Although Rick and Morty’s first spinoff didn’t work, the show’s struggles weren’t caused by its similarity to the popular Adult Swim series. As viewers wait for Rick and Morty season 8 to arrive, the popular sci-fi comedy franchise appeared to offer a fun spinoff to tide fans over in August 2024. Rick and Morty: The Anime promised to bring the world of the series to life in a new medium, showcasing the same characters in a new setting and with a bold new visual style. Unfortunately, this experiment proved a profound failure upon Rick and Morty: The Anime’s release.
Rick and Morty: The Anime earned a mere 2.7 IMDb rating, a far cry from Rick and Morty’s 9.6 rating. The spinoff’s largely negative reviews complained that its premise was too familiar, but its style was too different, resulting in a show that felt tonally different from Rick and Morty despite featuring the same main characters. After Rick and Morty’s season 7 ending wowed critics and fans alike, this was a disappointing surprise. However, Rick and Morty’s largely forgotten earlier spinoff could have warned viewers what they were in for. Released in 2022, this superhero spoof also flopped.
Rick and Morty’s First Spinoff Was A YouTube Vindicators Series
Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom Brought Back The Superhero Team
2022’s Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom was Rick and Morty’s first spinoff, although fans of the series could be forgiven for not remebering this. The Vindicators spinoff was an animated web series that delved into the daily lives of the dysfunctional superhero squad first seen in season 3, episode 4, “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender.” As implied by its title, Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom was set shortly before that episode’s events. The web series obliquely explained how the superheroes incurred the wrath of Rick, though it mostly focused on their daily lives.
Developed by writers Sarah Carbiener and Erica Rosbe, the ten episodes of Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom were directed by Maite Garcia. Unlike Rick and Morty’s disappointing 2024 spinoff, the Vindicators series featured few appearances from familiar characters and settings. Instead, the web series fleshed out the world of the Vindicators by illustrating the quiet moments between their big dramatic superheroics. The show revealed a team who were troubled, morally ambiguous, and complex, but not particularly funny or engaging. Tonally, the web series had an odd feel that was undeniably an acquired taste.
Rick and Morty’s Vindicators Spinoff Had A Strange Format
The Superhero Satire Was A Brief Slice-of-Life Web Series
With each episode being only a minute or two long, Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom was a slice-of-life web series that centered on the titular team’s lives outside the limelight. This premise had potential, although earlier efforts like 2000’s The Specials had played with the conceit before. What made Rick and Morty‘s later spinoff disappointing was its inability to expand the world of the series beyond the original show’s premise, whereas the Vindicators web series had the opposite problem. The world of the show felt distinctly disconnected from Rick and Morty‘s reality.
It was never entirely clear whether the
Vindicators
show was trying to parody the portentous tone of works like
Watchmen
or simply emulate it.
Although its heroes had appeared in an earlier Rick and Morty episode, Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom shared little creative DNA with the original show. The Vindicators web series was darker and more self-serious than Rick and Morty, and it was never entirely clear whether the show was trying to parody the portentous tone of works like Watchmen or simply emulate it. Episodes like “Pro-Nouns” and “First Love” were explicitly comedic and goofy, while outings like “Kintsugi” and “The Dance” were barely played for laughs at all. This uncertainty made the show’s tone tough to pin down.
Rick and Morty’s Vindicators Spinoff Was Poorly Timed
The Series Premiered At The Height Of Superhero Fatigue
Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom could have been a huge hit considering the show’s status as a dark, cynical deconstruction of sunny, fun superhero adventures. The original appearance of The Vindicators arrived in 2017 when the earliest hits of a backlash against the Marvel Cinematic Universe were beginning. By 2022, this backlash was in full swing and viewers were primed for parodies that ruthlessly took apart the tropes of superhero movies. This could have been good news for a satirical takedown of the superhero genre, but the Vindicators web series arrived after a slew of similar competitors.
The
Vindicators
series had little to offer that viewers hadn’t already seen.
By the time Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom arrived, Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Jupiter’s Legacy, Invincible, The Suicide Squad, The Boys seasons 1-3, The Boys Presents: Diabolical, and Harley Quinn had all already satirized the superhero genre’s overly familiar tropes. Between them, these earlier works ran the tonal gamut from dirty jokes to downbeat deconstructions of the genre’s simplistic morality. The Vindicators series had little to offer that viewers hadn’t already seen. Rick and Morty still hasn’t explored every story that the show could cover, but its web series spinoff was hard-pressed to come up with fresh perspectives.
Rick and Morty’s Vindicators Spinoff Proved The Franchise Needs Its Titular Duo
Rick and Morty’s World Isn’t As Engaging Without Rick and Morty
Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom wasn’t helped by the influx of superhero parodies in the years between the team’s first on-screen appearance and the debut of their web series. However, this wasn’t what killed interest in the spinoff. Ultimately, the biggest issue with the spinoff was that the Vindicators spinoff didn’t feel like an extension of the Rick and Morty universe. The show had moments of profundity and tasteless gags side by side but, unlike Rick and Morty, the superhero satire could never quite work out how to get the right balance between these divergent elements.
Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom
has an IMDb rating of 6.8, while
Rick and Morty
‘s IMDb rating is 9.1.
Although Rick and Morty: The Anime broke the original show’s rules with its time travel storyline, this isn’t the reason that the show faced negative reviews. It was the failure to recapture the anarchic, dark, playful tone of Rick and Morty that sank the anime, and the same can be said for Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom. The web series was fine when judged on its own merits, if a little thin. However, as a spinoff of Rick and Morty, the Vindicators show only highlighted how hard it is to recreate the Adult Swim show’s tone and style.
Source: IMDb