‘Rick and Morty’ Fans Debate Whether or Not Beth and Jerry Are Millennials

This week’s episode of Rick and Morty, the first of the show’s eighth season, found Summer and Morty living for 17 years inside of a Matrix-like simulation, all as punishment for stealing Rick’s phone charger. Since the Smith kids opt to retain their new memories, they’re essentially now adults stuck in children’s bodies, aka a reverse-Big situation.

One unintended consequence of this technologically-advanced ethical quagmire is that Summer and her mom Beth actually begin to bond at first, seeing as how they’re now both in their mid-30s. 

While fans seemed to love the episode (apart from the glaring lack of Jerry content), the Beth-Summer plot point prompted viewers to scrutinize Beth’s age, specifically, which generation she belongs to. As one person pointed out on Reddit, if Beth is in her mid-30s on a show airing in 2025, that would mean that she’s a millennial, right? And if Jerry’s roughly the same age, then he’s a millennial too! 

This revelation seems to have come as a shock to some fans, who were obviously much younger when they were first introduced to the characters. “I’m 35, and they both feel much older than me,” one person wrote. “It’s weird.”

Canonically, Beth is 34, and Jerry is 35. But some fans took issue with the suggestion that the couple are millennials, not just because the idea makes them feel old as hell, but because they’ve been the same age since the show began in 2013, which, as one fan argued, forever makes them “Gen X or Xennials.”

Another user backed up this argument by pointing out that the flashbacks of Jerry and Beth’s youth feel very ‘80s in nature, and Jerry is a firm believer in the answering machine, a technology that even the oldest millennials haven’t used since they were like 10 years old. 

And Beth did refer to Morty and Summer as “you millennials” in Season Three before realizing that millennials “are like 40 now.” 

Simpsons fans had a similar moment of shock upon realizing that Homer and Marge are now, technically, millennials. Although that show has included more pop-culture touchstones for the characters, making it extra-glaring that their timeline is also shifting. Rick and Morty, on the other hand, has given us less specificity about Beth and Jerry’s youth. 

They’re all simply cartoon characters, and therefore, are forever frozen in time and unable to age — with the exception of any mental aging caused by being trapped inside of a virtual reality prison, of course.