A year without* 'Power Rangers'
*Sort of
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt closer to the Power Rangers franchise than I was in 2023 and 2024 — the years in which it became clear that the long-running TV show would end and first year in which a new season wouldn’t drop since 20101, respectively.
My experience is an aberration. I spent the bulk of 2023 and most of this year doing all of the fun things that go into producing a narrative non-fiction book that is now available for pre-order. That process afforded me the opportunity to talk at length with dozens of writers, producers and actors whose work has left an impact on millions of people, as well as several of those people who were affected, just as I was from the moment my mom let 2-year-old me watch Fox Kids. While it was an exhausting amount of work — mostly performed through my wife’s pregnancy and then the first year of our son’s life — it’s hard not to reflect on it as having been a privilege. Not only did I get to spend literally hundreds of hours talking, thinking and writing about Power Rangers, but I got to do it at a time when fears about the brand’s future consumed the online fandom.
Working on Morphenomenal (in addition to, y’know, having a child) was a stressful-but-pleasant distraction from the fact that my favorite TV show was over, at least as I’ve come to know and love it. And while I don’t think it was a necessary distraction — as a middle-aged millennial with generalized anxiety disorder, I find there’s far more pressing things over which to catastrophize — the entire process did reinforce my admiration and respect for the show in a way that might not have happened without that effort. One of my hopes is that the story I’ve told will ease some tension in fans who’ve felt adrift since the show’s hiatus started, and give them some of the same affirmative feelings I’ve had since I started working on the book in fall 2021.
New reports of a future movie and possible sale of the entertainment IP rights rose to the surface in the last week, which was also affirmative in at least one regard: as long as IP is relished, there will always be interest in the Power Rangers franchise. It’s generated billions in revenue, continues to rake in billions of minutes in watch time across multiple streaming platform, and persists in various new forms outside of the TV show that spawned them (comics and video games, primarily, at this junction). The previously announced launch of Playmates Toys’ inaugural Mighty Morphin Power Rangers toy line in fall 2025 has kind of flown under the radar, but I predict it’ll be a potential landmark moment for the brand.
Yes, the TV show born in 1993 officially ended in 2023. Perhaps it’ll be revived some day, or maybe it never will. But Power Rangers won’t really be over until its final fan dies, and barring a meteor I don’t expect that to happen within the next century or two. That’s what I took away from our first year “without” Power Rangers.
Next month on Ranger Reader: Reflecting on the Power Rangers memorabilia auction
The MMPR Re-version was technically a new production under Disney, but it’s generally not considered one by the fandom.