Power Rangers: Shattered Grid Writers Reveal New Details About the Event

The Power Rangers universe will never be the same after Shattered Grid, and we got all the details about the big event straight from the source

That would be Kyle Higgins and Ryan Parrott, who are the writers of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers from BOOM! Studios. The two books will be crossing over for Shattered Grid and will each have an important part to play in the epic storyline, a storyline that first came into focus around three years ago.

“It originally started from a conversation very early on in the Mighty Morphin book, between myself, a group editor, Bryce Carlson, and editor, Dafna Pleban,” Higgins said. “When we were going through the publishing plan on Mighty Morphin, we actually started mapping out what … I had a year-long story that I had planned, and then ideas beyond that, that could be built off of that year-long story. Bryce pointed out that entering into year three would be the 25th anniversary. If there was a way to build my story towards a big event, that was both a celebration for the anniversary, as well as potentially the largest Power Rangers story in comics that had ever been done, that would be ideal. No pressure or anything.”

Since then the book has featured plenty of seeds that will pay off in future issues, and things got even better when a second series entered the picture.

“From that point, from the point of that conversation, the seeds were planted,” Higgins said. “For the last year and a half, almost two years now, actually let’s say two years, for the last two years, I’ve been weaving threads slowly together that are all going to culminate with Shattered Grid. As the book went on, and there was talk of adding a new title in Go Go, it was one of those kind of twists of fate that Boom hired Ryan, who is one of my best friends. They didn’t know that we were as close as we are. It was just kind of a coincidence.”

“As we started planning Shattered Grid, the idea of incorporating Go Go and bringing parts of the narrative across time, to the past, which is where Go Go takes place, as far as the Mighty Morphin timeline, was really exciting. Ryan and I have always been looking, are always looking for ways to work together, and just have a lot of fun playing off of the then and now nature of the comic, in the way that … I’m sorry, then and now nature of the two series.”

Granted, Ryan sees it a little differently. “Whereas I like to think of it as now and in the future, but that’s just how I like to look at it,” Parrott said.

“It’s all about perspective,” Higgins added, to which Parrott replied, “It is all about perspective, yeah.”

Joking aside, Shattered Grid will feature a large assortment or Rangers from all over the timeline, and the good news is that no one really ended up on the cutting room floor.

“No, everyone I want to use is in this,” Higgins said. “The process really has, it’s been about a year of me diving into past series, watching old episodes, watching recap videos, reading character bios. Something like this is both a celebration of the franchise and something that we want the fans to be excited about, but also it’s not just throw every Power Ranger ever into a story. To me, that’s not the story. There are certain Rangers from throughout the 25-year history of Power Rangers, that are going to kind of carry our narrative. Who those Rangers are, why they were chosen, and how they play into our arcs, is part of the fun, for me, of writing this event.”

While he couldn’t give away all of the Rangers that will be in the story, Higgins did talk about a few of the more prominent ones.

“I’m trying to think what I can say,” Higgins said. “I guess we can talk about the fact that Jen Scotts is very important and has a very prominent role in Shattered Grid. One of my favorite Rangers, Lauren Shiba, the red samurai Ranger, or one of the red samurai Rangers I should say, has a very prominent role in Shattered Grid. Yeah, I have to pick my words carefully here.”

Juggling that many characters in one storyline while keeping the cohesiveness of the narrative intact can be a daunting task, and it has been challenging for Higgins and Parrott when crafting Shattered Grid.

“You definitely hit the nail on the head, that it’s tough to juggle and figure out how to implement these characters, because the last thing … Look, the last thing we wanted this event to be was just a story that paid lip service to a bunch of different Power Rangers, without doing anything interesting with them.”

“To me, that would kind of be the worst way the story could go, which is they’re just kind of there, but they’re not doing anything,” Higgins continued. “They’re just kind of not a part of the main narrative. It became kind of my quest to build a foundation of this event in such a way that allows for these really interesting different team-ups between Rangers you may not expect and playing off of those different kind of matchings, in interesting emotional and thematic ways. I literally have an Excel spreadsheet that is tracking, for me, where everyone is in the event, from all of the seasons of the Power Rangers. It’s as much a math problem as it is a narrative problem.”

There’s plenty of pressure to appease everyone, as every generation seems to have their own favorite team and roster of character.

“I mean just a small thing, I think, just from the small time I’ve been in the Ranger world of it all, we go to Cons where you talk to fans,” Parrott said. “Every fan has their group that they love and that’s their favorite. I don’t know, I mean Kyle gets it all the time. I know he does. People come up, it’s like, “Will these people be in there? Is there any chance you’re going to have this team or this team?” Bringing certain teams into this world, you want to tell everybody, “These are the ones that are going to be in it, but we don’t have time to get to everybody. Some people are going to be disappointed, while other people … Those people who get to see their teams might be disappointed they’re not in it more.” It’s just, it’s that thing, there’s so many people to service, you can’t … If you try to service all of them at the same time, you’ll end up servicing none of them. Does that make sense?”

That has been a common criticism of something like Legendary Battle, the 20th-anniversary episode that featured the most Rangers onscreen at any given time. It delivered on cameos, but many feel it didn’t deliver substantive moments for those characters.

“Yeah, so we definitely have a specific focus in the event, certain Rangers from throughout the show’s history,” Higgins said. “There are a lot of Power Rangers in this event, as you can tell when I’m talking about Excel spreadsheets. I’m not going to say every Power Ranger ever is in this story, but there are a lot. There are a lot of Power Rangers who play very significant roles in the narrative. Those choices are both, those are choices that I’ve made based on the narrative arcs I’m most drawn to. I’m excited for fans to see who we’ve got paired up with who.”

While Shattered Grid won’t feature every single Power Rangers team, it will feature a lot of them, and Higgins named off a few that will make fans really happy.

“Here’s what I can tell you, just off the top of my head. Jen Scotts, Time Force, Zeo, In Space, RPM, SPD, Ninja Steel, all play prominent roles in this event. What you’re talking about, as far as like specifically Legendary Battle, that’s a really hard one. There are a lot of places there that you’re trying to juggle and it’s even harder in live action, where you have pre-existing footage that you’re limited by. In this event, we’re not limited by that, but it also puts extra pressure on us, because we want to make sure we’re taking full narrative advantage of having this really large canvas to paint on.”

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers previously introduced an all-new Ranger to the mythos in Lord Drakkon, and Go Go Power Rangers is set to introduce another new Ranger as part of Shattered Grid.

We’ve got our own theories as to that Ranger, and while the duo couldn’t reveal too much, they did tease a detail or two.

“They are someone that people have been asking about,” Higgins teased. “Yes, yes,” Ryan confirmed.

“We can definitely say that,” Higgins said.

“Yes we can, thank you, Kyle. Thank you,” Parrott said. “That’s good. Like Kyle said, because we’re playing with such a big canvas and Go Go is … I think when we’re doing Go Go, the thing that I wanted to make sure, when we kind of agreed to do sort of the, to incorporate ourselves in the Shattered Grid, was that it comes that, however, we link the two series together in the story, that you’ll feel like, it’ll feel organic in a way that doesn’t make Go Gofeel like a sub-story, because it’s not. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“The idea was to try and find a character that could come in and could bring out all those emotional and personal storylines that I’ve been trying to play with in the series, in a way that felt organic, that would actually propel it forward,” Parrott said.

“That person re-contextualizes a lot of those emotional dynamics that Ryan has been building in Go Go,” Higgins said. “That’s what’s so exciting to me about this event, is like it’s not a shoehorned in story. Ryan and I have been reading comics actually, like the same comics, for like 10 years, where we would … I remember when Sinestro Corps War came out and Blackest Night. Ryan and I were reading them at the same time, testing each other about every issue. We love this stuff. Finding ways to build towards events and use the narrative potential there, to help the characters, the main characters of the book grow as a result of the event, as opposed to they have to just be involved because it’s an event. That’s what really psyched us. We wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t take advantage of it in that way. I’m trying to be more specific, without being specific. I’m sorry.”

The mysterious new Ranger won’t be the only new character or take on a character to pop up during the storyline. One such example is the awesomeness that is Finster 5, which you can get a glimpse of in the image above.

“Finster is a favorite of both Ryan and myself,” Higgins said. “One of the things that I love about playing with alternate universes is finding ways to subvert the status quo and the iconography. The idea of the Finster of Drakkon’s world is that something happens and Finster is now augmented with parts from Alpha Five. He goes by Finster Five, and I guess technically he’s a cyborg. He’s been reanimated with parts of Alpha. It’s a design that, when I pitched it in the room, I think everyone smiled. We had a little bit of a laugh over what that could look like, and then Kelly delivered like the coolest design I could have imagined for this character. I don’t know, I’m really excited about his story in the event. I’m really excited about his story and I’m really excited about his dynamic with Lord Drakkon.”

Speaking of Lord Drakkon, fans can expect some big things from the character in Shattered Grid, an event that wouldn’t work without him.

“The last thing I’ll kind of say about this event is that the character, the villain of all this, Lord Drakkon, is someone that we introduced way back in issue number nine,” Higgins said. “We keyed him up through issues 11 through 16, but that’s all been kind of a precursor for Shattered Grid. As far as why he’s doing this and what exactly his plan entails beyond trying to go conquer all the Ranger teams, I think is, I mean it’s the heart of the event. Who this guy is and where he comes from, beyond just being quote/unquote alternative timeline version of Tommy Oliver, is really the center of this story. I think fans are going to be surprised when they see where we’re taking it.”

Shattered Grid kicks off in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #25, which lands in comic shops on March 21, 2018.