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Power Rangers‘ 30 year run was a success thanks to cable and broadcast television. It was made during a time where networks had time to fill, and were able to do so with 50 episodes of weekly action and adventure. That’s not the case with this reboot as it’s going to be made as a purely streaming release, and that means it’s going to have way fewer episodes than fans got to see with the previous eras. Which is another unique problem for setting up its newest team’s dynamic.
Power Rangers Disney+ Reboot Is Going to Have Fewer Episodes
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first made its debut during Fox Kids with 60 episodes in just its first season alone, and a total of 155 episodes across three seasons before the franchise went through its first real name change. That’s just not how television is made anymore. Through the original iteration of the series, fans had coined the “monster of the week” trope to reflect the fact that many of its episodes were one-shot stories that dealt with a brand new monster needing to be defeated every week. They were episodic, and rarely tied into one another.
Though the Power Rangers franchise always had room for serialized stories, as seen with the likes of “Green With Evil,” “The Wedding” or other multi-part events, but that wasn’t the goal of the franchise until much later. It was just a show that was made to deliver a new episode a week and fill time. But as a result of this kind of format for the franchise, fans got to spend a lot of time with the core cast of characters. It left time for the franchise to flesh out its character dynamics between the members of the team, and more importantly, build that connection with the audience.
Even after its cast was replaced across iterations, and Power Rangers completely reinvented itself with new versions of the show in the years to come, this extended episode count remained the norm of the franchise pretty much all through its run. Though its first Disney era and Neo-Saban eras had a shorter episode order, it still amounted to about 40 to 50 episodes for each series either way. It’s just not going to be the same for a series made exclusively for streaming. These shows don’t get usually get more than ten episodes at a time with Disney+.
