full image - Repost: Retro Review #22: Power Rangers Beast Morphers Season 2 Episodes 20-22 - Beast Morphers Finale Arc (from Reddit.com, Retro Review #22: Power Rangers Beast Morphers Season 2 Episodes 20-22 - Beast Morphers Finale Arc)
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The episode numbers on the videos go by production order so ignore the fact that they say episode 18, 19, etc.https://youtu.be/-I6kT9MhzN4?si=uKfGJ683arPkj2vdEpisode 20 - Crunch TimeAt Riptide Gym, Ben and Betty are giving a rock climbing class when Blaze shows up suddenly. Ben and Betty are confused as he was supposed to be away. He tells them to come with him to see the rangers, who are also confused to see him. Blaze was supposed to be at a karate tournament in Japan but came back when he found what he says could be one of Robo Roxy’s memory drives. Ravi points out that the Grid Battleforce clean up crew must have missed it when cleaning up Robo Roxy’s remains. Devon thanks Blaze when he highlights that this was more important than the tournament. Ben and Betty have a stupid sequence after this where they drop the drive and knock all their students over I’m not gonna get into it too much. Nate tells them to be more careful. Zoey says there may be other parts the clean up crew missed. Nate says he’ll take the drive back to the lab. As the rangers leave and thank Blaze once again, he begins to smirk as if something is up. At the lab, Nate, Steel, and Devon watch a clip from the drive of Evox and Scrozzle talking about their strongest Gigadrone yet. The commander informs Devon of an attack. Devon tells Nate and Steel to keep studying the drive. An upgraded Railtron is looking for morph-x with some Tronics when Zoey and Ravi show up. Railtron makes one too many cringy train puns and the two rangers have a short unmorphed fight against the Tronics. Railtron blasts them and knocks them down. All of the sudden, Blaze shows up and kicks Railtron away. He says he’s here to fight with them. They continue fighting the Tronics and this is very cool because we get to see Colby Strong (Blaze’s actor) show off his martial arts skills. A Tronic damages Blaze’s arm. Devon shows up on Cruise who got lost on the way and tells Blaze to take cover. The rangers morph. There’s then this really bad transition from the American to Japan footage. They couldn’t make it more obvious in this scene that it’s two different locations. Zoey tells the others to follow her. Railtron chases them and runs into Devon and Ravi and asks where the yellow ranger is. Zoey comes flying down from a building and Beast-X blasts him, destroying him. The rangers demorph. Blaze, still holding his arm, then confronts Cruise for making Devon late. Cruise says he didn’t mean to. Devon tells Blaze to stop being harsh. Blaze pulls him to the side and tells him they can’t afford mistakes in the war against Evox. He tells Devon he’s a great red ranger and he might even get to become commander of Grid Battleforce one day (wink wink). He tells Devon that a real leader should act tough and he agrees. They go back to the others and tell them they have to step up their game and that he can’t afford anymore mistakes from Cruise. Ok, I just wanna say, if there’s one thing I hate about Beast Morphers (even though I have some other problems with it as well), it’s that the rangers are always being jerks to their beast boys for no reason. They always apologize to them, but end up doing it again, and again, and again. This is a problem with Beast Morphers as a whole. Characters regress a lot and forget about all their development. I don’t get it did the writers just forget that these characters are supposed to have gotten over their flaws by now? This is literally the endgame arc!Cruise apologizes to Devon. Ravi asks Blaze about his arm, but he says it’s fine. Devon suggests they work out back at the base. At Grid Battleforce, Blaze and Devon are sparring. Blaze encourages Devon to train extra hard. When they finish, they meet the other rangers. Nate has completed his analysis of the memory drive, but he unfortunately hasn’t come across any other info aside from the stuff about the Gigadrone. He hands out pamphlets with plans for a counterattack. Blaze thinks it’s too complex and suggests they trap Evox’s Gigadrone, lure it to the hangar, and teleport Evox to a security cell in the base. Devon agrees, but the others says it could be risky. Blaze tells off Cruise who also disagrees. Devon calls that they should go with Blaze’s plans. Cruise leaves the room all sad. The rangers tell Blaze not to be mean to Cruise, but Blaze says that they need to make absolutely sure they can beat Evox. Ravi starts to argue with him, but Devon breaks it up and says they need to start preparing the trap. At the Crystal Dimension, Scrozzle is upset that Railtron got destroyed, but Evox is cool with it since his true plan is going just fine. He asks what the status is off his Gigadrone, called the Omega Drone. Scrozzle says it’s complete and Evox is happy that he won’t have to keep his “secrets” any longer. Wonder what that could mean. Scrozzle even asks about them, but Evox just says he has a very dark past. Back at GB, Nate, along with Ben and Betty, finish the prison cell for Evox. Ben and Betty go inside, and the janitor accidentally traps them inside while dancing to a Levi Weston song playing in his headphones. Fun fact by the way, the janitor is played by Geoff Dolan, who has voiced many PR characters in the past such as Koragg and Gosei. Ben and Betty transport Beast-X blasters and try to break out of the cell. The blast keeps bouncing off the walls, but Nate eventually frees them. Blaze highlights that at least the force field works. Devon and Ravi come in and tell the others that the Omega Drone has been detected. The rangers suit up again and go into their Zords. Nate and Steel form the Striker Megazord and the others form the Beast-X Megazord. The Omega Drone teleports in with Evox inside. They begin to fight and Cruise opens the hangar doors. The Striker Megazord knocks the Gigadrone into the hangar. Evox tries to destroy the hangar. By the way I really like the hangar fight. Devon summons the Beast-X King Zord to help out. Cruise starts to malfunction from a blast. Evox’s Zord blows up. The rangers exit the zords and Devon lays Cruise down. Cruise is damaged badly, and Devon blames himself for getting carried away by Blaze’s advice. The rangers find Evox and open fire at him. They teleport the teleporters and send Evox to the prison cell. Everyone celebrates for a successful plan. In the prison room, Ravi is amazed that Evox can’t do a thing to them despite being so close. The commander congratulates everyone for a job well done. Blaze does the same, but still blames Cruise for crying about getting hurt in battle. Devon snaps back at him and tells him that Cruise isn’t just a beast bot, but a dear teammate and friend. Devon apologizes to everyone as he thought being tough would bring better results and says he shouldn’t have listened to Blaze. He apologizes to Cruise too. Blaze sarcastically apologizes for coming up with a plan to defeat their worst enemy. All of the sudden, Devon gets a call from… Blaze?! He tells him that he won his tournament. The rangers get suspicious and Ravi tears off Blaze’s arm bandage, revealing wires! It’s Robo Blaze! He teleports away. Nate highlights that this means that Evox must’ve wanted to get captured. The episode ends with the rangers staring down Evox. Ok this was actually a mostly solid episode. You think the rangers have a smart plan going for them, but in the end, they’re the ones who got tricked and the episode leaves the audience with a lot of tension. The main plot was also very solid, as you can see some highlights of Blaze’s personality from Season 1 where he acts like a jerk. But that gets me into a complaint. I really wish this season would have some development for Blaze and Roxy instead of completely sidelining them. I get they had to do this for plot, but it would’ve been cool if this was a regular Blaze focused episode. Blaze changed into a goody two shoes all of the sudden after season 1 without any context. Sure, this is more of an overall season complaint, but still, the two of them got robbed. I’ll also bring up again that I hate how much the rangers reset on development in Beast Morphers. There’s been so many plots where the Beast Bots get treated badly, and the rangers never learn their lesson. I really like the set up they have going into the next episode though. This episode’s rating is a 6/10. ————————————————————https://youtu.be/7AAo2qOmlzM?si=x0QeL8PWBCw4T9bnEpisode 21 - Source CodeAt GB, Nate, Zoey, and Steel finish reprogramming the ultra blaster to scramble Evox’s virus until he disintegrates. Nate is confident that it won’t fail. They meet Devon and Ravi at the cell room. They lower the cell walls and Nate begins firing at Evox, weakening him. However, we see a beam of light go through the crevices of the floor into the computer. Nate fires again, but the walls go back up, deflecting the shot. The Rangers realize Evox now has control of the computer. Evox tells the rangers that they’ve reached the final chapter of their story. Wow, clever Hasbro. Evox teleports into the computer to gain access to the morph-x towers. Zoey destroys the computer but Evox escapes. Nate says they must destroy every computer with direct access to the Morphin Grid. The rangers chase Evox all throughout Grid Battleforce, until Commander Shaw tells them that Evox has accessed the ranger vault. Evox brings out a briefcase containing the RPM morphers and begins absorbing energy from one of them to recover. Nate blasts him again, but Evox stops it. Evox tells Nate he should know who he truly is. He recalls a day when Nate was experimenting with old morphers from past ranger teams, and that he was there that day. Nate was trying to experiment with snake DNA and morph-x to try to power up the morphers. They all failed until he tried the cell shift morpher. The morpher got energized and Evox got released into the system. Evox tells Nate that him being bonded with the cell shift morpher can mean only one thing:”I… WAS… VENJIX!!!”Yup, Evox was Venjix the entire time. Also, a really neat decision Hasbro made was to put Andrew Laing, who voiced both Venjix and Evox, under a pseudonym called “Randall Ewing” in order to prevent fans from guessing that Evox was actually Venjix. That was a great idea. I do remember some people being upset over this when it first got revealed during the initial airing, but why? Their only reason for being upset is that Hasbro was relying on nostalgia to advance the story. If they cared that much about nostalgia baiting, they wouldn’t have saved this reveal for the second to last episode of the entire show. I’m really happy that they decided to finish an unresolved plot that Saban completely ignored when he bought the show back. Hasbro could’ve also skipped over that plot but saw that people were still talking about RPM’s cliffhanger ending and that we still wanted a resolution. I know it’s cool to hate Hasbro right now, and yeah, I still have my problems with them, but I’m very grateful that they decided to appeal to older hardcore fans with a season that’s probably not well known amongst casuals who really only know about Mighty Morphin. Anyway, the rangers realize that this is the virus that nearly destroyed an entire world, but Zoey is in denial. Nate is speechless. Evox says that he’s determined to take control of the Morphin Grid and blasts the rangers. Evox leaves the room. Devon asks if it’s true that Nate really created Evox from an old morpher, which he technically didn’t. He just powered him up and gave him a new virus structure. Nate says he was just a kid and didn’t know. He begins to freak out because he released Venjix into their world. Evox tries to leave, but Ben and Betty step in front of him determined to stop him. The rangers find the two of them tied up. Jax calls Zoey and tells her he has a lead on Evox. The rangers morph and chase him along with the beast bots.They find him in a lot. Evox summons old robotrons and tells the rangers that nothing will stand in his way of victory. The beast bots leave and the rangers fight the robots. Devon tries to stab Evox, but gets his weapon absorbed. Evox says he has all the data in their weapons now. He then taunts Nate for releasing him and blasts him, demorphing Nate. Steel gets him up and Evox teleports away. Nate is really traumatized by everything and leaves. At the lab, Nate is examining the cell shift morpher, when Zoey tries to comfort him. Nate puts himself down and says that everyone thought he was a genius, when he actually released Venjix into their world. Zoey says they’ve faced tough problems before, but Nate says they’ve faced nothing on the scale of Venjix. He points out that Venjix is now fully powered up. Nate tells Zoey she has no idea how he’s feeling and tells her to leave. Zoey finds Devon and the commander and tells them that Nate is traumatized. Devon insists to talk to him, but Zoey says he needs to speak to someone who truly understands how he feels. She asks Devon to help her make a trans dimensional call. Nate is grieving over his mistake, when a portal opens up. Who comes out of it? None other than Dr. K. She introduces herself and Nate says he learned about her in ranger history class. They talk about they both are similar and unsuspectingly released Venjix into their worlds. We get some RPM flashbacks as Dr. K tells him her story. She tells Nate that if they work together, they might be able to prevent Venjix from destroying another Earth. Nate says he doesn’t want to risk failing again. Dr. K says she’ll wait nearby until Nate realizes that he can’t just be upset over his mistakes forever. I just wanna say by the way, Olivia Tenet was UNREAL this episode. Hasbro wrote her perfect lines and she completely recaptured Dr. K’s personality. It feels like she never left!Nate is still freaking out and says that this is a much more powerful version of Venjix and asks how you tackle a problem like that. Dr. K says it’s just like any other problem, and you take the first step. Nate grabs the cell shift morpher, and says that they can use it to find Venjix’s weaknesses. The rangers look on and are proud of Nate. At the Crystal Dimension, Evox shows Robo Blaze the access codes he got from GB and plans to use it to access the Morphin Grid through all the towers across the planet. Robo Blaze teleports away to do so. Evox then tells Scrozzle that he’s the key to everything. Back at the base, Nate develops a new arrow with a morph-x key that will act as an anti-virus for Evox. Nate says a lot can go wrong, but Dr. K tells him to relax. The rangers come in to get Nate to help them fight Blaze, who was just detected. Hesitant at first, Nate decides to go with them. Ben and Betty ask Dr. K if she needs help, but she turns them down. They keep suggesting tasks for them to take on until Dr. K tells them about a special fuel they can make for her, with crystals, heated water, and an organic substance found only on her world. Wonder what it could be. The rangers step in front of Robo Blaze as he heads for the tower. The rangers morph again and the three core rangers go Beast-X Mode. The 5 rangers begin to fight Blaze but get whooped. Devon and Steel get up and go back for more. Nate gets a call from Dr. K letting him know the arrow is ready. He transports it and Ravi and Zoey back him as he fires it. They fire at Robo Blaze and destroy him for good!Back at the base, Nate and Zoey have a nice moment together and Nate thanks Zoey for being able to count on her to make things better when they are at their worst. Commander Shaw asks Dr. K if she wants to stay, but she wants to get back to Corinth to check for anymore traces of the Venjix virus. This is actually a really good reason for her to not stay for the finale as much as I’d like her to. Nate walks in with Zoey and thanks her for everything. She tells him that with his friends, he’ll never have to face problems alone. Ben and Betty walk in with the fuel. She picks up the substance and drinks it, saying that she loves a nice cup of tea. Ok this moment was funny as hell. I remember cracking up the first time I watched this. It’s good too because modern PR almost never makes me laugh. Dr. K invites them to come to her lab anytime. She opens a portal and tells the rangers to keep their beautiful world safe, which Devon says they plan on doing. They then get an alert that the tower network is activated and has been disconnected from Grid Battleforce. They get a call from Evox and tells them that while they were fighting Blaze, Scrozzle went into the tower. All the Morph-X towers across the world are now under Venjix’s control. This was a crazy strong episode. The pacing was great, the plot twist was handled excellently, Ben and Betty weren’t annoying, but I haven’t covered the best part of this episode yet: Dr. K. She was the best character in the episode by a mile. I’m so glad that she acted like herself and that the writers kept her in character the whole time. The whole thing with the tea also was hilarious. I have a couple small complaints though. Dr. K should’ve interacted with Venjix a little bit. She was fully the one that created him so it would’ve been such a cool moment for the two of them to see each other again. Also, Abraham Rodriguez trying to act traumatized wasn’t too convincing. There were some moments that were fine, but his acting could’ve been so much better. He unleashed a world ending virus and he didn’t act that way. I don’t know man he had room to do better. Overall though, an excellent episode and a great finale set up. This episode’s rating is a 9/10.————————————————————https://youtu.be/eJa86nW__X8?si=P77lX_uDVZQDfSNBEpisode 22 - Evox UnleashedThe citizens of Coral Harbor begin evacuating due to the impending threat. At GB, Zoey’s mom is doing a news report with all 5 rangers, Mayor Daniels, and Commander Shaw, who goes on the air to explain that Evox has taken control of the Morph-X network. Mayor Daniels urges everyone to evacuate Coral Harbor. Devon, morphed, assures everyone that the rangers will do their best to protect everyone. They stop recording, and Zoey’s mom goes up to Commander Shaw to ask about her daughter. She asks to take Zoey with her to evacuate, but the commander says she’s critical to their success. Zoey’s mom as confused as she thought Zoey was in laundry. Zoey goes up to her mom and takes off her helmet, revealing to her that she’s the yellow ranger. They hug and her mom tells her how proud she is of her. They have a heart to heart and tell each other how much they love the other. Zoey leaves to help the other rangers. I just wanna talk about how nice this moment was. Zoey is about to go up against possibly the most dangerous villain in PR history, not to mention a powered up version. She may not come back from this battle. It was important to Zoey to show her mom that she isn’t just a laundry girl, but someone who solves big problems. I also loved that Commader Shaw was cool with her revealing her identity to her mom, because her son is also a ranger, and she understands Zoey’s mom’s concerns for the well being and survival of her kid. Well done Hasbro. At the lab, Nate instructs Ben to load the arrow into the ultra bow and he actually doesn’t ruin the tension like in most episodes. Nate, Ravi, and Steel question how they’ll take on Evox if he has all their weapon data. Devon comes out of the ranger vault with some briefcases, saying he has a solution. The commander informs the rangers of an Evox detection near Tower 1. Zoey asks what’s in the cases Devon brought out, and Devon says he’ll explain on the way to the fight. As Evox makes his way to the tower, the rangers show up to stop him. Nate highlights that even though he released him, he’s gonna destroy him with the help of the other rangers. The rangers all say “It’s Morphin Time” together and suit up. All of the sudden, they transport weapons belonging to OTHER RANGER TEAMS! Each ranger has the following:Devon has the Ninja Super Steel Blaster from Super Ninja SteelNate has a Dino Saber from Dino ChargeRavi has a Delta Enforcer from S.P.D. (somehow)Steel has a Cloud Hatchet from RPMZoey has a Thermo Blaster from Lightspeed RescueTo this day, I’m still unsure how I feel about this. It’s like what I said when I reviewed The Evox Snare when they used the Split Emitters from Dino Charge. I don’t know if it’s genius or just lazy. I’ll let you guys make that call. The core three blast Evox while Nate and Steel fight him off with their Sabers. The core three then summon the Beast-X King Power Bow and fire at Evox, but Evox hits it away. He then summons old Robotrons to fight the rangers as he heads for the tower. Evox enters the same room where Devon summoned Jason during the Dino team up and enters the Morphin Grid’s energy. Steel grabs the antivirus bow and goes after Evox. The others finish the robotrons and Nate takes off his helmet and tells the others that they have to go after Steel. Steel finds Evox and tries to get to him in the energy field. The other rangers show up and tell him not to get closer. Steel enters anyway and stabs Evox with the arrow, but Evox absorbs it. He blasts Steel, demorphing him. Steel says he tried his best and apologizes to Nate. He glows and fades away into the Morphin grid energy. Steel is dead, so obviously he won’t come back at the end randomly, right? The rangers try to comfort Nate after this devastating loss. Ravi tells Evox that he’s gonna pay, but Evox says otherwise and blasts the rangers out of the tower, demorphing them. Mayor Daniels and Zoey’s mom show up to bring them back to base. Nate tries to run after Evox, but Devon and Zoey stop him and say that they need to regroup at GB. When the rangers return, Ben asks where Steel is. Devon tells him and Betty that he’s not coming back, shocking them, the Beast Bots, and the commander. Devon asks the commander for the phone to speak into the PA system. Devon addresses GB and tells them that only 4 of the 5 rangers that went up against Evox came back, and commends Steel for his noble sacrifice. He tells everyone to evacuate GB, but Ben and Betty, the beast bots, and along with the rest of GB, all refuse to leave and are willing to stay and help the rangers. Although you can clearly see they were going for something similar to In Space and SPD’s finale, this was a pretty nice moment. Devon says that they will defeat Evox for Steel. They then get an alert that the sky got dark and the tower is glowing red, forming a new version of Evox bigger than a Gigadrone. Ravi points out the obvious and says that that doesn’t look good. Thanks Ravi for that valuable piece of information. Commander Shaw instructs GB to prepare the Ultrazord. She then tells the rangers that their humanity is stronger than Evox’s data. The rangers leave to have one last fight, one they may not come out alive from. Evox is excited to take over another civilization when the Ultrazord shows up. He starts blasting at the rangers, immediately knocking the Ultrazord down. Evox says that humans are weak, but the rangers argue otherwise. This gives Nate a revelation that when Evox tried to enter Steel and Mayor Daniels’s bodies, it made him very weak due to their human DNA. Nate suggests that they fuel their next attack with Morph-X and human DNA. Nate goes to Devon’s cockpit to begin preparations. Evox continues blasting at them, but Nate finishes preparations, but tells Devon they need a different formation. They go Beast-X King Megazord. The rangers transfer their human DNA into their attack and stab Evox. They give it everything they have and corrupt Evox’s system, finally destroying him after over a decade. The rangers begin to celebrate. The morph-x begins returning to the grid, when suddenly a glowing ball of light appears in front of them. It’s Steel! But wait, he turns into a human! Not sure why they used Jamie Linehan’s ADR over the actor but whatever. Steel is confused, and Nate goes to hug him and says that the Morphin Grid was able to do what he couldn’t and made him purely human. Not sure how that worked which is disappointing because it’s not like we’re gonna get an explanation for this in a future season (😉). Steel asks to be reassured that this isn’t a one day thing again, but Devon tells him it’s forever because it came from the Morphin Grid. Steel is fueled with excitement, and the rangers all share a big hug. One year later, Ben and Betty have Scrozzle in custody, and behind them is freaking Colonel Truman! They enter the command room and we see that the commander is no longer Ravi’s mom, but now Devon! This is nice and all, but I wish’s there was more setup for this. Like a few episodes ago he was telling off Keeper of all people because he cared more about a video game tournament. Devon and the colonel shake hands. Truman tells Devon that they found Scrozzle in Corinth and he instructs the guards to lock him up, where surely he will never escape. Devon thanks the colonel who gives Ben and Betty a lot of the credit. He then tells the siblings that they are just in time for operation 365. During a news report, the Mayor, Zoey, and Nate address Coral Harbor that city will now rely on energy from wind and solar means. Nate and Zoey get a signal afterwards, knowing what it’s for. We then cut to Ravi making a painting of Roxy, along with his mom, who is now the General. Ravi gets the signal too and heads back to base. We then see Steel being chased down by three people, whom he begins to fight off. Someone then says “cut!” Steel is actually an actor now that makes martial arts movies. He gets a call from Devon with a red alert signal. He heads back to base, and calls for his stunt double, who is actually Blaze! I’ll be honest, I really don’t like this ending for Blaze though. I wish he was involved with Grid Battleforce again and had an important role there, as he was supposed to be the red ranger in the first place. Steel leaves the set and morphs with a Beast-X Morpher… even though he and Nate use Striker Morphers. Steel shows up to GB and takes off his helmet, confused. The rangers, Ben and Betty, and the Beast Bots all surprise Steel for his “birthday”, or the one year anniversary since he became human. Nate brings out a cake for him. Devon tells Steel to make a wish, but he says that he now has everything he can possibly want now that he’s human. The rangers break out into dance as “It’s Great to be Human” plays (ughhh😑🫠). The episode, as well as Power Rangers Beast Morphers, ends with everyone celebrating and dancing over Steel officially being pure human for one whole year. Overall, this was a solid finale. They set up some really good tension with Steel’s death. Also, the scenes where Zoey tells her mom she’s the yellow ranger and when Devon talks to all of Grid Battleforce were really good. Ben and Betty also had good moments and didn’t ruin any scenes. The use of the old weapons was neat too. It’s also a nice touch that the first episode of Beast Morphers was called “Beasts Unleashed” and the last episode was call “Evox Unleashed”. My complaints mostly come from the end of the episode. First of all, the way Steel became human felt very forced. Yeah, I know they explain that in Dino Fury, but it’s in the most Deus Ex Machina way possible. Also, I feel like there was zero set up for Devon to become commander, after all, Blaze and Roxy, who I’ll get to next, were originally supposed to become the red and yellow rangers respectively. Blaze and Roxy had terrible endings too. Why aren’t they in Grid Battleforce. They were literally supposed to become rangers, but they get completely sidelined in the end. Why’d the writers completely ruin their potential? Otherwise, this was a solid finale. This episode’s rating is a 8/10. ————————————————————As for this entire multiparter, it was very good. My favorite episode was definitely Source Code. I’m so glad that the RPM cliffhanger has finally been resolved. There were also some really nice moments. I’d say my top 3 moments from this arc, in no particular order, were the Venjix reveal, Zoey revealing her identity to her mom, and Dr. K helping Nate find a solution to destroy Evox. The overall rating for this multi-parter is an 8/10.
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