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Preface
Coming off the last issue, the Mighty Morphin’ Rangers are finally going to be facing the ruthless bounty hunter Dayne. Before I get into that, let me just get all of the terrible dog jokes out of the way:
‘Aisha needs to stop hounding Kim’, ‘Tommy hasn’t reached his full pet-ential’, ‘Dayne’s Sirius-ly needs to just relax and raise the woof’
Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, let’s see how the Rangers handle Dayne. I doubt that they can beat him but anything’s paw-sible. Let’s hope fur the best.
The Cover
Great cover. Definitely gives off the impression of something epic happening, a disaster/apocalypse event with all of the destruction and the purple-ish sky in the background. Then, Dayne’s shadow as he moves closer to finish the job is just icing on the cake.
The Story
Billy is recounting their disappointing fight against Dayne to Zordon at the Command Center, about how Dayne was able to attack all of them individually and then critically injuring Tommy before teleporting back to the Moon Palace. Zedd questions why Dayne let Tommy and the other Rangers walk away. But, Dayne reveals his plan to basically scare the Rangers with the hopelessness of the situation so that one of them will sell out Zordon.
Back on Breel, the Omega Rangers morph and attack the Kedry forces with their new weapons…,
…where Queen Adriyel retreats to another chamber in the pyramid. During the fight, it’s revealed that the mind link from GGPR #13 – #16 is still in effect and Kiya learns all about Lord Drakkon through Jason’s thoughts of him. With Queen Adriyel, she questions Cavotus, one of her servants and the one granted with the Morphin’ Grid energy, on why he doesn’t follow her commands anymore. Cavotus doesn’t want to hurt any more innocent lives, with Adriyel responding by an attempt to torture him. However, when the Omega Rangers finally catch up to Queen Adriyel, when her back is turned, Cavotus uses his chains to snap her neck.
The Omega Rangers take Cavotus back with them to Safehaven, promising him he’ll be fine with them. But, the Blue Emissary wants to imprison him with the rest of the criminals since that even though he was captured and tortured, he still chose to kill innocent people with his powers. The Rangers think that the Blue Emissary’s decision is wrong, especially Kiya who’s killed with her powers before, but the Emissary and Xi take Cavotus into the hall of dumpsters and asks the Rangers to trust him.
Distraught and alone, Trini checks her cell phone and finds a voicemail from Kim on Earth. In the voicemail, Kim explains the situation about Dayne and Tommy and her feelings of being abandoned from her old friends. As Trini hears this, on Earth, Dayne grows giant-sized and the remaining Rangers form the Thunder Megazord to fight him off. However, the fight’s not going too well…
“I just… I miss my friends. And I didn’t want to not say that, in case…”
Ending Thoughts
Roll the credits, we got our necessary evil here!
To be honest, though, it feels a little weird. The idea of whether or not people should be accounted for or forgiven for their forced actions is a debate many people have had for centuries. Even in this franchise, some of the best stories have been formed from this idea like Karone / Astronema’s journey. But, with how it’s presented here, it’s a little questionable, mainly in how the previous issues showed off the Omega Rangers’ mission. Like, all of them (including the Blue Emissary and Xi) tried to offer forgiveness to Garrison Vox, the jerk who destroyed a city with his bare hands and had his own hate mob worshipping him, but apparently, the Blue Emissary doesn’t even bother considering it for Cavotus, the guy who was imprisoned and tortured? There needs to be a little more justification for the Blue Emissary’s reasoning here is all I’m saying.
Anyway, this issue was just filled with action, making up for the lack of it last issue. In addition to us seeing the Omega Rangers’ weapons for the first time (which aren’t that bad), we finally get to see Dayne fight the Power Rangers for the first time, and it’s strangely satisfying. It’s amazing to see him utterly demolish the Rangers. plowing through them one at a time, going after their own weaknesses. A lot of the action in Power Rangers is about them working together to fight their enemies so this is something we rarely see.
Besides the action, there’s one more thing that makes this issue memorable: Kim’s voicemail. It’s sincere and heartfelt and such a good look into Kim’s mind and her thoughts on the whole situation. Kim doesn’t want to feel angry at her friends for abandoning her, she doesn’t want to blame them for what’s going on. She just wants to tell her friends that she misses them and still cares for them. At the same time, this is the first time we’ve seen Kim stress out about a villain like this. Most of the time, when something bad happens, she either brushes it off and talks to the others or focuses more on her personal life. With this being the first time she’s genuinely stressing out, it helps set the tone of despair and hopelessness, especially for the final shot of Dayne stabbing the Thunder Megazord through the cockpit.
With the last issue being light on action, MMPR #43 makes up for it by delivering a lot of thrilling action sequences, but still devoting time for some great character moments and dialogue.
Random Thoughts from the Morphin’ Grid
- One thing I will say is that in the beginning fight with Dayne, he was clever in using a lot of different resources to counter everyone’s moves. But, with how it was presented, it looked like Aisha could’ve actually attacked him if (no offense) she kept her mouth shut.
- The Omega Ranger weapons are pretty standard except for Zack’s weapon, a chained pair of small scythes. That’s honestly pretty cool.