The big finale to Power Rangers Shattered Grid is finally here, and we talk to the team all about the much-anticipated issue.
Warning, spoilers are incoming, so if you haven’t read it yet you’ve been warned.
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ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with Power Rangers writer Kyle Higgins, Go Go Power Rangers writer Ryan Parrott, new Power Rangers writer Marguerite Bennett, BOOM! Studios Senior Editor Dafna Pleban, and Director of Power Rangers Development and Production for Hasbro Melissa Flores about the big finale and the questions it poses.
First off though we have to commend the job Daniele Di Nicuolo, Diego Galindo, Simona Di Gianfelice, Walter Baiamonte, Marcelo Costa, and Ed Dukeshire did on the art throughout the issue, including one moment that struck a chord with the team.
“Tommy and Kim kissing,” Pleban said. “It’s just beautiful, it’s the way Daniele like, he understands body language of each of the characters, and it’s such a soft sweet moment and not the sort of bombast you might see in a Michael Bay movie. And it all feels really earned, especially after that live reading of Shattered Grid and seeing their first date again. That came out in March. I had forgotten sort of what their lives were like before the state of the universe was at stake. For them to have that moment was really cool.”
“That entire page was just gorgeous,” Flores said. “I mean right after that kiss you have that beautiful moment when they’re all putting their hands on the heart and then you just see that fade out with their eyes closed and their heads tilted up. It’s like…it really chokes me up every time I see it and it’s just such a quiet beautiful way to end this art.”
Later in the issue, we see Drakkon’s ideal world, one that includes a home with two parents and a dog. In this version though, Zordon is Drakkon’s dad and Rita Repulsa is Drakkon’s mom, with Cruger as the family pet. Drakkon seeing Rita in that role is easy to picture, but seeing how he sees Zordon in the father role is surprising.
“I think it’s complicated,” Higgins said. “I think that Drakkon yearns for a life and a support system that he never really had. And I think that includes a mother and a father. I mean this whole new reality that he creates is kind of his own perfect world, you know? And so that’s really where it stems from.”
“It’s a paradise and it’s a prison,” Bennett said. “I mean it’s getting…it’s the tragedy of getting exactly what you wanted.”
“What I also love about it is all of the Rangers have spent time trying to figure out what Drakkon wants,” Pleban said. “We only really find out halfway through what he’s really getting at through Ninjor and Coinless Zack, but even then from their perspective all Drakkon wants is to conquer. All Drakkon wants is to rule and he rules through violence and he rules through fear and shows that kind of hard shift from both the Ranger’s expectation and audience expectation, to what Drakkon really wants, which is a family. To feel like he belongs, but it is filtered through this inherent selfishness like he is the only one that gets to be special. I thought that was really, really smart.”
“There’s some twistedness to the reality, in that… Kyle in the panel at Power Morphicon, someone asked Kyle how to so summarize this event and he said… at the end of this event he said Drakkon wins,” Flores said. “And he does win, and you see what winning gets him, and it’s none of what you’d expect him to get, and it’s nothing you expect him to want. Ultimately it’s his demise. It brings about his demise. It’s just so twisted as you’re watching this world and you’re reading these pages. You’re seeing the other rangers in these roles that he’s somehow assigned to them and still, he’s not happy. Still, he’s alone and still, they’re a team. It just speaks to the enduring nature of what it really means to be a Power Ranger, and why he ultimately isn’t the best of them. He’s the worst of them.”
Fans finally see why the Ranger Slayer shot Tommy with her piece of the Chaos Crystal, bringing Go Go Power Rangers seamlessly into the event and making those events really matter. It’s also great to see that a line from the first issue (Tommy’s “so that’s what she meant”) is so meaningful all these issues later.
“We knew from the beginning that, that was going… when we first said that in front of the arc,” Parrott said. “We knew that there was going to be a moment that basically sort of coalesced at Tommy’s death, and we sort of planted that line and it’s sort of just the bait. But what was nice for me is that I just sort of got to tell my story and then sort of hint at it. Then Kyle had to explain the whole thing. I had the best time in the whole thing cause I didn’t really have to do that much. Kyle had to do all of the heavy-lifting.”
Before the Rangers leave Drakkon’s idealized world, a newly revived Tommy reaches out to his otherworldy adversary with an offer to help him change and become something different. Drakkon turns away, and for Higgins, there was no other option.
“I mean in my mind there was no… he would never accept it. No,” Higgins said.
Dafna didn’t feel the same way though, saying “In my fan fiction he totally did.”
The end of Shattered Grid leaves some big questions, with a big flash to white and the promise of saving the universe without knowing what that restructured world will look like since it will likely return with changes. We asked if those questions will be answered directly in Beyond The Grid, and Marguerite said “Yep” with a laugh that any villain would be envious of.
“Oh, Marguerite. That laugh is why I hired her,” Pleban said.
You can check out the big finale for yourself, as Power Ranges Shattered Grid #1 is in comic stores now.
