Summary: Another solid episode uses its guest star to great effect, and makes a less-memorable season legendary.
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 a trip to the zoo, the Rangers encounter a monster who uses magnets to steal their weapons. While Troy, Gia and Noah argue over how to defeat him—Troy wants them to simply “not let go”—Jake and Emma meet a zoo keeper who also trains a specific type of weaponless martial arts. He teaches them to tap into their animal spirits, and once they do, he reveals he knows their identities as Rangers and that he is Casey, the Jungle Fury Red Ranger. With these new techniques in tow, Jake and Emma are able to defeat the monster and unlock the Legendary Jungle Fury Megazord. When the Rangers go to thank Casey, he has disappeared, and the zookeeper says no one named Casey has ever worked there.
Review
While “Samurai Surprise” asked us to accept the current state of Power Rangers for the sake of invoking nostaligia, “Spirit of the Tiger” reaps the benefits of what Super Megaforce is. This is an episode that features of the return of a Ranger who, at best, qualifies as average. He’s likeable, and Jungle Fury is generally a well-liked season, but neither Casey nor that season typically rank on the top of the popularity or fan-favorite charts. And yet, like “Samurai Surprise” made such a recent season feel nostaligic, “Spirit of the Tiger” makes Jungle Fury feel legendary, like a season that turned its characters into a seasoned veterans and taught lessons that could easily be passed onto future Rangers.
And that’s exactly how it should be! Like I discussed last week, Super Megaforce is doing right by keeping the guest stars in the periphery, instead paying homage by focusing on how much our current characters can learn from their predecessors. Jason Smith gets much more screentime than Alex Heartman (and let’s face it, Smith is much more fun to watch than Heartman anyway.) It’s very cool—and surprising—that Smith was given such a major role considering Jungle Fury isn’t often in the top tier of memorable seasons. Part of that surely has to do with Smith already being involved with the writing, but it’s also just cool to have the one season to never have any sort of crossover finally get to have one.
Moreover, Casey’s role is quite distinct from Jayden’s last week. While Jayden established how this season would work, essentially solidifying that the Legendary Rangers are out there, Casey more directly acts in the role of teacher. That makes sense, considering how heavily being a “Pai Zhua Master” factored into the Jungle Fury narrative. Martial arts training montages and ninja masters are heavily implanted into Power Rangers DNA as a whole, too, so it’s only fair that Super Megaforce have an episode devoted to that. It even has a totally nonsensical “martial arts master disappears into the ether” moment, which is about the silliest and most predictable thing it can do, but is also so totally perfect.
The use of Megaforce‘s animal theme to tie into the animal spirits is quite ingenious, and a particularly clever way to incorporate an otherwise obsolete aspect of the season. The little details, particularly Jake and Emma’s respective snake and bird-like hand motions during their training, works wonders. The only fault with this lies in the Sentai footage, which of course distinctly does not have Jake or Emma fighting in that specific style once in costume. A couple of American shots of them using those hand motions in their Legendary modes could have smoothed it all out, but it works well enough as it stands.
There’s quite a bit of cleverness present in the episode’s structure. The use of team logos, particularly Jungle Fury‘s Order of the Claw, is a bit that doesn’t often get utilized in the show. The Rangers are particularly smart throughout, putting pieces together and making connections without having it spelled out for them. Noah’s absence from the major events is clever, too, as he’s the only Ranger who’s thoroughly studied the database enough to recognize the veterans—which means with him out of the picture, Casey can remain a mystery to Jake and Emma. That, in turn, lets this continue to be the current team’s story, as they have to take the initiative to find their master to be trained, rather than having a veteran swoop in and steal the spotlight.
The best surprise comes from the dissension among the group, particularly Troy’s rather dickish attitude toward his teammates. It’s rare to ever see Andrew Gray express any emotion, but he does a decent enough job portraying a Troy who’s more frustrated and fed up than usual. Surely Super Megaforce won’t go dark enough to have the team splinter, but seeing that they aren’t all best buddies every second of the day is important, for both character realism and simple conflict. It also gives all the Rangers something to do while Jake and Emma get to hang out with the guest star, letting the remaining three come up with an alternate tactic that almost works. The weird “Rangers never let go of their weapons!” bit is perplexing, and Troy’s plan of simply “not letting go” is kind of laughable, but any time Megaforce diverges from the most basic of plots, it’s much more interesting. The only disappointing part of all this is that Troy doesn’t really learn that he needs to chill out—both of their plans kind of semi-work, even though Jake and Emma clearly had the more creative and less harmful of the two.
As per usual, there isn’t much of an overarching plot to speak of outside of “Rangers learn new a method to defeat villain-of-the-week.” But like the two episodes preceding, “Spirit of the Tiger” works its magic by pulling from the Power Rangers lore. What Super Megaforce lacks in story, it certainly excels in bringing out excitement, at least in a familiar “Hey, I remember that!” kind of way. With some changes to the structure, a distinct lack of Megaforce adaptation weirdness, and a welcome performance by Jason Smith, that puts “Spirit of the Tiger” up there as the best—or at the very least, most competent—of the season so far.
Odds & Ends
- So far, Gia is the only Ranger who hasn’t met a veteran Ranger. It’s especially weird this time around, since she would have the same titular spirit of the tiger. Seems like a missed opportunity.
- We almost, almost get development for the Jake/Gia non-starter relationship, with Jake basically only hanging out with Emma to get information out of her before it hits a dead stop when Casey comes into the fray. Something really needs to happen with this before the finale, as it’s already a broken record.
- What was with all the random animal facts being thrown out at the beginning? It’s like the show forgot it pretty much abandoned the semi-educational stuff midway through season 1 of Mighty Morphin.
- That said…I had no idea Rhino horns were made up of hair. Though apparently that’s been revealed to be not totally accurate anymore. But this is a series that also allows breathing in space, so who am I to judge?
- Casey totally lets two teenagers into a tiger cage. Let that sink in.
- It’s pretty cool that the Legendary Jungle Fury Megazord is just, like, a blast made up of the main Jungle Fury Zords themselves.
- Jake’s clawing motion at the end of the battle is fabulous.
- “Pa-cha-backpack!”
