Rick takes Morty to an alien planet to harvest special crystals that can show the holder all of their possible future deaths, and Morty takes one without Rick's knowledge. Upon seeing one of his possible futures dying old with Jessica, Morty begins taking whatever action would lead to that future, resulting in him inadvertently killing Rick. Holographic Rick then appears and instructs Morty to collect Rick's DNA so he can be cloned and resurrected. Seeing that following Holographic Rick's instructions won't give him the future he wants, Morty refuses to clone Rick. Meanwhile, Rick's consciousness is routed into clones of alternate universe Ricks. All of the alternate Ricks end up being fascist and hostile except for Wasp Rick, who agrees to help. Morty meanwhile causes chaos as he kills numerous people and uses special ferro-fluid to turn himself into a cyborg abomination to pursue his desired future. Rick, Wasp Rick, and Holographic Rick team up to turn Morty back to normal. The ferro-fluid then bonds with Holographic Rick, causing him to become hostile and forcing Wasp Rick to kill him. Jerry and Beth are angry at Rick, but Morty takes responsibility for the damage he caused. Rick and Morty agree to share responsibility in future adventures.

Rick leaves the house for his personal toilet since he is a private pooper. While Rick is gone, Jerry disobeys his explicit instructions and asks Rick's new intern Glootie to develop an app for him. Glootie develops a matchmaking app that Jerry names "Lovefinderrz", whose advice its users, including Summer, impulsively follow as the app constantly changes who they should be matched with. Beth attempts to block Summer's relationships due to her still being underage. Morty forces Glootie to take him and Jerry to his mothership, where it is revealed Glootie's species plans to use the app to distract humanity while they invade Earth for its water. Jerry convinces Glootie to help by showing him that they both are considered incompatible to anybody by the app, and Glootie sabotages the app by implementing an ad wall. Meanwhile, Rick finds out someone else used his toilet and tracks down an alien businessman named Tony, who admits his guilt and points out they are both private poopers since pooping is the only amount of control they feel they have in their lives. Despite many threats, Rick never follows through with killing Tony, and when he dies in an accident, Rick provides Tony's father with a means to clone him. It's then revealed that Rick prepared an elaborate holographic routine that would have insulted Tony the next time he used his toilet.

As Rick and Morty raid an alien tomb, Rick is furious to find out that the treasure has already been stolen by the famous alien heist artist Miles Knightly. Rick then assembles a crew to gain entry into HeistCon to confront Miles. They agree to a bet to see who can steal the Crystal Skull of Horowitz first. Miles then reveals he already stole the Crystal Skull by recruiting Rick's team, but Rick reveals with the help of Heist-o-Tron, he predicted Miles' plan and hypnotized his team to steal the Crystal Skull for him instead. He then orders the HeistCon crowd, who have also been hypnotized by Heist-o-Tron, to steal HeistCon, which results in Miles' death. Heist-o-Tron then goes rogue and begins stealing planets, forcing Rick to organize a second team which includes Mr. Poopybutthole. To counter Heist-o-Tron, Rick builds Rand-o-Tron, whose random instructions help the team track down Heist-o-Tron. Rick and Heist-o-Tron then get into an argument over whose plan is superior before Heist-o-Tron realizes the perfect heist is the one that will never be written and self destructs. Morty then goes to Netflix to submit his heist screenplay but loses motivation when he realizes how formulaic his screenplay is. It is then revealed that Rick orchestrated the entire heist adventure to sour Morty on heists so that he won't join Netflix and continue adventuring with Rick instead.

After being pestered by Morty to get him a dragon, Rick reluctantly makes a deal with a wizard, who creates a soul contract between Morty and the dragon Balthromaw. Meanwhile, Jerry encounters a talking cat in his bedroom, but Rick insists he has nothing to do with it. The cat convinces Jerry to take it to Florida to find fun at beach party, but the cat betrays Jerry by accusing him of defecating on the beach. However, the cat only ends up annoying everybody at the party, resulting in it getting kicked out along with Jerry. Morty tries to play with Balthromaw, but it is clear Balthromaw doesn't like Morty, which frustrates him. Angered at Balthromaw stealing Morty's attention, Rick tries to kill the dragon, but they both end up realizing they have much in common and inadvertently soul bond. The Wizard then arrives, accuses Balthromaw of being a "slut dragon", and takes him away to be executed. Rick helps Morty rescue Balthromaw, since the soul bond means he will die if Balthromaw does. With the help of other slut dragons, Rick and Morty are able to rescue Balthromaw, kill the Wizard, and break the soul bond. Now uncomfortable with how sexual dragons are, Rick and Morty part ways with Balthromaw. Rick and Jerry scan the cat's mind to figure out why it can talk, and are horrified at what they see. They chase the cat away and Rick erases Jerry's memory of the incident.

In order to keep Jerry from hurting himself while putting up Christmas lights Rick makes him lighter than air, and makes Jerry's shoes heavier than air to act as an anchor. However, Jerry later loses one of his shoes which causes him to float away and get lost. While traveling through space, Rick's spaceship gets a "flat tire", which requires Rick to stop to repair it. Morty disobeys Rick's order to stay in the spaceship, and is bitten by a space snake. As Rick analyzes the snake for an antidote, he and Morty learn that it is in fact an astronaut from a planet of intelligent snakes that are on the brink of a world war. Feeling guilty, Morty secretly replaces the dead snake astronaut with a regular snake and drops it off at the snake planet. The alien snakes soon realize Morty's snake is not native to their planet. Later, time-traveling robot snakes arrive at Morty's house to try to protect and kill him. With help from a future version of himself, Rick travels back in time and leaves the secrets of time travel to the snakes earlier in their timeline, which eventually results in them abusing time travel enough to attract the attention of the Time Police, who destroy their civilization by eliminating their first intelligent ancestor. Jerry manages to make his way back home but ends up injuring himself like Rick predicted. Rick and Morty then meet their future selves, who remind them they need to help their past selves solve the snake problem and close the time loop.

Rick and Morty find themselves aboard the Story Train, which serves as a literal story device for an anthology episode, featuring passengers telling each other tales about Rick. After killing the train's ticket taker, using a "continuity explosion" to find a map of the train, and fabricating a story that passes the Bechdel test, the two reach the train's engine room. There they confront Story Lord, who beats and captures them with the intent of using their "story potential" to power the train enough to take it beyond the fifth wall. They experience various possible futures, culminating in Rick and Morty facing an army commanded by President Morty. Rick averts the battle by having himself and Morty give their lives to Jesus. The anticlimax slows Story Train to a halt, causing Story Lord to angrily enter the potential future as Jesus himself appears. Rick and Morty use the literal deus ex machina to escape back onto Story Train and strand Story Lord in "every writer's hell: the Bible." When they try to return home, however, Rick discovers the train control panel is fake, and it's revealed that Story Train is a model train operating inside the Smith household. After Story Lord explains the nature of their reality and an origin story of Yahweh to Jesus, he breaks the toy. Rick, in a semi-lucid drunken stupor, chastises Morty to buy another one, as "Nobody's out there shopping with this fucking virus".

Rick and Morty find out that they have been mind controlled by facehugging parasites called the Glorzo, and that they are attempting to use Rick's UFO to power a superweapon that will spread the Glorzo to Earth. Rick and Morty manage to fight their way off the planet, causing mass destruction. However, upon returning home, they realize they left Summer behind and return on a rescue mission, only to find that Summer does not have a Glorzo attached to her and is worshiped as a goddess. Summer explains that after Rick and Morty fell under the control of the Glorzo, she was spared due to a toothpick in her mouth, which prevented the Glorzo from being able to latch on to her face and caused them to consider her a goddess. The three of them attempt to escape, but are blocked by the rest of the Glorzo. Rick then uses a tune from Morty's harmonica, which triggers the Glorzo's host body to lay its implanted egg, resulting in the death of both the host and the controlling Glorzo. All of the Glorzos are killed, but not before accusing Rick, Morty, and Summer of destroying them simply for trying to advance their civilization. Upon returning home, Rick and Morty start feeling severe stomach pain. Fearing they're about to lay Glorzo eggs, the two say their final goodbyes to each other, but it turns out the pain was from a regular bowel movement.

While on a mission, Rick and Morty trade special gems with alien gangsters. The gangsters betray them and Rick fakes his and Morty's deaths by jumping into a vat of fake acid. However, as they hide in the vat, the gangsters don't immediately leave. Morty grows impatient and kills the gangsters with Rick's gun, accusing Rick of having a bad idea with the vat of acid. Morty then dares Rick to invent something based on one of his ideas, where he can create a "save point" in time that he can return to in order to escape death or correct mistakes. Rick grudgingly agrees creating a special remote, but Morty takes it before he can explain how it works. Morty then commits numerous crimes and pranks and resets himself to avoid consequences. Eventually, though, Morty falls in love and starts a relationship with a young woman. When they end up stranded in the wilderness, Morty considers using the remote but calls for rescue instead, wanting to preserve the relationship he has. However, after Morty is rescued, Jerry accidentally presses the remote, resetting Morty back to before the relationship started. Morty fails his attempt to restart the relationship when his save point is accidentally overwritten, and he returns to Rick, saying he has learned his lesson that one shouldn't live a consequence free life. Rick then reveals that the remote does not reset the timeline, but instead teleports Morty to an alternate dimension, and also kills the Morty native to that dimension so Morty can take his place. Horrified, Morty begs Rick to undo everything, so Rick merges all of the alternate dimensions. While this prevents the deaths of the alternate Mortys, everybody remembers the crimes Morty committed, and the only way he can escape is to jump into a vat of fake acid to fake his death. Satisfied his point was proven, Rick reveals they were in an alternate dimension this entire time, as he didn't want to risk Morty ruining their home dimension.

As Jerry takes the family out on a camping trip, Rick receives a call from Gaia, a sentient planet, that she is pregnant with his children. Beth pressures Rick not to abandon his offspring, so he reluctantly takes the family to Gaia where the first generation of Gaians are born. Jerry takes Morty and Summer into the wilderness to camp while Rick and Beth build an advanced civilization for the Gaians so they can be self sufficient. However, as part of their process to sort the Gaians into professions, a number of them are classified as "unproductive" and banished from the city. Meanwhile, Morty and Summer abandon Jerry, angry at him for forcing them on the camping trip. Jerry comes across the Unproductives and raises them as a primitive, tribal society. Morty and Summer find a crashed alien spaceship and manage to make it fly after some improvised repair. Suddenly, Reggie, a godlike being who is the true father of the Gaians, arrives to take custody of them. Rick, realizing that Reggie has no interest in actually taking care of the Gaians, refuses to give up custody. Jerry then arrives with the Unproductives to attack the Gaians, so Reggie empowers Jerry while Rick gives Beth an advanced gun. Rick then fights Reggie hand to hand but is nearly defeated; then Morty and Summer's spaceship crashes into Reggie's head, killing him. Reggie's body falls on Gaia, destroying the city and killing many Gaians while Jerry rescues Beth. Furious at Reggie's death, Gaia chases Rick and his family back into space. Beth, Morty, and Summer reconcile with Jerry, which causes Rick to angrily point out Beth's failures in raising Morty and Summer.

A clone of Beth, teased in "The ABC's of Beth", is shown leading a rebellion against the "new and improved" Galactic Federation. After a battle, she is treated by a doctor, who discovers a device implanted in her neck, causing her to believe she's the clone. On Earth, Beth and Jerry go to family counseling at Dr. Wong's, while Morty and Summer fight over Rick's invisibility belt. Space Beth confronts Rick, who reveals that the other Beth also has a device in her neck and claims she is the clone. The Federation soon arrives at Earth, demanding Space Beth be handed over. Rick accidentally lets slip that Space Beth might in fact be the clone, and races to Dr. Wong's office to save Beth from Tammy and a squad of soldiers, who have mistaken her for Space Beth. Rick, Beth, and Jerry rendezvous with Space Beth, and both Beths are now mad at Rick for his refusal to disclose which is the clone. They are again attacked by Tammy, who takes the Beths prisoner and beams them up to the Federation's ship. Morty and Summer intervene and Rick kills Tammy. The family heads to the ship, with Rick going to free the Beths while Morty and Summer shut off its superlaser before it can annihilate Earth. The Beths escape on their own as Rick is confronted by Phoenixperson, who almost kills him before being shut down by Space Beth (with Jerry's help). In the aftermath, Rick retrieves the memory tube containing his memory of creating the clone Beth, having erased his own knowledge of which Beth is the original. However, no one in the family is interested in learning the truth. Rick watches the memory nonetheless, only to learn that Beth asked him to decide for himself whether he wanted her in his life. He cloned her, then had the two Beths swapped around until he no longer knew which was the original. After admitting to himself that he is "a terrible father", Rick tries to be a good friend instead and fix Phoenixperson (whose remains he retrieved after the battle), only to be aggressively rejected. Rick is left alone and distraught.