Is Prime's arc really over?
I mean, he's dead alright, no doubt in that, and tbh I sort of hope that he will not be brought back to life. But. BUT.
This is a long ass rant. If you open it, it's on you.
Even in the last confrontation between Prime and C-137 we didn't really get any solid confirmations of Prime and C-137 origin story. We know they've met, we know Prime showed C-137 "infinity" (in his own words) and killed C-137's family, which resulted into C-137 trying to hunt him down, but except those facts confirmed and explained in s6ep1, s7ep3, s7ep5, nothing else was. Not the real meaning of their conversation in the garage, not even the fact of this garage meet-up being the first time they've met, and also not the meaning of Prime's words that he misses it when there were only two of them.
Both Mortys seem to buy everything Evil Morty extracted from C-137's memories (Evil Morty is confident in his tech and Prime Morty is just like that lol), but can we really trust that those memories are intact? What if, just like with Federation, Rick kept main points of events, but changed the details or timeline, that can potentially flip the meaning or change the tone of said events?
The most confusing part in relation to the timeline for me is Prime's slips during his rants: "I do miss when it was just us. The only two Rick's who actually invented portal travel", especially combined with "I showed you infinity".
It makes sense in two possible situations: if Prime showed C-137 the portal tech ("showed you infinity"), offered it, was rejected, left, killed his family and then was actively fucking with C-137 during the first hunt (which can explain the "miss when it was just us" line) OR if Prime showed him the portal tech, C-137, being inspired, also invented the portal travel, and then he and Prime were on friendly terms for some time after that, travelling together or each on their own with random meet-ups, until Prime offered him something else, which C-137 declined. Then everything else followed.
And honestly? IMO, first option doesn't line up. We never saw clones or decoys of Prime during C-137's first hunt in the crybaby backstory, no mocking images of Diane, nothing that could possibly indicate that Prime was actively playing with him. We also see other Ricks owning portal technology during young C-137's run, so there already weren't "just two of us", only in the very beginning maybe. Prime obviously watched C-137 to keep track on him and his whereabouts and shenanigans, but we don't see him making any moves himself, interacting with C-137 in any way. So what's there to miss at all?
Let's look at the second option. What's really interesting about it is how Prime's words "I showed you infinity" can be interpreted in two ways that are not mutually exclusive - as in showing interdimensional travel or showing something entirely else, possibly even bigger. Like something that was supposed to create "Infinite Rick, a GOD", which was mentioned in the 'falce' memory in 03x01 together with another interesting line: "Once we give you this technology, you become the smartest man in the universe". Since we know that Rick uses his own memories to fool people, it's entirely possible that these lines are real, they sound real, like something Prime could say. But.
But how simply owning a technology makes you the smartest man in the universe? The answer is - it doesn't. You just own it. You don't become smarter because you get your hands on a sci-fi tech, unless it alters your own mind/brain to make you smarter, and portal travel doesn't work like that.
This is just a theory based on the altered memory of Rick C-137, but what if Rick Prime wasn't just giving out portal tech, but was actively doing almost the same thing Evil Morty have done - absorbing every possible knowledge of every Rick he encountered, maybe connecting them in some kind of a web instead of killing them, so he could cover his presence not using a Morty, but creating virtual clones of himself everywhere in all those Ricks? Maybe that's what he was tempting C-137 with - infinite knowledge of infinite Rick. Unite every single one of them, make them bigger than the universe, make them THE GOD in every sense possible.
Only that it can cost you everything. Cost you your humanity. Change you ultimately, make you so much above any other being, that it will eventually sound lonely. So Rick C-137 declined.
It's just a random ass theory. But how does it sound?
