Warning: Spoilers for Ranger Academy #12!The most powerful Power Rangers the squad has just emerged as a Thanos-level superpower. BOOM! Studios’ original Rangerverse came to an end with the Darkest hour final, leaving room for its new Prime relaunch to take its place. The “Darkest Hour” arc as a whole solidified the TV show’s evil mastermind, Dark Spectre, as the Thanos of Power Rangers tradition. It took an entire Rangers superteam to finally defeat him.
The Ranger Academy team emerged as the only team capable of defeating Dark Specter alone in Ranger Academy #12 by Maria Ingrande Mora and Jo Mi-Gyeong. Although Mighty Morphin Power Rangers just wrapped up his eight-year comic book series, Ranger Academy is still located in the same universe as the MMPR comic series.
As such, Dark Specter proves to be a threat in this series, but miraculously, Students don’t need help from any other team to defeat you – in his first official team, no less. But the question remains as to how the final Rangerverse team from BOOM! ranks among the Rangers’ most powerful squads.
Ranger Academy Power Rangers Team Defeats Dark Specter
Ranger Academy #12 by Maria Ingrande Mora, Jo Mi-Gyeong, Joana LaFuente and Ed Dukeshire
Ranger Academy follows Sage, a teenager living in the middle of nowhere on a distant galactic farm. with her father, who, unbeknownst to her, was once a member of the Power Rangers. When Ranger Academy cadets Tula and Mathis – whose mother was redeemed Power Rangers Time Force Villain Nadira – crash-lands on her colony, this inspires Sage to stowaway on her ship in hopes of something more than what she experienced on the farm. Upon becoming a junior cadet, Sage continues to make friends with other students on campus, such as Maev, Theo, Lindy, and Kartyr.
In due time, each student begins to work to have the opportunity to transform and earn their colors. While Sage worries that she has been cursed upon learning her destiny as the Green Ranger, the fun and games end when Dark Specter crashes her parents’ weekend dance. During the “Darkest Hour” storyline, Dark Specter begins infecting all universes and timelines in hopes of turning unsuspecting Rangers into his zombie army. Dark Specter infection begins to spread throughout the schoolincluding about Sage’s friend Mathis.
Sage and her friends free Mathis from Dark Spectre’s influence. Soon after, they all come up with a plan to use the school’s connection to the Morphin Grid to dispel everyone’s Dark Specter infection and, most importantly, dispel the entity from the school grounds. This plan proves easier said than done when the group of friends is forced to fight the Dark Specter head-on. As Sage struggles to deal with all of the Morphin Grid’s energy alone, all of her friends transform into their respective costumes to help her, marking her. the first time everyone transformed together at the same time.
Dark Specter has never been easy to defeat by a single team of Power Rangers
Only several teams or one Z-Wave were able to defeat him
Their unison transformation arrives just as Dark Specter attacks the Next Generation Power Rangers. The Rangers work together, strategizing out loud to fell Dark Specter like a tree until he is cut into pieces, eradicating him from their world. The team of Sage, Tula, Theo, Lindy, Maev and Kartyr are able to defeat Dark Specter alonewhich, given the precedence of the enemy’s power in both the series and the comics, is a bigger deal than some readers might think.
On television and in comic series, Dark Specter has never been an easy threat to defeat for the Power Rangersand the Rangers needed extreme means to even have a chance of beating it. It originally debuted in Power Rangers in space and was revealed to be the Big Bad of the franchise, who pulled strings from the beginning as the Grand Monarch of Evil and head of the United Alliance of Evil. Every villain dating back to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers responded to Dark Specter or operated under direct orders from Dark Specter – hence the comparison to Thanos.
Node Power Rangers in space In the end, it takes a sacrifice from Zordon to disperse pure energy across the universe in a massive Z-Wave to finally defeat Dark Spectre. Meanwhile, in BOOM! The studios’ “Darkest Hour” arc and the one-shot finale of the same name all ended with multiple Rangers from various timelines banding together to use their shared power to destroy Dark Specter for good. About that, the Ranger Academy’s Junior Cadet Rangers only needed themselves and the power of teamwork to put an end to Dark Spectre.
Where do the Junior Power Rangers rank in power levels?
They could be among the strongest Power Rangers teams
Being able to defeat Dark Specter alone is not a feat that should be taken for granted in the grand scheme of things. Power Rangers tradition. When Dark Specter manifests in the final panels, he mentions that the process the Rangers go through to connect to the Morphin Grid allows him “to become more focused.” At a technical level, Dark Specter is even more powerful than normal in his final fightbut he still falls to a crop of teenagers with attitude in training.
It all comes down to skill level and teamwork more than anything, but maybe The Ranger Academy’s Power Rangers’ Powers Are Stronger Than Initially Given Credit. The franchise has set a high bar for the Rangers to call themselves the most powerful in the franchise. Zeo Squad might be the most OP unit in the franchise, while the final issues of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers featured arguably the most powerful team, powered by Tommy Oliver’s White Tiger Power Coin.
The bar is set high thanks to previous teams, and with this issue being the end of Ranger AcademyThis may be the last time readers see the Junior Power Rangers, making it harder to rank them on a power rating scale. However, the unprecedented feat of defeating Dark Specter without the help of another team or source is enough to consider the Junior Rangers among the most powerful Power Rangers teams. They may not be the real most powerful Power Rangersbut doing something like defeating Dark Specter at least puts them in contention.
Ranger Academy #12 is now available on BOOM! Studios.