Power Rangers: Will ‘Soul of the Dragon’ Reveal Who Tommy’s Wife Is?

Power Rangers fans will finally get a peek into Tommy’s post-Ranger life in Soul of the Dragon, which might end up answering a long-debated answer in Ranger lore.

Soul of the Dragon puts an older Tommy Oliver front and center as he tries to hunt down those who took his son and bring him home. At this point in time one would assume he’s married, and whenever Tommy is brought up it doesn’t take long for Kimberly or Katherine to come up int he discussions as well. ComicBook.com had the chance to sit down with Mighty Morphin writer Kyle Higgins and senior BOOM! Studios editor Dafna Pleban to talk about the new graphic novel, including if that particular detail will be addressed.

“Well I’m not gonna answer that directly but I will say that it doesn’t really matter,” Higgins said. “The story is about much more than that. There are some threads involving who Tommy is married to, but I think when you get into what the narrative is and what he is trying to achieve as far as saving his son, as well as from an even more deeper personal level, what it looks like to have been five different Power Rangers and no longer be in that mix.”

While he wouldn’t say who Tommy ultimately ends up with, in a story about family we are likely to find out the answer somewhere in the book’s pages. For some the love of his life will always be Kimberly, but in Zeo there was a scene that showed Kat with Tommy in the future, which many consider canon.

Either way, it won’t be the focus mind you, as there’s plenty of material to explore with just Tommy.

“That’s the thing that people don’t really talk about a lot with regards to Tommy Oliver,” Higgins said. “It’s one of the reasons why I was so fascinated with this premise. How did the guy find himself when the thing that he is known for is no longer the thing that he does, right? I often think about tradesmen and even comic book artists whose styles go out of style right? That’s the thing that they’ve spent their whole life learning how to do and all of a sudden it’s no longer applicable. What do you do then? How do you define yourself outside of that? And is there something that’s very deep-rooted in Tommy that is from a personality standpoint, why he kept coming back time and time again to be a Power Ranger. That’s what I’m really interested in mining in this graphic novel.”

For Pleban the most exciting part of the new graphic novel is getting to inject Power Rangers into some other non-typical genres.

“I really love the world you’ve created,” Pleban said. “It’s the future of the Power Ranger’s universe. Tommy’s a bit older, he’s got different stakes in his life, different concerns and it brings him back into the fold so-to-speak. It’s interesting, we’re used to Power Rangers stories that have big universal stakes and in this case it’s a very personal one. It’s also a different type of genre story than you usually get in Power Rangers. It’s more noir, it’s more hard-boiled detective. Like, there’s a case here and Tommy’s pulling the wrong thread, and yeah there are going to be fights and you’re going to have to choose but you know.”

“And it’s also very much in the vein of an old western,” Higgins said. “There’s a gunslinger who straps on the guns again because of something very personal, or a new threat. It’s funny because I don’t know that it was necessarily intended to be my last work on Power Rangers when we really start it, but it is really fitting in how it’s developed. It’s very different from Shattered Grid and from my run on the book thus far. It’s very much its own thing. Being able to explore this character within the context of established universe elements like SPD, it’s really cool. This book is definitely as Dafna says, much more grounded than the big cosmic adventures that we’ve been doing in the book thus far. In a lot of ways I would almost say it’s the most Power Rangers in the real world that’s been done.”

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Soul of The Dragon hits comic stores in December. You can follow @MattMuellerCB for all things Power Rangers and make sure to check our Ranger Hub here.