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31 Years Ago Today, An Iconic Power Ranger Made Their Long-Awaited Return (But With a Catch)
The Power Rangers series has featured many memorable returns over the course of its 30-plus-year history, and while that is sometimes connected to anniversary episodes like Forever Red or Legendary Battle, that also occasionally happens over the course of a season. A perfect sample of this in action is an episode from 31 years ago, which featured an iconic Power Ranger making their long-awaited return to the franchise, but there was a catch.
On February 28th, 1994, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers aired part 1 of an episode titled Return of an Old Friend, which featured the awaited return of the original Green Ranger Tommy Oliver (played by Jason David Frank). After Tommy lost his powers, he wasn’t as present in the show, but Tommy remained incredibly popular, so Saban found any way they could to make sure he was in the mix. While he would return in part 1, it wasn’t until part 2 that he was able to regain his powers, but the catch was that his powers were unstable and finite, so no one knew how long his powers would last.
How Power Rangers Brought Back The Green Ranger
Tommy’s Green Ranger was at the center of one of Mighty Morphin’s greatest arcs in the Green Ranger saga, though the story continued to have twists and turns along the way. One of the biggest twists happened in the two-part episode The Green Candle, which resulted in Tommy losing his powers.
While he had a brief appearance in Doomsday, Tommy wouldn’t make a full return in Return of an Old Friend, which sees him being brought in after the rest of the Rangers are forced to give up their Power Coins to save their parents. All hope isn’t lost though, as Jason kept Tommy’s Dragon Coin, but it doesn’t have any power left.
Zordon comes up with a pretty ingenious, albeit dangerous plan, which is to infuse his own energy into the Dragon Coin to give Tommy his powers back. The catch is that he is giving his own life force to make this happen, so if he’s not careful, Zordon could completely cease to exist if he gives too much energy. There’s also the safety of Tommy to consider, as the power could go out and leave him without powers, surrounded by enemies. Despite the danger, Tommy is all in, and he actually manages to retrieve the Dragon Dagger and the Power Coins right before the powers go out, but they lose Zordon in the process.
That’s when the other Rangers put their own plan into motion by channeling energy to Zordon from their newly recovered Power Coins, and not only do they get Zordon back, but they also unintentionally charge Tommy’s powers from the electrical charge. Tommy now had his powers back, but Zordon and Alpha said if they couldn’t find a way to make them permanent, he would lose them again at some point down the line.
The Green Ranger’s return added some intrigue to the story, but it more importantly brought Tommy back into the show in a major way, which is what fans were clamoring for. The character had become quite popular, but in the Sentai, the Green Ranger isn’t a permanent part of the show, and so Mighty Morphin was initially going to follow the same path.
When the Green Ranger became popular, the show had to utilize whatever footage was left over of the Green Ranger from the original series and work in new footage of Tommy to make it all work. This problem was solved later when Tommy was brought back as the White Ranger later in the series.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is streaming now on Netflix.
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