“Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” is an interesting exercise in localizing international television for American (and, more generally, Western) audiences. The show spliced together fight footage from the “Super Sentai” series “Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger” with clips of U.S. actors playing teenagers to create wholly original stories about a group of teens when they’re not fighting evil creatures. The result was the first “Power Rangers” show, which remains a good time all these years later. It was also a monumental hit in its day, lasting for three seasons while combining different generations of “Super Sentai” into a Frankenstein’s Monster of a TV series (even if the kids watching at home never realized that’s what it was).
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But “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” was more than just a ratings superpower; it was also a merchandising juggernaut and pop culture phenomenon, spawning a theatrical film and even a live touring show in 1995. Nevertheless, the series eventually came to an end, with the show rebooting itself via a mini-series titled “Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers.” This, in turn, started a tradition of changing the cast every season (which makes the many “Power Rangers” anniversary reunions quite special) and led to the franchise’s next incarnation, “Power Rangers Zeo.” Before “Zeo,” though, Fox Kids decided to ease kids into the new show with a series of short films.
After “Zeo” came 1997’s “Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie,” which was meant to be an introduction to the new generation of heroes on “Power Rangers Turbo.” But while the transition from the original show to “Zeo” went smoothly (even excluding the short films), the transition to “Turbo” was awful. The new series ignored the return of the villainous Zedd and Rita Repulsa from the end of “Power Rangers Zeo” while inexplicably incorporating new antagonists into the mix.
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Seeing as “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” used short films to ease the transition into the franchise’s “Zeo” era, presumably that show did the same thing before “Turbo,” right? This, at last, brings us to the bizarre story of “Scorpion Rain,” a fan hoax turned urban legend that eventually became canon to the “Power Rangers” property.
How Scorpion Rain went from a fan hoax to Power Rangers canon
In 1998, a “Power Rangers” fan group on Usenet saw a post uploaded by — among others — Derik Smith, Satu Sharp, and Amit Bhaumik. The tiro claimed to have seen an eight-minute short film that takes place after “Power Rangers Zeo” and features new actors as the Red and Pink Zeo Rangers fighting Lord Zedd’s robot, Serpentera (thus explaining what happened to Zedd before the events of “Turbo”). The post also insisted the short film had only aired in Australia and that’s why it was unknown to U.S. audiences. Of course, because it was the ’90s, everyone collectively decided not to give this the tiniest bit of scrutiny, with the whole thing turning out to be a fabrication, a hoax, and otherwise a lie.
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So, how, exactly, did this become canon? Surely everyone eventually accepted it was all a hoax, right? Well, here’s the thing. One of the conspirators, Bhaumik, later became a story editor for “Power Rangers Wild Force,” which debuted in 2002 as the 10th anniversary season of the franchise. That show both marked the grand return of Jason David Frank and included the 10th anniversary special “Forever Red,” a crossover featuring the Red Ranger from every season up to that point. The episode itself saw the Rangers fighting the remnants of the Machine Empire from “Power Rangers Zeo” and uncovering the remains of the destroyed machine Serpenera. That’s right, Serpentera, the one from the “Scorpion Rain” hoax. Being a story editor, Bhaumik took it upon himself to reference his own fan fiction’s plot and dialogue in the series’ canon, forever immortalizing “Scorpion Rain.”
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Power Rangers has a nebulous relationship with canon
The “Power Rangers” canon is, well, about as meticulously thought-out as the franchise’s overarching story is tightly written. The first few “Power Rangers” shows, in particular, have a shared continuity, with one series tying into the next (even if it doesn’t make much sense, like how the deeply ’90s “Mighty Morphin” suddenly becomes a space opera with similarities to “Starship Troopers”). Even beyond that, though, the property does, in fact, have a greater continuity and shared canon.
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After 1999’s “Power Rangers Lost Galaxy,” however, the continuity stopped mattering. Instead, the “Power Rangers” shows became standalone and started taking place in a rather nebulous time period — one that looks quite modern and is devoid of any big sci-fi elements (even though the literal stars of the “Power Rangers” universe were canonically colonized back in 1998). Finally, in 2023, “Power Rangers Cosmic Fury” tied directly back to “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and served as a coda to the original era of the property.
Now, we have the news that there is yet another “Power Rangers” series on the way, as produced by the creative team behind “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and set to stream on Disney+. Though the Disney era of “Power Rangers” in the 2000s was considered a low point for the franchise, it still gave us some great shows like “Dino Thunder.” The question now is: Will we get a new string of short films before the latest series?
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