Originally Published on Set The Tape
Is this really how Power Rangers Ninja Steel is going into its season finale? I’ve not been kind when talking about this season of Power Rangers, and I’ve often scored it very low; but it’s been a real struggle to find good things to say about the episodes.
‘Helping Hand’ is the penultimate episode of the season, leading straight into the finale, but other than two minutes at the very end could have been any episode anywhere else in the season.
With the Rangers needing to find an extra credit assignment for shop class, Sarah (Chrysti Ane) tries to improve upon her flying hoverboard, which has been experiencing some difficulties with its battery. This gives the audience an insight into her home life, and introduces her mother, Jackie (Jodie Rimmer). Much like Sarah, Jackie is an inventor, however, where Sarah is creating actual flying hoverboards and holographic clones that can act independently and interact with the world (remember how ridiculous that episode was?), she’s a bit of a disaster.
Attempting to help improve Sarah’s battery she ends up creating a super-charger that gives the battery so much power that it goes flying out of control. This plot point then takes a back seat for a while as the Rangers have to deal with this week’s monster, Forcefear (Darren Young).
When the monster proves to be too tough for the Rangers to defeat by conventional means they have to produce a new ninja star with the very last piece of Ninja Steel in order to combine all of their Zords. This is where the two stories meet, as the super-charger that Sarah’s mother made is used to charge up the new ninja star before it’s thrown into the Ninja Nexus Prism, something that has never needed to be done before in 20 episodes.
With this new ninja star they are able to create the Ninja Ultrazord, one of the most god awful looking Zords ever. The Ninja Ultrazord consists of the RoboRed Zord sitting inside the Ninja Megazord, sitting inside the Lion Fire Zord. Whilst the blame for this creation lies with Super Sentai rather than Power Rangers, it’s still awful.
Defeating Forcefear, Sarah learns that her mother was only trying to help her, and he two of them reconcile. Just when you think that the episode is over, however, Victor (Chris Reid) and Monty (Caleb Benit) show up to accidentally obtain all of the ninja power stars (minus the morphing stars that the Rangers have on them all the time) using their super magnet extra credit project.
This is where Galvanax (Richard Simpson) shows up and claims the power stars, before declaring to the buzzcam in a fourth wall breaking moment that the upcoming season finale will be ‘one to remember’.
So after months of watching Galvanax, the most powerful and feared warrior in the galaxy, try and fail to obtain the ninja power stars, Victor and Monty succeed; two characters that are so awful they make the original series’ Bulk and Skull look like Shaft and Han Solo.
Any threat or gravitas Galvanx has just been thrown out of the window. Rather than having him working on some kind of scheme for weeks that culminates in him achieving his goals he simply stumbles upon a pair of idiots that have managed it.
It’s this kind of this kind of thing that makes Power Rangers Ninja Steel so bad, there’s literally no season arc. There’s no character development, there’s no story, there’s no personality.
Normally I’m looking forward to a season finale, especial one that would put the Rangers in such a dire situation, but here I’m just desperate for it to be over; and hoping against all indications that Saban get their shit together so that they don’t ruin Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel for the franchise’s 25th anniversary.
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