Power Rangers is now in the works on a new reboot with Disney+, but this new series is already going to be dealing with an issue that no other version of the show has ever faced before. Power Rangers is a very unique franchise in that the rights to it have changed hands a number of notable times across its multiple decade run. This has led to the show entering noticeably different eras with different takes on the franchise across different creators. But it’s going to change in one big way with its new reboot with Disney+.
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Power Rangers‘ 30 year run was a success thanks to cable and broadcast television. It was made during a time where networks had time to fill, and were able to do so with 50 episodes of weekly action and adventure. That’s not the case with this reboot as it’s going to be made as a purely streaming release, and that means it’s going to have way fewer episodes than fans got to see with the previous eras. Which is another unique problem for setting up its newest team’s dynamic.
Power Rangers Disney+ Reboot Is Going to Have Fewer Episodes
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first made its debut during Fox Kids with 60 episodes in just its first season alone, and a total of 155 episodes across three seasons before the franchise went through its first real name change. That’s just not how television is made anymore. Through the original iteration of the series, fans had coined the “monster of the week” trope to reflect the fact that many of its episodes were one-shot stories that dealt with a brand new monster needing to be defeated every week. They were episodic, and rarely tied into one another.
Though the Power Rangers franchise always had room for serialized stories, as seen with the likes of “Green With Evil,” “The Wedding” or other multi-part events, but that wasn’t the goal of the franchise until much later. It was just a show that was made to deliver a new episode a week and fill time. But as a result of this kind of format for the franchise, fans got to spend a lot of time with the core cast of characters. It left time for the franchise to flesh out its character dynamics between the members of the team, and more importantly, build that connection with the audience.
Even after its cast was replaced across iterations, and Power Rangers completely reinvented itself with new versions of the show in the years to come, this extended episode count remained the norm of the franchise pretty much all through its run. Though its first Disney era and Neo-Saban eras had a shorter episode order, it still amounted to about 40 to 50 episodes for each series either way. It’s just not going to be the same for a series made exclusively for streaming. These shows don’t get usually get more than ten episodes at a time with Disney+.
Streaming Has Changed Power Rangers
Power Rangers fans got their first taste of how the streaming era would change the franchise with the release of Power Rangers Dino Fury. This was the first version of the series that would be exclusive to streaming, but even it got two seasons with 22 episodes each. Power Rangers Cosmic Fury was the very first iteration of the series to get only ten episodes, but it was able to avoid any troubles as it was technically the third season continuation to the two Netflix seasons that came before.
It’s obviously not going to be the same case here as Power Rangers is being developed as an original project with Disney+. Developed by Percy Jackson and the Olympians showrunners Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz, this newest version of the series is going to be crafted with the modern day streaming audience in mind. This means it might not carry over the same episodic adventures that the older versions of the franchise had as there just won’t be enough time to properly do so. It’s not going to get a chance to relax or experiment like before.
Power Rangers is going to be developed for the first real time with a clear cut, serialized story with this new reboot series. That doesn’t mean outright that it’s going to be more “serious” or anything like that compared to the older shows, it’s just not going to be as flexible. Fans won’t have the same amount of time to enjoy this new cast of characters unless they carry over for multiple seasons, and releasing on a bi-yearly basis means it just won’t hit the same as before either. Let’s just hope it’s good enough to circumvent these problems.
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