick was always the smartest and that’s just how the universe always worked out. So the multiverse as we knew it wasn’t the true multiverse, but one section separated from the rest of the multiverses.

At the end of episode 10, Evil Morty breached that wall and traveled to where he can access other universes previously unreachable. Thus, the yellow portal gun that he uses at the end likely references travel to universes that weren’t accessible before the central finite curve was in place — universes where Rick is not the smartest. Rick himself admitted that Evil Morty is the only one who was ever able to hack his portal gun.

Of course, one might view a few possible plotholes in the central finite curve idea itself. For example, Evil Morty has thwarted Rick at every turn, implying that he’s actually smarter than Rick. And we’ve seen a few episodes where we encountered some Ricks who were definitely not smart (although they might have been the smartest in their respective universes.) There have also been a couple of times this season where Morty seemed to be smarter than Rick. It’s not readily apparent how these exceptions fit with the central finite curve explanation, but we’ll likely learn more in future seasons. And viewers will certainly have quite a few theories about it too.

The Central Finite Curve Has Been Referenced Before

This actually wasn’t the first time we heard about the central finite curve. In “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind” (season 1 episode 10), a Council member notes that “of all of the Ricks in the central finite curve, you’re the malcontent.” The quote is about 45 seconds into the video below.

Ever since this quote, fans have been guessing that this wasn’t an infinite multiverse we were operating within. Here’s one discussion below from Reddit that was written four years ago.

Simple Rick Was 60 Iterations Off the Central Finite Curve

In “Tales from the Citadel,” we learn that Simple Rick’s origin is “60 iterations” off the central finite curve.

You can see when this was mentioned in the YouTube video above. Does this imply that Simple Rick was from outside the central finite curve, and that’s why he was able to be satisfied with a simpler life? Or do Ricks simply become less smart the closer they get to the finite curve?

READ NEXT: ‘Rick and Morty’ S4E4: What Did Rick See in the Cat’s Mind? [Top Theories]