Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always!
Thirty years ago, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers ruled the Fox Kids lineup alongside X-Men: The Animated Series and Batman: The Animated Series. Technically, Power Rangers never came to an end, since it’s been constantly reinvented as new series with a fresh cast of characters. This week, Netflix celebrated the 30th anniversary of the franchise with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always, a special that brought back some of the original cast for the first time in decades. And now it’s time for the Superhero Hype community to talk about it! This post is a place for you to leave your reviews or say anything you want about Once & Always.
The special effects for this episode were a step up from the show’s humble beginnings, but still relatively low-budget looking. That’s par for the course for the franchise, and the dialogue had a tendency to be fairly on the nose. But what the episode really did well was explore the emotional fallout of the death of the original Yellow Ranger, Trini Kwan.
Thuy Trang, the actress who portrayed Trini, passed away in 2001 at only 27-years old. But within the Power Rangers universe, Trini apparently lived on to have a teenage daughter, Minh (Charlie Kersh), and she somehow regained her Yellow Ranger powers in the decades after she stepped down from the team. In fact all of the original Power Rangers characters are present, even though Austin St. John, Jason David Frank, and Amy Jo Johnson declined to participate in the special. Their characters, Jason, Tommy, and Kimberly, still appear; they just stay morphed the entire time.
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The bulk of the special belongs to Walter Emanuel Jones and David Yost, the only two of the original cast members who came back for this anniversary. And it gives them both a lot to play with. For example, Jones’ Zack Taylor has to step up as the leader of the team, while also serving as a guardian and surrogate parent for Minh. Meanwhile, Billy Cranston (Yost) has to deal with the guilt of Trini’s death because it really is his fault. Trini died saving Billy’s life from Robo Rita Repulsa (Barbara Goodson), after he accidentally resurrected the latter while trying to restore Zordon.
Steve Cardenas’ Rocky DeSantos and Catherine Sutherland’s Katherine “Kat” Hillard round out the team of emergency Rangers, but they don’t get as much to do as their fellow cast members. Essentially, Rocky and Kat are only there so the Rangers can field a full team. The throughline of the special is the way it allows Minh and Billy to work through their grief and reconcile. Again, the dialogue is a bit clunky and the script takes some awkward steps to get there. But it’s also the strongest part of the story. And in the end, this classic team has a new member. That made it all worthwhile.
Now it’s your turn! So leave your reviews for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always in the comment section below!
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