In a perfect world, we would always get closure. No lingering questions. No unresolved feelings. There would be a clear end. Everything would be nice and complete. We don’t live in that world. People move in and out of our lives and we don’t always get to say goodbye. Places that you meant to visit could be gone in the blink of an eye. You could lose your favourite hat and never find it again. Things don’t wrap up nicely in the real world. In the world of storytelling, however, there’s always a chance to give a good send-off.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always was released directly to Netflix on April 19, 2023. It was a proper closure to the Mighty Morphin era or the Power Rangers franchise, while also leaving some things open to a potential continuation. It also gave closure to some lingering real world events surrounding the show. The special was a tribute to two actors who had passed away since the original airing of the series, as well as an in memoriam for another who passed while the special was being made.
In order to fully get into why the special brought closure to these real-life deaths, I have to go back to season two of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. It started out like a normal season of the show. All the characters returned to fight off monsters that once again attacked Angel Grove. Midway through the season, three new characters were introduced who would replace three characters of the originals. Jason, Zack, and Trini were gone. Rocky, Adam, and Aisha were now Power Rangers. The actors playing the original characters had been gone for a few episodes prior to transferring their powers, only showing up in their Power Rangers suits or by way of body doubles. There was no real send-off to the actors. They were there one episode, gone the next, and popped up in archive footage in their final episode to transfer the powers. That was it.
Jason would return in Power Rangers Zeo and Walter Jones, the actor who played Zack, would return to the franchise to voice a few monsters. But when it came to Trini Kwan actor Thuy Trang, that was it for her time in the Power Rangers franchise. Thuy Trang would die in a car accident in 2001, putting an end to any idea that she would one day return to the franchise. The show never acknowledged the character beyond that point, aside from a couple silent Power Ranger appearances in big team-up episodes. The audience never got closure for the character or the actor.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always changed that. The story was built around the death of Trini Kwan. Rita Repulsa, the villain from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, returned in robot form to attack Angel Grove. She tried to kill Billy Cranston, but Trini dove in the way of the attack and was killed. The rest of the special dealt with how Trini’s death affected Billy, Zack, and Trini’s daughter. This was the closure that audiences needed, being handled more maturely than it would have been in the original run of the series.
The three different perspectives on Trini’s death allowed audiences, and the actors, to mourn in whatever way they needed. Billy’s perspective was guilt that he caused her death. She had sacrificed herself to save him. She died for him. But she also died because of him. A wrinkle in the story revealed that Billy had accidentally released Rita Repulsa from the power grid. He gave her the freedom to attack Angel Grove. It hit him especially hard because Billy and Trini had been best friends. Early episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers showed that Billy and Trini were close. Her character essentially existed as a translator for Billy’s smart speak. If any character was going to feel the loss deepest, it was him. The guilt just added to his sorrow.
Trini’s daughter, Minh, didn’t have the same guilt. Her perspective was rage. She blamed Billy for Trini’s death. She blamed the world for Trini’s death. Her rage fueled her. It motivated her actions throughout Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. She stole Trini’s old morpher to use herself. She rebelled against Zack, her parental figure after her mother’s death. She tried to fight putties by herself, without telling anyone where she was going. There was no care for her own well-being. Minh just wanted revenge. She was mad and wouldn’t stop being mad until Robo Rita was dead.
Finally, there was Zack’s perspective. He mourned Trini, for sure. But someone had to be level-headed. Someone needed to pick up the pieces following the death and make it easier for people to go on. Zack was that person. He took the responsibility of looking after Minh. When Billy immediately wanted to tell Minh how Trini died, Zack wanted to hold back until Minh was ready to learn the Power Ranger side of her mother’s life. Zack was the stability that everyone needed. He was the glue that kept them from falling apart. All while still mourning the death of his friend.
These are three perspectives that I’ve seen throughout my life. People will feel guilty when other people die. It could be a death they directly caused, through drunk driving or negligence. It could just be a situation where they were supposed to be somewhere and something happened, then they felt survivor’s guilt for not being there when they should have been. I’ve seen people get mad when someone dies. They blame everyone for the death, even though the death could have been inevitable. And then I’ve seen people who had to become the leaders, the caretakers, for other people when death struck. Life happens and very frequently happens like this.
Watching the characters mourn in these different ways allowed the audience to finally have closure on Trini Kwan and Thuy Trang. It was twenty years late, but at least that closure came. The audience was able to mourn with the characters. Emotions could finally be released. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always tied up some loose threads that had been hanging for far too long.
The special also gave a good lesson on death to the viewers. It was a lesson that has been told many times, but one that’s important, nonetheless. To teach the audience this lesson, there was a tribute to another late actor who was an important part of Power Rangers history. It was the actor who played Zordon, Robert L. Manahan.
Zordon was one of the most important characters in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He may have been more important than the Power Rangers, themselves. He was their mentor, the character who put them in their superheroic position. Zordon was the reason there were teenagers with attitude fighting the evil of the moon castle. The character was a giant head in a tube of energy. His voice was a key point of the figure. When the look or the voice of the character is gone, a character who had such a great influence over the team of monster-fighters, finding a replacement would feel wrong. Robert L. Manahan was the voice of Zordon from the mid-first season until the character’s “death” at the end of Power Rangers in Space. Bringing the character back with a new voice in canon with the television series would do a disservice to Manahan’s work on the show.
Zordon still had an influence over the events of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. Part of the reason Billy accidentally released Rita back on the world was that he was looking for Zordon within the power grid. That’s why he felt so guilty when Trini was killed. He was the reason Rita came back in the first place. His reason for wanting to bring Zordon back was the final lesson about death.
The Zordon aspect of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always was a way to teach people, specifically the younger demographic of the franchise, that you can’t bring back the dead. As much as you may miss them, you need to come to an understanding with their death. You must accept that the person you loved is gone. The whole special was about acceptance of death, but the Zordon story really brought that home. It showed the extents that Billy went to so he could bring Zordon back, and how those attempts failed. By the end, he learned that life was about moving forward. You could remember the dead when they were around and look fondly upon those memories. You couldn’t live in those memories, though. You couldn’t create more memories when that person was gone. You could cherish what you had and how it made you the person you are, but you had to find a future on your own with the people who were still around. That was Billy’s journey, through the lens of a Power Rangers monster fight.
Those were the two actors and characters who got proper send-offs that allowed both the audience and the other characters to come to terms with their absence. The final actor who got a small tribute was Jason David Frank. The fan favourite actor declined a return to the franchise in this special because he was busy directing his own movie. Sadly, he committed suicide during the production of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. His name was thrown into the end credits alongside Thuy Trang’s name as a tribute to the actor, but his character was not written out of the franchise due to their assumption that he would be alive to reprise his role at a later date, if he wanted. Alas, here we are.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always was a loving tribute by the Power Rangers franchise to three late stars of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers who helped lay the groundwork for the long-lasting franchise. It helped the audience grieve those losses through a story that shed light on the different ways people could grieve. It let the audience know it was okay to move on, while also saying that you should never let go of what you had. Don’t be sad for what you lost. Be happy that you had it at all. That’s a solid message to give long-time fans, while being a good lesson for the younger, newer fans.
If Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always did anything right, it was bringing closure to some things that nagged fans for years. It brought back Zack and Trini, two characters who had been unceremoniously written out of the series during the second season. It showed who Zack had become, and it added some closure to Thuy Trang’s time in the franchise. Audiences got what they had been waiting decades for. I’d say the Power Rangers crew did a good job. It was worth the wait.
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