WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Power Rangers #8 by Ryan Parrott, Francesco Mortarino, Gilbey Ibarra, Raul Angulo, Jose Enrique Fernandez and Ed Dukeshire, on sale now.
To the casual observer, Power Rangers and Mass Effect are two properties one wouldn't expect to have much in common. While the Power Rangers have continued with spacefaring threats since the original Mighty Morphin's "Evil Space Monsters," they've rarely been space explorers and adventurers akin to those in Mass Effect. However, the latest Power Rangers villains, the Empyreals, draw an incredible comparison to the galaxy-ending threat players faced in the original Mass Effect trilogy.
The Empyreals are massive robotic constructs, having emerged from the farthest reaches of the galaxy to scour life from civilized planets. Drakkon describes them as "ancient in ways you can't even fathom," but it's also revealed in the comic's latest issue that they serve Zartus of Eltar, one of Zordon's contemporaries from his home planet. That description — cosmic engines of destruction from beyond known space emerging to destroy civilized life — is awfully close to Mass Effect's Reapers, which form the central threat for the overall series as their agents sow mayhem throughout the events of the first two games before they finally arrive to round out the trilogy.
Originally created by a now-extinct race known as the Leviathans, the Reapers were an artificial intelligence tasked with solving the problem of synthetic rebellion. Over time, organics created and developed synthetic minds smart enough to destroy them and mistreated them so harshly that they revolted. The Reapers' solution is a microcosm of the problem they were created to address, as they decided the way to solve this problem was to prevent the creation of such synthetics. Wiping out their creators, the Reapers developed a system where they would periodically cull the galaxy, destroying any civilized race whose technology had advanced far enough to develop synthetic life.
The Empyreals seem to carry out a similar process, but with different selection criteria. The Empyreal destroying Hartunia continuously lambasts its victims, decrying their civilization for its practice of slavery. This positions the Empyreals as cybernetic agents of an almost divine moral judgment. But the "almost" there is important, as the Empyreals serve a master much younger than them — Zartus of Eltar. Zartus is the successor in his position to Zophram, who disappeared while searching the far reaches of space for assets in the fight against Dark Specter. It seems too likely a coincidence that Zartus is suddenly in possession of ancient deep-space weapons.
Zartus's mastery of the machines also provides a clear explanation for the Empyreals' moral standards. Zartus is certainly against the Hartunian's colonial practices as a guardian of Eltar, which tries to bring galactic stability with light touches. If Zophram found these machines dormant on the edges of distant space (possibly after destroying their own creators, much like the Reapers did), he would have brought such information back to Eltar. Zartus would be the first to know about such powerful weapons, and any coup he carried out against Zophram in secret would leave him in the position he occupies today.
But regardless of speculation and questions of how he got to where he is now, Zartus' current position is almost identical to the plans of Mass Effect's Illusive Man. The Illusive Man planned to use the Crucible to try and control the entire Reaper fleet, which he would then use to usher in a new age of peace for the galaxy. This is also one of three endings available to the player at the end of Mass Effect 3. It's the most overtly villainous, as the absolute power of controlling countless planet-killing destroyers is absolutely corrupting. It's certainly seemed to have that effect on Zartus, but he'll have to be careful not to end up like the Illusive Man himself — manipulated by the very machines he claimed to control.