Power Rangers Super Megaforce #2.16 “Vrak is Back, Part 1” Review

Summary: A relentless episode uses two loose ends to raise the stakes, tension, and momentum, somehow by ditching what had been the best part of the series.

If you have not seen this episode yet and don’t wish to be spoiled, don’t continue reading. It’s not like we’re MEGAFORCEing you to, or anything.

Recap

After Prince Vekar’s defeat, Vrak is revealed to be living underwater and plotting the Rangers’ defeat. He goes topside and kidnaps Orion, and uses his alien lifeforce to power a dangerous drill that will dig to Earth’s core and destroy it. He also reprograms Robo Knight, who he’s been holding captive since the Megaforce finale. When he makes himself known to the Rangers, they discover that they’re unable to access their Legendary Modes–he’s disabled them–and Vrak has access to all his previous forms. Vrak calls on two other monsters and a reprogrammed Robo Knight to fight them, and the Rangers are barely able to fight everyone off even with their Ultra Mode. Vrak decides he wants the Rangers to see their planet crumble when he wins and retreats, leaving the Rangers to only face one monster. They form the Megazord and destroy the monster, but learn that it was part of Vrak’s plan–he was using the monster as a cipher, turning all the blows and blasts from the Rangers into power for a second drill. Vrak has one more drill he must power up, and the Rangers have gotten him one step closer to the goal.

Review

Let’s be honest, best parts of Super Megaforce have been the Legendary Modes, and to a lesser extent, the Super Mega Modes. With this season’s severe lack of significant character or plot development, things haven’t changed much since the premiere: the nostalgia of seeing past Ranger powers is great, and the erratic and grittier fighting styles of the Super Mega Rangers are fun. It’s been about the only saving grace of an otherwise failure of a season…so, of course, we now come to a two-parter stripping the show of both the Legendary Modes and the Super Mega Modes. Someone thought that was a good idea.

And yet, heaven help me, I thoroughly enjoyed “Vrak is Back,” at least this half of it. It’s a full-on homage to the first season, which is a bit self-indulgent. But for the first time all season, loose threads are picked back up. The stakes are raised. The plot is simple, but the tension is high and rather riveting. And the cliffhanger has me anxiously wanting to see next week, not because I can’t wait for Super Megaforce to be over, but because I actually want to know what’s happening next. What in the Morphin Grid is going on?!

“Vrak is Back” is something of the antithesis of “All Hail Prince Vekar,” which tried to ramp up tension but fell flat due to messy pacing and inconsistencies. “Vrak is Back” is very action-centric and straightforward, so there’s admittedly little meat to it, but it’s exceptionally well-paced and edited. The pathos of this episode work significantly better than the Troy fake-out in “All Hail Prince Vekar,” too; Robo Knight’s run as the most defined character last season gave his long-awaited return and evil reprogramming more poignancy. It’s a stretch for this season to have any pathos at all, but the brief views of Robo Knight’s brutal torture are particularly affecting, especially considering he’s presumably been under this torture for months. Seriously, props to that suit actor for portraying the immense pain so well, even under all that armor. The suit actors both in the American and Japanese footage for Ranger and monster characters aren’t praised enough, when sometimes their ability to emote within the elaborate costumes soars over the talents of the human cast. It’s so good that it admittedly makes the Rangers look quite bad in retrospect, considering they basically stopped searching for Robo Knight as soon as he disappeared.

Robo Knight’s inclusion in general is satisfying in so many ways, and the decision to keep him MIA for so long made his return much more exciting. He’s hardly the best character in the whole of Power Rangers history, but he might be the best character to come from Megaforce just because of his development. His history with the Rangers gives their fights even more immediacy than there already is–and this is an episode full of the most immediacy since the premiere. We get another spotlight for Noah’s badassery this week, just like the mess that was “All Hail Prince Vekar,” but it makes more sense this time. Unlike the randomness of pitting Noah solo against Argus last week, Noah did have a sizeable relationship with Robo Knight last season–seen in “Last Laugh,” particularly–so it makes sense to see he and Robo Knight one-on-one. It’s a bit frustrating that we never got any pay-off to Troy’s intense determination to find Robo Knight in the premiere, or really that any other character get development. But, as much as Noah’s fight against Argus was annoying in concept, it does at least give precedence to Noah being able to inflict so much damage on Vrak on his own; between the past couple of weeks and “Blue Saber Saga,” he’s grown to arguably be the most powerful Megaforce Ranger, perhaps outside of Orion.

Well, that would be true if Orion wasn’t MIA so often throughout this season for silly or unexplained reasons. But finally there’s a justifiable reason for his absence, and in fact it only ramps up some already high stakes. “Vrak is Back” puts the pedal on the gas as soon as Vrak kidnaps Orion in the teaser, which blacks out on an uncharacteristically horror-esque note. After that, the giant drill on the horizon is well-rendered, with ominous shades of Independence Day and War of the Worlds as the population discovers the new threat. Even in a franchise with so many aliens already, Super Megaforce has done an exceptional job of imbuing the sense of otherworldly terror an alien invasion would evoke, even if only in the first two episodes and this one. But when it works, it works, and the sight of that giant drill sets the stage for a series of losses from the Rangers.

The most pivotal point of which, of course, is the loss of their Legendary Powers. While this hardly justifies the awkwardness of the dual Megaforce/Super Megaforce suits, this is a clever way to play with that odd decision. The Rangers get to spend a season with nigh-infinite power, and now when the stakes are so personal, they have them swiftly stripped away. Much like “End Game,” the Rangers are forced to keep on powering through with whatever they have. It gives much more backbone to their constant barrage of attacks and speeches about protecting the Earth, because the Rangers are actually the underdogs for once. And then when the Rangers dredge up all their old powers to finally make progress against Vrak, it totally backfires, and they make things worse by accidentally funneling all their power into a new drill. It’s not even a matter of the Rangers making a stupid move; they were backed into a corner and had no other choice but to fight back as best they could, and that leads to the biggest cliffhanger this season has seen. Bad things are stacked on top of other bad things, and the momentum does not let up.

Super Megaforce hasn’t had a very good handle on its editing, with numerous problems with awkward shots and dissolves, and bad decisions for what material it adapted (all the non-Ranger Sentai suits, for example.) The editors never seemed to have a handle on the extremely fast pace of the Gokaiger footage they were adapting, but they feel much more at home back with the Goseiger footage from which the original Megaforce was adapted. While the fights in Megaforce were far less interesting than those from Super Megaforce, the former weren’t as frustratingly messy the latter, which means this week’s extensive fight footage feels a lot more confident. And the boring slog that was Megaforce was more a result of uninteresting plots, so placing these high stakes in the context of the better utilized fight footage makes all this click.

Make no mistake: “Vrak is Back” is only as good as this season’s limits allow, so it’s hardly a powerhouse. But even without any significant character work, this episode is a whirlwind of intensity from start to finish. With so many factors at play, this is the first episode of either season that feels genuinely dangerous. It took about 38 episodes to get to this point, but it’s something.

Odds & Ends

• You know something’s gonna go down when there’s a “previously on” segment.
• The use of the Megaforce cards is a reminder that they could have been way cooler in Megaforce, but the special techniques were rarely used enough to justify their existence.
• Other throwbacks to Megaforce season 1: Troy sleeping on the bus a la “Mega Mission,” Troy mentioning Creepox and Malkor, and Vrak referencing the chess move”Prince Takes Knight,” the name of a season one episode that also featured Vrak capturing Robo Knight and trying to turn him against the Rangers.
• Okay, as much as I like this episode…how does Vrak disable the Legendary Modes and turn the keys to stone? How does he even know about the Legendary Modes? I guess this is still Super Megaforce, so there has to be something that doesn’t make sense.
• The literal left and right hand monsters are both very clever and very…stupid.
• Why do we still hear’s Gosei’s voice announcing “Summon Volcan Cannon” for evil-Robo Knight? I doubt Gosei would be in support of that happening.
• I liked the eye-shot through Noah’s visor. It’s very cool when the show does it, and we haven’t seen the effect much since RPM.
• It’s funny that the Sea Brothers version of the Gosei Great Megazord is used, considering it’s a pirate-themed Megazord…like the pirate theme of the Super Megaforce powers.
• “You can’t defy the Sixth Ranger power. It’s your own!” – Pretty cool that Robo Knight is specifically deemed a Sixth Ranger. Still weird that his powers are used for Gold Mode, but the Legendary Powers are such an enigma that it’s best to not think about it.