Rick Sanchez, the smartest man in the universe, has made no secret about his theory on existence: it’s meaningless and every individual’s part in it doesn’t matter. This thread of nihilism runs throughout Rick & Morty and made for an intense debate in the comics through an unlikely character, Mr. Meeseeks. If life is truly meaningless and comic books and TV shows are just momentary diversions from the curse of pondering existence in a chaotic and uncaring universe, then Mr. Meeseeks may be smarter than Rick, because he found meaning—through a bowl of chili.
Mr. Meeseeks are problem-solving, skinny, blue creatures born from a button on a mysterious box that Rick introduced to his family. Meeseeks yearn to earn death and do so by fulfilling a request, be it menial or complex. Their existence is determinative, but do they gain any meaningful or positive insight while completing their task? Are their lives only task-defined without free will? Does the mere completion and their subsequent non-existence give meaning since lingering existence causes Mr. Meeseeeks pain?
Comic creators James Asmus, Jim Festante and CJ Cannon take on the difficult task of determining life’s meaning in the comic Rick and Morty Presents: Mr. Meeseeks. They accomplish what the best writing on the show does: make a farce out of an intelligent, rhetorical debate. This comic tasks Mr. Meeseeks with stripping away artifices to find if life has meaning. All over a bowl of chili. Rick’s granddaughter Summer decides to make chili to impress a boy but gets bored with the long process and pops a Mr. Meeseeks into existence to stir the chili until it’s ready. Mr. Meeseeks accidentally births another of his kind after asking himself how people derive meaning in life. This new Mr. Meeseeks simply says life is meaningless, punctuated by chaos and pain. But the new Meeseeks doesn’t blink out of existence. This is a Mr. Meeseeks’ worst nightmare since they have to figure out a complex problem in order to achieve non-existence. Rick drops in to assert that duh, life has no meaning.
But this answer is unsatisfying to the Meeseeks since some people do find meaning in their lives. Even though everyone will eventually die and most people don’t leave a mark on history books to be remembered or leave an indelible mark on the ancient universe that came before them and will continue after they die because the universe is so ceaseless and unsympathetic. It’s an impossible problem for anyone, especially a Meeseeks. The two blue guys go out into the world to gain meaning but have the most fun when they enter a video game that condenses human life to a playable turn and only enjoy it when their character dies. So they repeat the game, finding unique and gory ways to die. A grim reduction to life—that death is the only meaningful thing a person can do in a senseless existence.
The Meeseeks again strike out to try several things that moral philosophers have suggested over the millennia. They perform acts of good service to a homeless man, try religion, seek out a self-serving hedonist life, they steal, kill and love wantonly. But none of it satisfies the initial question since neither Meeseeks dies. The culmination of the anguished debate over existence brings Meeseeks to a revelation. Life only has purpose according to the meaning each person assigns it. The other side of the nihilism coin: existentialism.
Sure the grand scale of life in this 13-billion-year-old universe might have no overarching purpose. But an individual’s life can have significance based on whatever meaning they find in it. As the first Mr. Meeseeks gains enlightenment, the chili is finished and he dies. So did it really matter at all anyway? The task was fulfilled, does that assign meaning? It was just chili. And in the end Summer takes the chili to a party where no one eats it and it ends up in the trash. The comic ends there, with the reader left to decide if Mr. Meeseeks led a meaningful life by the experiences he chose to seek out, or if his life’s work was in the end, meaningless.
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