SPOILER WARNING: The following interview contains major spoilers for Go Go Power Rangers #8 and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #25, on sale now.
It’s the moment that had WonderCon fans weeping as they left this past Saturday’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers panel, sworn to secrecy by the Blue Ranger himself. Kyle Higgins and Daniele Nicuolo’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #25 has kicked off the much-hyped “Shattered Grid” event in a big way that nobody could have predicted: Tommy Oliver, the long-beloved and insanely popular Green Ranger, is dead.
Stabbed by his evil counterpart Lord Drakkon in an effort to recharge the Green Chaos Crystal, Tommy's death also heralded the first of many appearances to come as Jen Scott, the Pink Time Force Ranger, arrived to help Kimberly chase Drakkon back to his world. But it was too little too late, as the issue ends with Kimberly sobbing and holding Tommy's body, with no help in sight.
RELATED: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Marks 25 Years with Anniversary Special
Tommy’s death is a huge shock for Power Rangers fans, essentially the franchise's "Death of Superman” in terms of impact. But BOOM! Studios' Mighty Morphin Power Rangers team, as well as the Go Go Power Rangers creative team of Ryan Parrott and Dan Mora, aren’t just ready for the fallout of Tommy’s death, they’re ready to push the limits further. We sat down with the Higgins and Parrott, as well as series editor Dafna Pleban and Power Rangers franchise executive producer Brian Casentini to talk about the decision to kill Tommy and where “Shattered Grid” goes from here.
CBR: That last page is a pretty big deal for the lore of Power Rangers. How does the team come back from this kind of a loss? Is there a new Green Ranger coming down the line?
Kyle Higgins: I’ll put it this way: I wouldn’t pull a move like this if I didn’t have a plan, and if I wasn’t interested in exploring the emotional fallout. So all of those are aspects of “Shattered Grid,” and this big kick-off. The death of Tommy is what changes things. It’s not necessarily just his death, but it’s the complement of events around his death. The supercharging of the Green Chaos Crystal. Jen Scott’s arriving. Tommy dying. Drakkon getting back to his homeworld. All of those events together breaks things. And you start to see in issue #26 where the narrative is heading. The end of issue #25 is what allows and causes “Shattered Grid” to happen.
Killing off the most popular character of the entire 25-year-old franchise is a pretty big deal. What made you decide it was time to kill Tommy?
Higgins: I think there are two different perspectives on it. From Lord Drakkon’s perspective, there is a lot that killing Tommy means for his character. And I think as we dive more into Drakkon’s motivations and what his ultimate plans are, that will start to make more sense. From the Rangers standpoint, this is something they’ve never experienced before. The loss of one of their own. And dealing with the very real life and death stakes that come with being a teenage superhero.
To launch a big 25th anniversary event like “Shattered Grid” that brings in all of these other Rangers and puts all of reality at risk, I wanted to launch with something sizable, and I wanted it to all fit together in a way that both had emotional resonance and fallout but also really kicked the story into high gear. I think that the death of Tommy sends a very clear message that anything can happen in “Shattered Grid.”
Dafna Pleban: The death of Tommy is a very specific event that we chose because it really helped tell this underlying story that Kyle’s been building since the very beginning. What I think made Drakkon work so well is that he’s a version of Tommy that rejected what the Power Rangers represent and embody so well. They are a team, they are friends, they’re looking out for each other. What does that do to a person that doesn’t have access to that? Using our Tommy and using Drakkon to explore that conversation in the best way the genre does, which is literalizing it, I think you're going to see it play off both in an emotionally resonant way and in ways that have implications for the entire universe.
Tommy’s death is a big deal, but he existed in the current timeline beyond the Green Ranger; as shown in later MMPR episodes, Dino Thunder, Super Megaforce and more. Are we going to find out how those roles are affected in a timeline where Tommy died?
Higgins: I think an alternate timeline is actually one possibility, but I think there are other possibilities that you’ll learn about in issue #26. One of the things that was the most exciting about the framework of this event is that we’re actually playing with causality in a very interesting way between Go Go Power Rangers and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, as well as the aftermath of the death of Tommy, what that means and what things breaking actually entails.
Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='How Shattered Grid changes the Power Rangers franchise going forward, behind the Ninjor cameo']
The Ninjor cameo was a surprise that a lot of fans are going to enjoy. Was the discussion about his books a mystery for “Shattered Grid,” or is that planning for longer down the road?
Higgins: The knowledge that Ninjor holds, whether it be knowledge that he has gained or knowledge that was given to him by others, is definitely a part of the story, and also part of how Drakkon is going to carry out his alternate plans. If you pick up the Free Comic Book Day issue [available on May 5 at participating retailers], that’s a story Ryan and I co-wrote that looks at Zordon’s Hail Mary attempt to get help from the Morphin Masters themselves, because the threat that Drakkon and his army represents really is putting all of the Rangers and ultimately reality at risk. And so Ninjor, his books, and his knowledge are definitely tied into that.
Brian Casentini: There’s also another amazing reveal in that Free Comic Book Day issue that I can’t wait for everybody to see. It’s something that everyone is going to freak out about.
RELATED: Shattered Grid Continues With New Power Rangers Variants
The team’s already one down, two if you count Saba. What can the readers expect next?
Higgins: Issue #26 is going to look at the aftermath of losing one of their own and the grieving process that goes along with it, as well as what the stakes of what the event really are. Jen Scott, who we’ve seen at the end of issue #25, is here for a reason, and she’s going to contextualize for us exactly what is going on and what they need to do to try to save both the Morphin Grid and reality. And while that’s happening, you also have Go Go Power Rangers, which features the debut of a brand new character, the Ranger Slayer. The Ranger Slayer is the dark Kimberly from Lord Drakkon’s world, who has come back to our world during the Go Go Power Rangers era along with her Zord, the GraveZord.
Ryan Parrott: One of the major story arcs of Go Go Power Rangers has been Kimberly’s relationship with her first boyfriend, Matthew. Kyle had a wild card hanging with Kimberly from the Drakkon universe. It seemed like such a natural progression to bring her in to that timeframe and have Kimberly sort of come face to face with the potential, alternate version of herself; a future version of herself. I loved the way that brought so many interesting, emotional questions for her, for her relationship with Matthew, for her relationship to the team and each member of the team as well. It has an interesting result that felt natural and felt like a nice progression and felt like a really easy way to bring the book to the "Shattered Grid" storyline.
Speaking of Matthew, he was left in a pretty bad place in the last issue of Go Go Power Rangers. Will he factor into "Shattered Grid"?
Parrott: He will factor into "Shattered Grid" in a very important role. He has an important role throughout the entire series, and specifically in regards to how Kimberly sees the dual responsibilities of her personal life and her Power Ranger life. He’s always that hanging consequence that she has, so it’s interesting to see her try to play that out. I think that he has a big part of the story, and he will factor into every part of the “Shattered Grid” story.
RELATED: Shattered Grid Puts Every Power Ranger, Including a New One, in Peril
So how can we expect “Shattered Grid” to affect Power Rangers as a whole?
Higgins: Brian has been speaking to the idea that “Shattered Grid” and the BOOM! books are starting to permeate some of the other interpretations of Power Rangers, and I think a great example of that is something like [web seires] Power Rangers Hyperforce, which I was on a few weeks ago. Recently Jason David Frank appeared on Hyperforce as Lord Drakkon in a story that factors into "Shattered Grid" that I worked with them to construct so it would all fit. I think that an event like this is a very collaborative way of telling stories, and I think what Ryan and I have in store, as well as things like Hyperforce, is a very kind of different look at event storytelling that hopefully people enjoy.
Casentini: The team at BOOM! and Kyle and Ryan are incredible talents that have brought these comic books and this incredible event to life, and they went well beyond our expectations and dreams. We see there’s the canon of the BOOM! comic and a mature, fresher take on the core Power Rangers mythology.
It’s a remix: it’s in the current day, not set in the ‘90s. But there are loose elements that bleed into other areas of content like Kyle just spoke to Hyperforce, and there’s going to be other surprises. So the continuity across all of the content is going to be affected in little ways here and there, and some big ways, so it’s going to be a very exciting journey for all the fans, and I think they’re going to have a lot of fun with it.
"Shattered Grid" continues with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #26 on April 18.
