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The “Rick and Morty” series has always been a classic for analyzing contemporary existentialist ideas through entertainment. In the finale episode of the latest season 7 “Fear No Mort”, Rick and Morty dive into a “fear hole” that, as it claims, can help one conquer their deepest fears by presenting their fears and letting them battle their fears. However, when Morty think he has come out of the fear hole, having successfully battled his fears, he discovers again and again that he’s still in the hole and is only going through deeper and deeper fears. Although the episode does give the answer that all of the fear holes just symbolize layers of Morty’s fears and his deepest fear of Rick not jumping in the fear hole at all with him, in various parts of his adventure, he has to question whose fear it is, if fear really exists, and if one can truly conquer fear.
The idea of the episode draws a parallel with existentialist Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s discussion on despair, where he divides people’s despair into three kinds: the one who is ignorant of despair, the one who despairs over the weakness of the self to allow the despair, and the one who despairs because they defy being despair. The three kinds of despair seemingly suggest a progression of more and more real despair, and yet, in the end, Kierkegaard claims that humans have to be in the constant existential pain of despair unless they can become the true self, almost a perfect self who is well aware of who they are and is satisfied with who they are, which is a very rare circumstance.
To try to conquer the fear in the preliminary fear hole, Morty has to drag the fake Rick (who is in fact part of the fear hole simulation) out of Rick’s fantasy to linger in the past relationship with his wife. While the wife asks Rick to stay in the fantasy, the NPC Rick replies, as Morty wills him to, “you can be great or you can live forever”, implying that to seek the true self instead of perishing in the fear hole reality, one has to stop fearing the potential loss. This aligns with Kierkegaard in saying that despair is a developmental failure in a human whose ultimate goal is to achieve their true self.
After having the false impressions of having got out of the fear hole multiple times, Morty realizes that perhaps the fear he needs to conquer is the fear of the fear hole itself. He needs to let go of his uncertainty about his existence, becoming sure that the reality he sees is the actual reality so that he doesn’t fear anymore. Morty has thus entered the stage, “to will in despair to be oneself”, a defiance against despair so that one can be the true self. Yet, Kierkegaard doesn’t answer the questions of what a true self is, what the ethical is, and what the reality is. Indeed, existentialists have battled with the problem of what human nature or reality is. Therefore, Morty never in fact let goes of his suspicion toward the reality he is in, meaning he is in fact still in the fear hole.
There never seems to be a true answer to what a self is, and that’s perhaps why humans need to constantly struggle to find the truth of the self that is ever more far away, according to Kierkegaard. Indeed, even after Morty decides to drop his uncertainty about whether he is still in the fear hole, he eventually finds out that he’s still battling his fear when he realizes that he has grown up and has become exactly like his dad, which has been an impotent and hilarious figure in the family. The existential crisis of fear and trembling seems to last throughout one’s life because of the constant contradictions in the secular world: one’s desire for infinity with a finite body, one’s desire for freedom while trapped by life necessities, and one’s temporal life with the eternal possibilities. In Morty’s case, he can never come to terms with his growth and his dad’s genetic influence on his appearance; also, he can never be at peace with that perhaps most grow up to be mundane people they hate in their childhood. Although Kierkegaard doesn’t explicitly say that humans will be in pain forever, his argument that despair is a disappointing consciousness over oneself eternally implies that. For Morty, even if he has lived a fulfilling life in the fear hole for several years, in the end, he still can’t be satisfied, because his growing up will only remind him of his own father. This doomed possibility of human finiteness makes him despair.
Finally, it turns out that Morty’s deepest fear, the reason for his non-stop circulation through multiple fear holes, is because his grandpa and adventure partner Rick never jumps in the fear hole with him in the first place. All along, Morty has been fighting with the possibility that Rick doesn’t even care about him.
Although the episode seemingly gives a solution to the reason for Morty’s despair, it’s hard to say whether Morty has found his true self and has defeated his fear. Fear of losing attention from Rick seems to be an irresoluble fear, and the episode doesn’t specify if Morty has indeed come out of the fear hole.
Moreover, when Morty tells Rick about the various fears he has to tackle in the fear hole, Rick really wants to try it out himself, but gives up as he considers the consequences of facing his fear. In Rick’s case, he chooses to be unconscious of his despair, the first stage in Kierkegaard’s theory on despair (73), but perhaps the most sensible stage as one can never defeat fear, anyways. Rick, as a seasoned nihilist in the show, has perhaps purposefully chosen to be ignorant of his consciousness after he has been through all the stages of despair. Possibly, Rick’s decision provides the only tangible method for humans to tackle their permanent despair.