The Rick And Morty Season 5 Finale Scene Fans Thought Broke Canon

Contains spoilers for the "Rick and Morty" two-part Season 5 finale

In the "Rick and Morty" Season 5 finale, upon a visit to the Citadel of Ricks, Rick (Justin Roiland) and Morty (Roiland) run into longtime series villain Evil Morty, first introduced upon the Citadel's debut. He reveals that the Citadel contains something called the Central Finite Curve, which limits what might otherwise be the possibility of infinite universes to solely those in which Rick is the smartest man alive. Evil Morty's plan to transcend the Central Finite Curve involves obtaining a recording of the entirety of Rick's mind in order to learn more about its workings.

Rick's memory ultimately reveals (as was hinted at in a previous episode) that his biological daughter and wife were both killed by another multiverse version of himself. Viewers already knew that the Jerry (Chris Parnell), Summer (Spencer Grammer), and Beth (Sarah Chalke) from Season 1 Episode 7 onwards are endemic to a separate universe than that from which the primary Rick and Morty originate. However, the Season 5 finale revealed that even the Smith family introduced in the series premiere is not related biologically to Rick, but is rather yet another universe's Smith family with whom he began living when Beth was already an adult in the wake of the death of his young birth daughter. 

That said, some fans quickly noted that this info is incongruous with a previous episode, leading to accusations that the Season 5 finale might not be entirely respectful of existing series canon.

In a Reddit discussion about the Season 5 finale, user miboyl questioned how the death of the primary version of Rick's young daughter squares with a Season 3 episode, "The ABC's of Beth," which reveals that Rick built Beth an idyllic world called Froopyland to serve as her childhood playground. Since we now know that Rick never raised a version of Beth as a child, the fact that he describes Beth growing up visiting Froopyland doesn't make sense in light of recent revelations from the Season 5 finale.

In response, user inbooth credited the discrepancy to "bad writing." User Weird_Winter4696 similarly described this incongruity as evidence that perhaps the series' creators aren't as attentive to series canon, while noting that the show is "still fun." 

Other users still, like therealpogger5, attempted to explain why Rick might claim he created Froopyland, assuming he learned about its existence after the fact and took credit for creating it from another Rick.

It's an interesting potential contradiction, though one we suspect might be easily resolved. One thing's for certain, after that Season 5 finale, everything on "Rick and Morty" became a lot more complicated.