YMMV / Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: It’s hard not to feel sorry for Vypra when Queen Bansheera destroys her.
• Awesome Music: Lightspeed Rescue's theme as well as the bridge that served as the series' Leitmotif.
• Badass Decay: Triskull, in the span of just one episode no less. In his first fight against the rangers, he curbstomps all five Lightspeed Rangers + three Lost Galaxy Rangers. In his second fight, when fighting only Carter and Leo, Carter takes him out with a single punch from his battle booster.
• Character Perception Evolution: Carter Grayson, the Red Ranger used to be really disliked. His preference for using blasters (even though he was just following his Sentai counterpart with the footage provided among other reasons) and having the personality of a wooden board were the major reasons why he was originally hated, but over the years he became known as a Memetic Badass thanks to his strong attitude, tough demeanor and all-around Awesomeness, sometimes because of his use of blasters. He was Vindicated by History largely thanks to Linkara, watching the series with fresh eyes, singling out his best moments in History of Power Rangers. It is now to the point the fandom now consider him one of the best Red Rangers of all time and he will usually easily be in the top 5 of any best Red Ranger list.
• Complete Monster: Queen Bansheera is the queen of the demons and by far the worst of their ilk. Bansheera desires to rule the world and recreate her castle and has no care for any of her minions, being one of the worst bosses in the entire franchise. To return to power she callously absorbs her loyal minion Vypra for failing her. She later forces her general Diabolico to open fire on his enemies without caring that her most loyal minion Loki, whose only desire has ever been to serve her, is caught in the blast and dies. When he goes against her, Diabolico has his mind forcibly erased to serve as her unwilling pawn. She also shows little regard for her own son Olympius and ordered him abandoned to his fate while laughing. She later has him fight alongside a brainwashed Diabolico, and his death provokes no feeling in her whatsoever, and neither does the death of his last minion Jinxer. In the finale, Bansheera attempts to open a gateway to the demon realm allowing all demon-kind to pour out and overwhelm humanity, even attempting to drag Carter Grayson down to the demon realm with her after she fails. Bansheera is one of Power Rangers's cruelest villains and does her evil for her own selfish ambitions.
• Epileptic Trees: A common theory way, WAY back was that Captain Mitchell (whose first name is William) was actually a futuristic Billy from seasons 1-4. Jossed when Time Force confirmed that it took place in 2001, and Lightspeed in 2000. Billy didn't have time to have an eighteen-year-old daughter. (Not that the lack of time has stopped other series...)
  • It doesn't help that Billy's fanfic surname had been "Mitchell" for years, both of which were an allusion to the film Dave. Eventually Jossed when Disney's official site for Power Rangers finally established Blue Ranger Billy's last name as the long-rumored "Cranston."
  • There is also the theory that says that the Rescue Zords were built or reverse-engineered from the wrecks of the original Rescue Zords. Supposedly, this was the writers' original plan, but nothing's ever been outright confirmed on the matter.
• Fan Nickname: Demonite, Falkar and Thunderon, Diabolico's final three monsters, are commonly referred to as the Troika Monsters by fans, named after their fused form Troika.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Nearly every human-sized monster gets blown up, and Carter says "Mission Accomplished", except that Jinxer always brings them back to life and megazord-sized. Saying "Mission Accomplished" except the threat is far from over, and has actually gotten worse? Seems like President Bush's infamous 2003 moment, but Lightspeed Rescue aired in 2000.
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans like to hope that Jinxer (and maybe even the Batling Mooks who accompany him in stealing the Omega Megazord) survive the robot's destruction in the finale. It helps that his counterpart, Pierre, actually survived the events of GoGoV and returned in the team-up movie.
• Ho Yay: Absolutely obligatory for Carter and Ryan, being the Red and Sixth Rangers. Particularly due to Carter staring at Ryan's naked back during the cobra tattoo arc, but lack of screentime between the two poses some drawbacks.
  • Same can be said for Joel and Chad in "The Mighty Mega-Battles".
• Les Yay: Kelsey/Nancy (from "Riding the Edge") has long been read this way by fans.
  • Kelsey also does this with Dana.
• Magnificent Bastard: Diabolico serves as The Heavy until his first death and was the Lightspeed Rangers' smartest and most noble enemy. Prior to the season's start, Diabolico saved Captain Mitchell's son, Ryan, at the cost of Ryan's life belonging to him. Raising Ryan with the belief that his father doesn't care about him, Diabolico has Ryan infiltrate the Aquabase steal the Titanium Morpher to sidestep the Demon's inability to enter water. When Ryan turns good, he sears a cursed tattoo into his back that will kill him when he morphs one too many times. When revived by Vypra and Loki, Diabolico works to undermine his rival Olympius, trapping him in the Shadow World, and when Ryan manages to find the Sorcerer of the Sands to reseal the demons, Diabolico counters the spell, reducing the Sorcerer to sand. When forced by Bansheera to kill Loki, Diabolico swears off fealty and even after his final death manages to end the season taking revenge on her and saving Carter Grayson and the whole world.
• Memetic Badass: Carter Grayson.
• Memetic Loser: The old lady in the Lost Galaxy crossover who tells a child monsters aren't real despite every Rangers series having featured blatant public monster attacks in every episode has been near-unanimously declared the single stupidest person in the history of the franchise.
• Moral Event Horizon: See the page for examples.
• Narm: Just about all of Vypra's dialogue would make any viewer laugh because of the incredibly bad acting.
• Narm Charm: Blowing up a city with explosive feathers is... okay, it's pretty cheesy (even for Power Rangers). But the episode does its darn best to make it pretty believable.
• Never Live It Down: No matter how many badass moments Carter had, two things stick out amongst fans: using his blasters and his dull personality. For the former, this criticism was unfair in "Forever Red", where the Cogs he faced used blasters as well, and he was smart enough to use his own weapon.
  • Considering the Rangers function as a militia, the shoot first mentality made sense.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The situation that led to Diabolico taking Ryan and forging him into a minion of evil is one of the most potent cases of fears in the entire series. Captain Mitchell is dangling from a cliff with his Dana in his free arm and Ryan holding on to his leg for dear life. Diabolico's spirt projects itself to him and tells him that he'd save Ryan in exchange for the boy's life becoming his. It becomes a truly Sadistic Choice when at this point, Ryan's fingers slip and he begins plummeting to his death forcing Mitchell to take Diabolico's deal at the cost of never seeing his son again until Ryan turns 20. It should be kept in mind that Dana was very young during this incident and Ryan couldn't have been older than around six years old. Captain Mitchell had to spend over a decade agonizing over the fact that he couldn't save his son.
  • The Curse of the Cobra, with Ryan suffering and writhing in pain every time he morphs, with it coming incredibly close to outright killing him.
  • The end of the episode where Diabolico dies. From Impus turning into a cocoon onward, to Queen Bansheera announcing herself to the Rangers... not helping is the legitimately good musical score the series has making the cocoon descending from the sky actually unnerving. (Not helping is that on the VHS release, Impus' cocoon hovering over the city was a cliffhanger).
  • Queen Bansheera's deformed form is not a pretty sight.
  • Bansheera nearly returning before the ritual to bring her back is interrupted. The first thing she does is summon a giant tidal wave to destroy the city. If the ritual weren't stopped, she would have succeeded.
  • The Shadow World, which is basically Hell. The episodes featuring it contain monsters the Rangers previously killed, who are all shambling and moaning like zombies.
• No Yay: One episode introduces Clark, an apparent romantic rival to Joel for Ms. Fairweather's affections. The good news for Joel is that Clark is actually her brother. The bad news for everone else is that the episode does too good a job convincing you that they're a couple first.
• One-Scene Wonder: Kelsey's grandma, who first appeared to be a cold woman who didn't get along with her granddaughter and refused to help the Rangers by giving them a family heirloom Vypra was after. She later shows up in a forklift and unleashes a major ass kicking when Kelsey's in trouble, all the while cackling like a madwoman and managing to reconcile with Kelsey.

• The Scrappy: The large reason why Vypra was so hated was due to Jennifer Yen's notoriously bad acting, even worse than the typical Power Rangers fare.
• So Okay, It's Average: Of all the Power Rangers seasons, this is probably the one which gets the most indifferent reaction from the fanbase. Very few actively dislike it in the same way that they do Turbo, Operation Overdrive or Samurai, but at the same time you likely won't find a single fan who considers it to be the show's best season.
• Tear Jerker:
  • You can't help but feel for Captain Mitchell who was forced to allow his son to be taken by demons or let him fall to his death (as well as finding out he's grown up evil and thinking his dad never cared about him). He never forgave himself for what happened.
  • Ryan and Mitchell's reunion in "Ryan's Destiny". Even though Mitchell assures him that there's a home for him in Lightspeed, Ryan tells his father that the former needs to know who he really is and he's leaving Mariner Bay. Just before Ryan leaves, Mitchell tells him that there's still an ocean of goodness left in him and gives him the Titanium Morpher. As Ryan's entering the elevator, Dana desperately tries to stop him but it's too late; he's already gone.
  • An Alas, Poor Villain example comes when Bansheera forces Diabolico to fire a weapon at the Rangers despite Loki being in the way. Not only does this not succeed in destroying the rangers, it kills Loki leaving Diabolico to mourn his fallen friend and swear vengeance against Bansheera. Despite everything he'd done up to that point it's hard to not feel at least a little bad for Diabolico at this point. Even the Rangers are shocked by what just happened.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Vypra, despite her actress's performance, could have easily been the most interesting villain of the season. The past two seasons had the human-looking female villain either reformed (Astronema) or just a more complex character (Trakeena). Vypra... is neither. Her most notable aspect was acting as surrogate mother/big sister to Impus, but that goes away when he becomes Olympius. They could easily made her something else, a seductress, having a thing for one of the Rangers or The Starscream, instead she's just a henchwoman.
  • The show could have gotten a lot of mileage out of Dana's relationship with her brother and father and how she felt about her father keeping her brother's true fate form her all the way into adulthood.
  • Speaking of Ryan, his time with the demons is rarely used for anything, aside from him informing the Rangers who Queen Bansheera and her son Impus (about to be Olympius) are. Diabolico practically raised him, but after the cobra arc they have no interaction with each other, even though it would have made sense for lingering affection for Ryan to be a factor in Diabolico's Adaptational Heroism. Nor do we get any insight from Ryan on Loki or Vypra, who also would've had a hand in his upbringing, or what it was like to grow up in a demon pocket dimension instead of on Earth and what kind of values being raised by demons would have instilled in him.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: While the Playstation and GBC games based on the show are considered good, the N64 game is considered to be the worst of the 3 versions, with clunky gameplay and seemingly having very little to do with the show itself.
• Vindicated by History: To a degree. Keep in mind when Lightspeed came out it was the first season not to launch directly off the one before, followed fan favorite seasons Power Rangers in Space and Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, and was succeeded by another fan favorite season, Power Rangers Time Force, so it was generally regarded as one of the worst with the possible exception of Power Rangers Turbo. But after that would come come much more panned seasons such as Power Rangers Wild Force, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, and Power Rangers Samurai, and Lightspeed has fared a lot better in comparison.
  • Not to mention, thanks to Linkara's review both Carter and the series' image overall is improved (though it was already improving beforehand, Linkara's review certainly sped it along). He points out how Carter Grayson may be dull but was a badass firefighter before being a Ranger. While many fans disliked that Carter went for his guns first, Linkara loved that aspect because it made him one of the more pragmatic Red Rangers.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The Aquabase which was heavily detailed and built with an actual aquarium to simulate the underwater environment.
  • Their transformation sequence is pretty awesome in and of itself. It is probably one of the more elaborate sequences on the show to date and it shows very well.

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