Recap / With This Ring Episode 146

Episode 146: Mighty Morphin' Lantern Rangers

Takes place 1 April 2013.

Recognising that he is likely to experience visions of alternate versions of himself on April 1st, Paul takes the day off and sets up monitoring equipment. However, instead of merely experiencing an alternate life, he finds himself arriving in the Power Rangers world, with evidence that he has been created — including his memories — from a comic book, using a magic potion, and will vanish once the magic runs out. With Zordon unable to help him keep existing, he agrees to help Rita Repulsa defeat the Power Rangers, in exchange for infusing him with magic. However, as soon as he persuades Rita to send her staff to Earth to Make My Monster Grow during the fight, he turns on her, steals the staff to empower himself with, and blows up her moon base with stolen nuclear weapons.

A far future version of the Renegade visits an alternate DC Extended Universe, intercepting Steppenwolf and setting out to Take Over the World so he can build it up to fight Darkseid.

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• Alternate Universe:
  • Paul ends up in a world where the Power Rangers exist.
  • A future version of the Renegade travels to a version of Earth that was about to be invaded by a version of Steppenwolf.
  • At some point, the Future Renegade travels to a version of Earth where the Doctor exists.
  • Future Paul is shown accompanying Azula when the latter visits her world.
• An Arm and a Leg: The Renegade loses an arm while fighting All-American Boy. Thankfully, he's able to retrieve it and stick it back so that he doesn't have to go through the hassle of regrowing it.
• Black-and-White Morality: Upon realising where he is, Paul is quick to note that the Power Rangers series didn't have a great deal of moral nuance.
  But Rita wasn't attacking with any sort of political goal in mind beyond 'conquest = good'. There was no difference of opinion that could be resolved by dialogue. No discussion about the morals of killing or the use of child soldiers. Not much of one about the state of the rest of the universe where people could and did just openly declare for Team Evil.
• Existential Horror: When Paul realises there's a possibility that all his memories of Earth 16 could be a fabrication and he might have only existed for a minute or two, he almost has a breakdown, with his ring keeping him from descending into a panic attack.
  Breathe in. Breathe out.
• Forced to Watch: The new Secretary-General of the United Nations, serving under the Renegade, achieved his position when the Renegade made him watch Subjekt-17 "removing" all the corrupt officials above him.
• Foreshadowing: Early on, OL asks the Rangers why they haven't tried nuking Rita Repulsa's base. Later on, as part of OL's plan to steal Rita's Magic Staff, he sneaks nukes into her base, resulting in it blowing up with her and all of her henchmen inside.
• Harmful to Minors: One of the people sent by the world's governments to fight the Renegade and his group is Nay, a Child Soldier who's forced to fight against his will until the Renegade is able to destroy the helmet on his head and transport him to the Absolute Dominion.
• Internal Reveal: Some time after the Renegade had taken over Earth, he admits to a small few that he actually planned on losing and was surprised at how corrupt the governments of Earth really were, surprising some of the people who hear him admit this.
• Interspecies Romance: Captain Adam is taken aback when Luna turns up in her native form and the Renegade kisses her.
  Adam: You married a talking horse?
  Renegade: Not every intelligent species in the universe is bipedal, Captain Adam. And no. I married a pony.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Although he went about it in possibly the most brutal way possible, the Renegade is rather accurate in his summation on Nathaniel Adam's chances of getting justice.
  Renegade: It will never happen! They got away with it, Captain, with the full support of the infrastructure of the state. The case will go nowhere, the guilty will slip away or get the pardon they denied to you and your children will carry on calling him 'Dad'.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Unlike the previous times, Paul doesn't remember what he saw during April's Fool Day.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Seeing the Power Rangers coming, Baboo loudly announces that Paul is his "Orange... Warmaster" and will destroy them, before teleporting away, prompting the Rangers to attack Paul.
• Make My Monster Grow: The core of Paul's strategy is to convince Rita to grow him, then subvert it by stealing her staff.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: When the Renegade criticizes Thundermind for supporting his country in trying to steal the powers of the Accomplished Perfect Physician, Thundermind replies that it's not his place to decide who gets the power, causing the Renegade to accuse him of this mindset and that it makes him unworthy of the superpowers he has.
  Renegade: That right there? That's why you would never have achieved enlightenment without that magic pottery. Loyalty above truth. Herd behaviour above selflessness. You may not live for yourself but you live for whoever tells you how to live.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The Renegade announces his plans for earth to all those present, namely, "friends, and Hippolyta." (Not that he has any particular animosity toward queen Hippolyta, but he knows she feels differently.)
• No-Sell:
  • The Renegade demonstrates how pointless Earth guns are on him by allowing a soldier to empty the magazine of their rifle into his eye.
  • The Doctor's usual ways of tricking people into getting him where he needs to go don't work on the Renegade.
• Nuke 'em: OL asks why hasn't anyone tried to use nukes to destroy Rita Repulsa's base, only to be told that it would only be effective if the nukes were detonated inside the base itself. As such, OL tricks the villains so that he can sneak some in and blow them all up.
• Oh, Crap!: Billy/the Blue Ranger reacts this way when he realizes OL stole nukes with Rita's henchmen.
• Or Was It a Dream?: Upon pouring excess magic into the comic that he emerged from, Paul then finds himself back in his lab in Earth 16, without any time having apparently passed, and without properly recalling the Power Rangers events — but there is a comic nearby with a Power Rangers/Orange Lantern crossover that he doesn't recall authorising.
• Person of Mass Destruction: All-American Boy is basically Doomsday but without a convenient weakness like kryptonite.
• Springtime for Hitler: The Renegade presents himself as a benevolent conqueror who intends to rule as an absolute-but-fair dictator for the purpose of marshalling the Earth to help him fight Darkseid. However, his true purpose is to provoke the Earth's heroes to rally against him, as he did on Earth 50, so they'll be prepared to fight Darkseid off themselves. However, he does such a good job of revealing government corruption, and convincing influential people of Darkseid's threat level, that heroes like Wonder Woman start turning up to join forces with him instead.
  Okay, just her, she can-.
  The batwing zooms over my head, hitting Thundermind with an anti-tank missile and smashing him into the ground.
  Well, he's a foreigner, and-.
  The other Thundermind flies after the batwing, then gets shot out of the air by a beam of… 'Martian vision'.
• Squee: Although he's able to control himself when the Doctor is around, the Renegade does this once he's alone.
• Take Over the World:
  • Hippolyta is skeptical about the Renegade's ability to assume control over the whole planet, but he's pretty confident that after his publication of all the dirty secrets of every other government, plenty of people will prefer him, giving him a base of operations from which he can expand outwards.
    Renegade: Once things are stable, the public trials of literally everyone who used their authority to duck accountability will begin as a reminder why I'm better, and I'll get to work discovering why Father finds Earth so interesting.
  • After killing Rita Repulsa and taking her staff to keep himself charged up, Paul comes to the conclusion that there is no-one on Earth who can really challenge him, so he sets out to fix things however he pleases, starting with flying to Bosnia and mowing down the belligerents.
    I told the world-. The comic world, that the Justice League had effectively become its rulers. But here, it… Really is just me. And there's no one whose-. Who I like enough to listen to, to let myself be talked down by.
    That.. might not be a good thing. But it's where we are. And looking at the piles of shallow-buried corpses littering the countryside around here, I'm not exactly worried about my ability to do better than the default option.
    Hail Orange Lantern, I guess.
• Throwing the Fight: Even on low power, Paul could easily have disabled or killed all five Rangers. What he really wanted, though, was to put up an impressive fight and then be on the verge of losing — so that Rita would send her staff to empower him.
• You Fight Like a Cow: OL criticizes the Red Ranger for his choices in their fight as it goes on, and explains how he could do better.

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