Growing up in the nineties meant you had a very specific relationship with spandex and cheap explosions. Most people moved on. They got jobs, they started families, and they forgot about the teenagers with attitude. But i watch power rangers still, and let me tell you, the rabbit hole goes way deeper than just nostalgia or a giant cardboard robot stepping on a model city. It’s a strange, multi-decade experiment in recycling Japanese footage that somehow became a global pillar of pop culture.
People usually laugh when I bring it up. They think of the 1993 original, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and assume nothing has changed. They remember Tommy Oliver, the late Jason David Frank, and his iconic green suit. But the show has lived through several "deaths" and rebirths, shifting from Haim Saban to Disney, back to Saban, and now into the hands of Hasbro. It’s a mess. A glorious, colorful, confusing mess.
Why I Watch Power Rangers in a World of Prestige TV
Most modern TV is heavy. It's Succession. It’s The Last of Us. Everything is gray, moody, and full of people crying in rainstorms. Sometimes you just need to see a guy in a rubber dinosaur suit get kicked so hard he turns into a fireball.
The show is built on a process called tokusatsu. For the uninitiated, the American production team buys the rights to a Japanese show called Super Sentai. They keep the action footage—the fights and the giant robot battles—and then film new scenes with American actors to create a completely different story. It’s basically the ultimate "reduce, reuse, recycle" program.
Because of this, the show has a weird, disjointed energy. You’ll have a scene where a high school student is worried about a chemistry test, and then it cuts to a scene filmed in a Tokyo rock quarry three years earlier where a stuntman is doing backflips. It shouldn't work. By all laws of cinematography and storytelling, it should be a disaster. Yet, here we are, over thirty seasons later.
The storytelling has actually matured in ways people don't expect. If you look at Power Rangers RPM, which aired during the tail end of the Disney era in 2009, it’s basically Mad Max for kids. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where a computer virus has wiped out most of humanity. It’s dark. It’s cynical. It mocks its own tropes. When the Rangers are asked why their spandex glows when they transform, the tech expert literally screams at them about "bio-mechanical hardware" and "internalized energy fields." It’s self-aware. That’s why i watch power rangers even as an adult; it occasionally catches you off guard with genuine quality.
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The Hasbro Era and the Future of the Grid
Right now, the franchise is at a crossroads. Hasbro bought the brand for over $500 million in 2018. That’s a lot of plastic toys to sell to make back the investment. We recently had Cosmic Fury, which was a massive departure because it featured almost entirely original American footage for the ground fights. It also introduced the first full-time female Red Ranger, Amelia Jones.
Changing the status quo is always risky in a fandom this old. Some people hated the new suits. Some people loved the serialized storytelling. Unlike the old days where every episode ended with the status quo being restored, the new stuff actually has consequences. Characters die. Cities stay leveled. The stakes feel real, even if the weapons look like they’re made by Fisher-Price.
The "Mighty Morphin" nostalgia is a double-edged sword. Hasbro knows that the 30-somethings have the money, so they keep leaning back into the 1993 aesthetic. We saw this with Once & Always, the 30th-anniversary special on Netflix. It brought back Walter Jones and David Yost. It was a tribute to Thuy Trang, the original Yellow Ranger who passed away in 2001. It was heavy. It dealt with grief and the legacy of being a hero. Seeing the Blue Ranger deal with the fact that he’s not a kid anymore—that his joints hurt and his friends are gone—hit way harder than any episode of Mighty Morphin ever did back in the day.
The Comic Books are Better Than the Show
If you actually want to see the potential of this world, you have to read the BOOM! Studios comics. Honestly. Kyle Higgins and Ryan Parrott took a silly kids' show and turned it into an epic space opera. They introduced Lord Drakkon, an alternate-universe version of Tommy Oliver who never turned good and instead conquered the world.
The comics explore the "Morphin Grid" as a legitimate piece of cosmic mythology. It’s not just a buzzword. It’s a multiversal energy source that connects every Ranger across time and space. The comics handle the lore with the kind of respect usually reserved for Star Wars or Dune. They bridge the gaps between seasons, explaining how the powers actually work and what happened to the characters who just "disappeared" when their actors' contracts ended.
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The Weirdest Seasons You’ve Never Seen
Most people stop after the first few years. They miss the absolute insanity that came later. You have Power Rangers Dino Thunder, where the original Green Ranger returns as a paleontology professor. Then there’s S.P.D., which is a police procedural set in the future where aliens and humans live together on Earth. It deals with systemic corruption and prejudice. In a show about colorful jumpsuits.
- Jungle Fury: Features a mentor who is a stoner-coded pizza parlor owner who happens to be a martial arts master.
- Time Force: A literal tragedy about a man from the year 3000 who dies in the first episode, and his fiancé has to go back to 2001 to find his ancestor to take his place.
- Ninja Storm: The Rangers are extreme sports athletes. The Blue Ranger is a competitive surfer. It’s the most 2003 thing to ever exist.
It’s this variety that keeps me coming back. Every year or two, the show completely reboots itself. New cast, new theme, new rules. It’s an anthology series disguised as a toy commercial.
Fact-Checking the "Kid's Show" Label
Is it for kids? Yeah, obviously. It’s meant to sell Megazords. But the production behind it is fascinating. The show was famously non-union for years, which led to a lot of the original cast leaving over pay disputes. Austin St. John, Thuy Trang, and Walter Jones walked away in the middle of the second season because they were making peanuts while the show was a global phenomenon.
There’s also the "Sentai" factor. Because the show relies on Japanese footage, the writers often have to work backward. If the Japanese footage shows a monster that looks like a giant toasted marshmallow, the American writers have to come up with a reason why a marshmallow is attacking Los Angeles (or "Angel Grove"). It leads to some of the most creative, albeit bizarre, writing in television history.
I think the reason i watch power rangers today is because it’s one of the few things left that isn't cynical. It’s unironically about being a good person. It’s about teamwork. It’s about the idea that no matter how big the monster is, if you work with your friends and stay focused, you can build a giant robot and blow it up. We don't get a lot of that simplicity anymore.
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How to Get Back Into It Without Feeling Silly
If you're looking to jump back in, don't start with the new stuff. It might be too jarring. Go back and watch the "Green with Evil" five-parter from the original series. It still holds up as a solid piece of serialized action. Then, jump to In Space. It was the season that was supposed to be the finale of the entire franchise, and it goes out with a bang. It wraps up six years of storytelling in a way that feels earned.
After that, check out the comics. Shattered Grid is the storyline that changed everything. It’s the "Infinity War" of the Power Rangers universe.
The franchise is currently in a weird hiatus. There are rumors of a "reboot" directed by Jonathan Entwistle, aimed at a more mature audience. Whether that happens or not, the existing library of nearly 1,000 episodes is a testament to the staying power of a weird idea from the nineties.
It’s not perfect. The acting can be wooden. The CGI is often terrible. The plots are repetitive. But there’s a heart to it that you don't find in big-budget Marvel movies. It’s scrappy. It’s loud. It’s colorful. And honestly? It’s still a lot of fun.
Action Steps for the Lapsed Fan
- Watch the "Once & Always" Special on Netflix: It’s a 50-minute hit of nostalgia that actually respects the audience's intelligence and the actors' legacies.
- Pick up "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" Volume 1 by BOOM! Studios: This is the best way to experience the story if you can't stomach the 90s campiness of the TV show.
- Find a "Best Of" Guide: Don't try to watch every episode. Use a skip list. Some seasons, like Operation Overdrive, are genuinely tough to get through. Stick to Time Force, RPM, or Dino Thunder.
- Embrace the Camp: You have to accept that you're watching adults in spandex fight people in rubber suits. Once you get past that, the themes of loyalty and courage actually start to resonate.
The Morphin Grid is still open. You just have to be willing to look past the sparkles and the explosions to see the story underneath. It’s been a wild thirty years, and even if the show changes completely in the next decade, the core idea—that anyone can be a hero—is why it’s not going anywhere soon. It's why I keep tuning in. It's why the legacy holds firm.