How To Watch Every Episode Of The Rick And Morty Spin-Off, The Vindicators
Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon's "Rick and Morty" is arguably the defining adult cartoon of the past decade, a genre-bending comedy that brilliantly explores the wackiest and raunchiest implications of the multiverse while also delivering emotionally complex stories and endless pop culture references.
But because of how long it takes to produce animation, the wait between seasons can be quite long. While we wait for season 6 to get made and released, Adult Swim has been pleasing fans with fun "Rick and Morty" adjacent adventures, from short films to commercials and more. Earlier this year, an anime spin-off series was announced, and now we have a spin-off web series of shorts that is all about Earth's mightiest heroes — The Avengers The Vindicators.
What is The Vindicators?
We first met the Vindicators during the season 3 episode "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender," which introduced us to the titular group of heroes comprised of Supernova (Gillian Jacobs), Vance Maxiumus (Christian Slater), Million Ants (Tom Kenny), Alan Rails (Lance Reddick), Crocubot (Maurice LaMarche), and Noob-Noob (Justin Roiland).
In that episode, Morty excitedly forces Rick to go on an adventure with The Vindicators during which they realize that this is actually The Vindicators' third adventure. Furthermore, they dislike Rick so bad that they didn't invite them to their second outing. This causes Rick to get so angry he drunkenly sets up a series of sadistic death games inspired by "Saw" that end up killing all the heroes.
Though The Vindicators were little more than a one-off joke making fun of superhero groups, the title of the episode already hinted at previous stories just ready to be explored. That leads us to the web series, "The Vindicators 2," which tells the story of the fateful adventure that made the team bitter and sad.
Where can you watch The Vindicators spin-off series?
"The Vindicators 2" series is comprised of 10 episodes, each between two and five minutes long. All 10 episodes of "The Vindicators 2" are available on the Adult Swim YouTube channel. But make sure you head over to Hulu or HBO Max to watch, at the very least, the episode of "Rick and Morty" where The Vindicators made their debut. Of course, if you haven't already done that, what would you even be doing here?
Is The Vindicators worth your time?
Kind of. The show is far from groundbreaking or even that surprising, and the episodes are so short that they mostly amount to a single visual joke per episode, like Crocubot being a cold and detached cyborg reptile but also loving to dance. Instead, they are mostly an excuse to revisit these characters, make fun superhero stories, and expand on the implications of the heroes' wild powers. Still, it is fun to see Tom Kenny, Maurice LaMarche, Justin Roiland, Gillian Jacobs and Christian Slater return as Million Ants, Crocubot, Noob-Noob, Supernova and Vance Maximus.
Ultimately, "The Vindicators 2" is a fun and harmless way to pass the time before "Rick and Morty" returns one day, eventually. Plus, the whole thing is about as long as a single episode of the main series, so what do you have to lose?