How About That Thing?

If you thought Rita Repulsa’s family tree was already complicated, what with her brother being a sentient skeleton guy, just wait till you meet her father.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Master Vile. And on this note, the dial went right back up to eleven. Also, considering his son is a skeleton man, and his daughter is a human witch, I’m beginning to think someone adopted. but I digress.

On one hand, I must confess that I’m not crazy about the name. Even by Power Rangers standards, Master Vile is kind of on the nose.

On the other hand, it’s easy enough to look past once the man sets up shop and begins conducting his business. Master Vile is so unspeakably evil, a shroud of darkness follows him everywhere he goes. He’s so evil, pipe organ music accompanies his presence every time he’s on screen. He’s so evil, his spaceship is literally a giant floating skull with wings!

Seriously, If that spacecraft isn’t metal, I don’t know what is.

When he shows up at Rita and Zedd’s palace, his mere presence is enough to cause a solar eclipse that temporarily fries the command center. When the rangers show up to see what’s wrong, they see Alpha powered down, Zordon is MIA, and none of the machinery is operational. Until the eclipse passes. Then everything switches on.

While this is going on, Master Vile is introducing himself. He takes one look at Lord Zedd, then looks at Rita, and all he has to say is “Pfff, whatever.” Poor Zedd: just can’t catch a break anymore.

Master Vile gives them a house warming present in the form of tenga steroids. As Squat and Baboo feed the tengas their strength-increasing bird seed, Rito gives Master Vile a gift of his own. Ninjor: all sealed up and…

Yeah, even as a kid, I was in disbelief in how Ninjor was set free. No epic battles, no stealthy operation into Zedd’s palace… Ninjor is freed because Rito Revolto is a fucking butterfingers. Frankly, I’m surprised I was surprised.

Ninjor kicks everybody’s ass, and heads home to stock up on bubble gum. Meanwhile, Master Vile lets loose a stream of Shakespearian-worded rage that could’ve easily been condensed down to “Rito, you fucking idiot! You had ONE JOB!”

Vile takes Rito, and… Goldar, for some reason, to his skull ship, and shows off his ability to barf up monsters. I’ll level with you, dear reader, this sequence was pretty badass. And the monster that came from it?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is The Blue Globber. This guy right here was, without a hint of dispute, my favorite monster from this entire season. He wasn’t silly, he wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t spit out insane amounts of insufferable puns. He mostly went “Raaar!”, and used his gimmick to his advantage. That gimmick being the ability to steal energy from someone, and using it to create a new form that not only made him stronger, but any and all damage that was inflicted on him ALSO got inflicted on the person he stole the energy from in the first place. That is just EVIL! And I loved him for it.

True, Blue Globber is maybe just a tad bit of a tacky name, but compared to insufferable idiot monsters like Marbo the Meanie, or Fangenstein, I’ll take it.

Trust me, your day is coming. If I’m still up for writing about Power Rangers by the time this month is done.

Zordon becomes aware of Master Vile through Ninjor, and his plan to capture the legendary Zeo crystal. After finding out it’s Master Vile, Zordon gifts the rangers with a new, fourth form: the metallic armor form.

Not going to lie, this is the dictionary definition of tacky. I mean yeah, the tenga warriors ALONE are now so powerful that the rangers can’t even stand a chance against them in their ranger forms, and I guess if there’s a new, more powerful villain in town, they need something new. However, this has got to be the lamest looking upgrade I’ve seen since Jacketless Travis Touchdown.

But I guess it makes them stronger. So, whatever.

Master Vile makes a really good first impression as a villain. He uses Blue Globber to recapture Ninjor and suck his energy dry.

He then manages to defeat the rangers, and capture ALL of their zords in one go. Tommy is able to retrieve the zeo crystal, only to end up losing it to Master Vile in the process of battling Blue Globber. The world is basically Vile’s. And… He decides to throw a party.

I am SOOO not making this up. It seems kind of premature to be throwing a “the world is mine!” party, but I guess when you’ve acquired a legendary warrior like Ninjor, two megazords, and a crystal that gives you god-tier power… Well, as a famous dirtbag once said: “it ain’t bragging if you can back it up.”

SIDE NOTE: Yes, I did in fact just quote Kid Rock. And yes, I do feel like I need a shower after the fact.

Unfortunately for Master Vile, while his party is under way, the rangers retrieve their zords, and the zeo crystal. The Blue Globber is destroyed in battle, and the zeo crystal is bashed into pieces and scattered across time and space.

Most villains in Master Vile’s place would throw a colossal hissyfit… But not Vile.

“So I failed once. Big deal. Rita and Zedd had tried to conquer the Earth over a hundred times, and have never come close. The ranger think they’ve won, but they haven’t. That was just a small taste of what I have in store for those horrible teenagers. Master Vile is here to stay!”

I got to say, this is an astounding change of pace. The average Power Rangers viewer has gotten used to villains throwing an absolute bitch fit after losing for so long, that a villain like this, who’s probably a lot more used to playing the long game and dismisses his eventual defeat in his first encounter as “pfff, whatever.” is actually MORE menacing than even Zedd was in the beginning!

What a shame that the very next episode reverts to the standard monster of the day formula. The episode itself isn’t even worth talking about all that much, outside the fact Dischordia is probably the most annoying monster of season 3. And believe me, season 3 had a lot of candidates.

It isn’t until the next episode when Master Vile unveils his next master plan: to turn the power rangers into children!

“I hate to break it to you,” says Zedd, “but we already tried that one, and it didn’t work.”

“You dare compare your petty little scheme to my master plan?” replies Master Vile.

You got to love a guy whose master plan is not only something the previous villain already tried, but the fact he’s convinced that he can do it better is an interesting direction. Especially when you take into account Master Vile’s version of the plan actually works.

The crystal in Master Vile’s possession, given the super-creative name of “The Orb of Doom”, ends up making time go backwards to a point where the rangers were all kids, Ninjor hadn’t met them yet, and the command center was without power. And then, in a bit I had to replay two or three times just to make sure I understood, Alpha discovers the command center is powerless because the orb of doom took them back to a time when Alpha unplugged the main control panel so he’d have a place to plug the vacuum cleaner in.

“You can’t be serious,” says Zordon. “You mean to tell me the command center has been left powerless because of a little spring cleaning?”

I genuinely can’t remember the last time a Power Rangers related thing made me laugh so hard. Like I said, I had to rewind it, just to make sure I heard it right. Oh, bruttah!

Despite being kids, the rangers are the only ones aware that something has changed. They make it to the command center, and after watching Alpha defuse a bomb Master Vile left for them, they make a phone call to Aquatar to borrow THEIR power rangers.

The Aquatarian rangers, AKA: The Alien Rangers, is pretty much an article in of itself. For now, let’s just say the Aquatarian rangers defeat the invasion force Master Vile assembled following ANOTHER party, and Master Vile… Proceeds to throw the most epic bitchfit a Power Rangers villain has thrown up to this point.

I kid you not: Master Vile took his first defeat with dignity. In his third defeat ever, he proceeds to act the same way my two-year-old does when he’s told it’s bed time. Even Rita and Zedd are baffled by the behavior, and you should’ve seen some of the bitching they’d gone on after losing.

And as if this sudden temper tantrum wasn’t jarring enough, Master Vile then basically says “Screw you guys, I’m going home!”, and leaves! After making that epic debut, after making defeat seem like no big deal for two straight plots, and after proving to be the coolest thing that happened to this show since The debut of Lord Zedd himself… He gets all stompy, takes his ball, and goes home.

Good god, what a fucking letdown! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing the first time this happened. After about five or six episodes with the coolest thing since freezer burn, he goes home, and we’re stuck with comedy relief Lord Zedd and Rita all over again like nothing even happened in the first place. Except now they’re fighting Aquatar’s rangers, but that’s for another time.

So much of season 3 was an absolute dumpster fire, and Master Vile ultimately ended up being another example of it. Yes, obviously, the villain wasn’t going to win in the end. Yes, he was eventually going to settle down into less grandios monster of the day caliber plots if he’d stayed, but the way he just gave up after two or three tries… It never sat well with me.