Power Rangers Beast Morphers First Impressions

I'm still amazed that Hasbro chose this as the next season simply because its been so long since Gobusters aired and they had plenty of other Sentai shows to choose from as their starter show. I majorly held back my expectations for the show because I don't have much experience with how Hasbro handles their shows. Anyway, lets see how the first 3 episodes of Beast Morphers turned out.

Unfortunately I'm not a fan of the theme song. A bit too much techno in it for my tastes. I tend to prefer a rock feel when it comes to Power Rangers openings. The lyrics are also a tad too generic and it might work better if it were longer. It being yet another reworking of Go Go Power Rangers doesn't really help much. All in all, its gonna take some time to grow on me.

Episode 1 is a nice start for the show. The pacing of the episode is nice and tense. It feels a bit like a Disney era premier in that regard to me. It set up the rangers' motivation well enough. The avatar thing is an interesting way to handle things and is a decent way to give us Blaze and Roxy as evil rangers. Although when Blaze first showed up in the episode, I figured he'd either willingly turn evil or just be brainwashed.That feeling mostly came from him being a little eager to try and beat Devon down after a small provocation.The Ravi and Roxy thing should be interesting later on and its actually an interesting way to handle Blue Buster and Escape's rivalry. It should make for some tense stuff as the series progresses. I saw a bit of a debate as to whether or not Roxy's avatar counts as a ranger. Until Hasbro says otherwise, I'm going to counter her as a ranger because thats what the machine was initially designed to make and Hasbro repainted Escape's monster form to yellow to show she is a twisted version of what would've been the yellow ranger. Overall, I enjoyed it but I kind of wish it was an hour long premier because we didn't learn much about Ravi outside the love story stuff.

In episode 2 we get a nice bit of rivalry between Ravi and Zoey as they compete to become leader of the team. We also get a decent look at Devon's leadership skills after their weak-points cropped up. It was actually nice seeing Devon be the only one not interested in competing to be the leader. The unmorphed fight is nice and has some good environmental action. I'm a bit surprised they brought over the weak-points from Gobusters. I thought for sure that those would get cut out. Other than that, the episode was establishing the villains' plan. I sort of expected that since the premiere didn't establish that. It also had a lot of exposition. Overall its an ok episode but not much really happened in it so its a bit of a step down from the premiere.

Not gonna lie, episode 3 was kinda weird. In order to stop a forest from being torn down for a new road to cut down on traffic flow, Zoey pitches a new city-wide bike program powered by Morph X to the mayor. The weird thing is that they're just regular bikes with a slot for a vial of Morph X. With that being said, this might be one of the more subtle environment episodes the franchise has had in a while, even if the problem was essentially solved by the rule of cool. The bike chase was decent if a little too 90's/early 2000s. Other than that, there wasn't much to the episode. It felt out of place compared to the 1st two episodes. However, I'm glad that idea of them using the Grid as a power source is still being carried on past the 1st episode. It wasn't a bad episode but its a step down from the previous two.

Its decent start to the series though episode 3 makes it clear that Hasbro is still trying to get a feel for how they want the franchise to go. Episodes 1 and 2 felt like they were intended to be an hour long premiere and that Nick probably said no to that idea. It would explain why episode 2 had so much exposition. Overall I'm looking forward to how the show plays out. I'm also curious as to whether or not future seasons will keep the Morphing Grid being used as an energy source. That really not something you can take back once you've done it unless each season from now on is an alternate universe.