Review: POWER RANGERS: ONCE AND FOREVER is a morphinically funny special

Netflix and Hasbro are releasing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once and Forever tomorrow, April 19th. This is a 30th anniversary special that sees the return of previous Rangers and a new but familiar evil in Robo Rita Repulsa. I’ve been excited for this special and I know everyone else Power Rangers the fans were too. Netflix and Hasbro were kind enough to provide me with an early screener of the special, and you can find all my thoughts below. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers in the first section, but we’ll get into spoilers at the end, so keep an eye out for the spoiler alert.

Overall, I had a lot of fun watching Once and always. The writing team did a great job of feeling old Power Rangers, but then adding a little more seriousness to show some growth and maturity. This is very fitting because the fans and the actors have grown quite a bit. Sure, you can watch Once and always with your children as long as you are comfortable with them hearing about death and killing. As was shown in the trailer, “death” and “kill” are words that are not shied away from in this special.

In Once and always, we have loads of fun stuff for fans to indulge in with varying degrees of importance. There are returning actors included David Yost, Walter Emmanuel Jones, Catherine Sutherland, Steve Cardenas, Barbara Goodson, Karan Ashley, Johnny Yong BoschAND Riccardo Horvitz which is enough to get anyone excited. Then you have a newcomer Charlie Kersch playing Trini’s daughter, Minh, you’ve got the Bandora protocol reference that fans have separated since the trailer showed it, and more.

Some of my concerns with Once and always it had to do with explaining the continuity issues. He will say that the issues that I saw as bigger were well explained and the smaller issues weren’t really addressed. Since they’re smaller, though, I can live without them having answers.

One issue I will address that some may consider more spoilers is that there is a Megazord battle and they went full CG for the Megazord which is a bad thing in my opinion. It just feels weird and mean. I’m not sure if it was how smooth the movements were, if the proportions were wrong or what, but the Megazord looked really bad to me.

If you are a fan of Power Rangersyou’ll have fun Once and always. I also really appreciate the dedication at the end for Tuy Trang AND Jason David Frank. It was touching. If you don’t want spoilers, this is where you need to stop reading and know that I give the special a 9/10.

Okay, it’s spoiler time. For one thing, there were no surprise actor returns. Frank wasn’t secretly involved, Amy Jo Johnson does not appear, etc. I know many were speculating about a surprise actor returning and I can confirm that nothing happened. We see a banner that has the faces of Jason Narvy such as Skull and Paul Schrier like Bulk, but that’s the extent of that cameo.

The story is really touching to be honest. There is a lot about overcoming grief. Minh is frustrated with everything and she tries to transform using Trini’s morpher, but she is unable to until she realizes what it really means to be a Power Ranger. Meanwhile, Billy is struggling with grief over the loss of his friend and feels guilty for causing it. Not only did Trini sacrifice herself to save Billy from Robo Rita, but we eventually learn that Billy facilitated Robo Rita’s arrival. He was trying to find Zordon after the big Z-Wave, and she thought she did. However, he ended up basically collecting a bunch of the evil that Z-Wave had taken out and that’s what Robo Rita became. I liked this explanation of how we have an evil Rita Repulsa again because of the Z-Wave.

Here are some fun little things that I enjoyed. First, Zack ends up becoming Minh’s guardian after Trini’s death and we learn that he used to be a congressman. I guess this is a little nod to the teen peace conference he attended with Trini and Jason in the past. He went to the peace conference, got interested in politics and then pursued that career. Does this make sense. I also like the continuity maintained when Kat and Tommy are married. When Kat shows up at the command center, we learn that she had to sneak out during her son’s soccer game and claims that her son must not know what happened to his father and then again reminded that Kat and Tommy are indeed a couple. Also, apparently being a firefighter in the Power Rangers universe teaches you to shoot first and talk later. At one point, Rocky and the others show up to fend off a group of Putty Patrollers and before yelling at the Putties to leave people alone, he blows one up. It looked like something from Carter Rescue at the speed of light would have done and I liked it.

Another item I think deserves attention is a lovely tribute to Trang during the special. There’s a flashing title card at the end for her and Frank, which is nice, but during Once and always, there is a small tribute to her. The Rangers are fighting Robo Rita in Bandora’s Palace on the moon and Robo Rita launches an attack to kill Billy once more. This time, Minh selflessly takes the hit for Billy but hits the Yellow Morpher in his jacket pocket which somehow triggers a stream of memories of Trini flowing into Minh’s mind. That’s a bunch of clips with Trini from the original season and a half that she was in. She was just adorable to watch.

As much as I enjoyed watching Once and always, there were some things I didn’t like. I’ve already mentioned the Megazord, but there’s more. First, we knew Adam and Aisha were going to be in the special. I was really excited about this since Adam is one of my favorite characters. Unfortunately, these two characters do nothing. We see them when the Bandora protocol is sent for the first time and they send a message to Billy saying they are on their way but it will take several hours to arrive. They drop the name of the Troobian Empire from spd, but they don’t even mention the Space Patrol Alpha drop or whatever the SPA is supposed to be on their uniforms. They finally make it to Earth after all the action is over, but it’s just to say goodbye and that they’ll help get all the shrunken Rangers back to normal. We can’t even see it happening. It just felt like a waste. Maybe they’ll follow up and somehow we’ll get some sort of reward then?

Another issue I had was that when the four Rangers trap Snizzard and Minotaur on a giant magnet, they leave the monsters there. Why didn’t they destroy them? It makes no sense except as a plot device and it bothers me.

My final gripe is that we haven’t had more Rangers come back. Bandora protocol was supposed to alert all Rangers to the threat posed by Robo Rita. However, we only ever follow Billy, Zack, Rocky and Kat with the tiny roles of Aisha and Adam. It would have been really nice to see just a couple of other Rangers back in action with the stakes that high.

That said, it was a blast to watch Once and always. I had a lot of fun and it felt very Power Rangers. I’m a little surprised it didn’t end in a way that launched a spin-off, but I’m also glad it didn’t. If you are a fan of Mighty Morphin Power Rangersyou will probably enjoy this 30th anniversary celebration.