Summer Smith from Rick and Morty’s original universe died heroically saving her world and the multiverse overall from a great evil. When Summer was introduced, her world of high school and teenage priorities was interrupted by random consequences of her grandfather and brother’s madcap sci-fi adventures. When her world was changed forever, Summer and her parents were left to fend for themselves in a world full of Cronenberg-like monstrosities. Although Rick and Morty would revisit the reality they abandoned to start again elsewhere, their comic adventures would continue Summer’s story and reveal her tragic fate, sacrificing herself to prevent a cabal of evil Ricks from unleashing a mythically malevolent Rick with the potential to destroy the multiverse.
In Rick and Morty Season 1, Episode 6 “Rick Potion #9,” Rick’s attempt to reverse the love potion he created for Morty only results in the entire world transforming into hideous, violent monstrosities called "Cronenburgs," which leaves Rick and the Smith family as the only remaining humans. While Beth, Jerry and Summer adapt to a feral lifestyle of killing and consuming Cronenbergs, Rick and Morty escape to another dimension to impersonate their doppelgängers there who died in a lab accident. While this world would be revisited in Season 2’s “The Rickshank Redemption,” the comic Rick and Morty #45 explores the daily life of Summer and her family, which consists of remaining alive and killing Cronenbergs that wander into their territory and often become dinner. Summer’s life changes when she encounters a Cronenberg version of her brother who admits to being from another world where Rick cured all the monsters, causing the deformed pair to seek another world where they’d fit in.
In the Rick and Morty #45 story by Kyle Starks and Marc Ellerby, Summer learns from Cronenberg Morty that his Rick has sought council with a group of extremely evil Ricks who plan to unleash “Old God Rick,” an imprisoned malevolent Rick with unfathomable power. Summer and Morty attempt to use her grandfather’s old spaceship and the neutrino bomb inside to destroy them and stop Old God Rick from becoming freed. When the plans change upon running into her father, Summer prevents Jerry from piloting the doomed ship, choosing to sacrifice herself to stop her otherworldly grandpa and his evil variants from dooming other worlds the way he doomed hers.
One can argue that Summer’s role in Rick and Morty began to expand after the titular duo abandoned their original world for another, playing a more pivotal role in future storylines instead of being solely reactionary. She admits that despite what Rick and Morty did to their world, she still misses them and that she grows bored of her daily routines. When she meets the deformed variant of her brother, it presents her with what she’s been missing: a purpose. Although it’s a suicide mission, she willingly steps up to save the world from a version of her grandfather that clearly references H.P Lovecraft’s multi-tentacled Old God Cthulhu. She sees this as her chance to not only save her world but all other worlds full of versions of her family that continue to deal with the consequences of Rick’s genius and ego.
As the clock ticks down, Summer flies away just as Old God Rick rears his head, the following mushroom cloud suggesting that all Ricks present perished along with her in the explosion. While this Smith family lost their daughter but gained a Cronenberg son, it’s a bittersweet ending to the original Summer that fans knew before Rick and Morty took their signature mayhem to another universe. Although its unclear on if her death here is canon with her later appearance in the show, the real tragedy is that Summer sacrifice will likely remain unknown and forgotten within the shadow her grandfather and brother’s legacy casts throughout the Rick and Morty multiverse.
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