From humble beginnings as an ultra-low-budget splice series that no one thought would take off, all the way to present-day success, it's easy to imagine Power Rangers going the way of The Simpsons and just never ending. The franchise has had dinosaurs, ninjas, magicians, kung-fu masters, dinosaurs again, post-apocalyptic defenders, samurai, dinosaurs for a third time, and, ninjas again. This Power Ranger train isn't stopping any time soon.
But there's one who stands out as the greatest, most decorated Ranger of all time. He's cycled through a few colors, but few nineties kids would fail to recognize Tommy Oliver as the Green Mighty Morphin Power Ranger, the one who started evil and became a legend.
Updated on January 10th, 2023 by Amanda Bruce: Green might not be a color that makes it into every Power Rangers team line-up, but thanks to Jason David Frank’s turn as original Green Ranger Tommy Oliver, fans certainly remember the color. As a result of Frank’s appearance as Tommy in the Dino Thunder season as well, a whole new generation got to know the character. The tragic passing of the actor in November 2022 has plenty of Power Rangers fans looking back on his legacy as one of the most decorated Power Rangers of all time. That legacy got its start in green.
Tommy Oliver Was The First Ever Sixth Ranger
The addition of a sixth ranger is as old as the hills in Power Ranger lore, being present in every series in some form and pretty much lampshaded into oblivion during Megaforce. There exists a usual core team of five, after which the sixth ranger enters the fray, gets their own special storyline, becomes so hyper-competent for a few episodes that he/she makes the rest of the team look like incompetent chumps, and then just sort of settles in for the rest of the series. With some slight variations, that’s the basic Sentai/Ranger formula, with the only exceptions being Ranger-ish characters who hang around the main team and do most of the same stuff (a la Magna Defender).
Except in Zyuranger (the series that spawned the American Mighty Morphin’ counterpart), the Green Ranger was a ground-breaking event. While the very first for worldwide viewers, Zyuranger came in at number sixteen overseas, yet it was also the first to feature a sixth ranger. What’s more, it was a rogue ranger who tried his best to destroy the main team before converting to the side of good. The end result was the same in both English and Japanese: a breakout character who proved popular enough to become the face of the series, return time and time again, and also start a sixth ranger tradition that’s been going strong ever since.
Tommy's Sentai Counterpart Died
Like Tommy Oliver, the Sentai Green Ranger is considered one of the most iconic and enduring characters of the series, to the point where many would tune in for the character alone. Sadly this wasn’t to last, as while the Power Rangers version simply lost his Green powers, Tommy's Sentai equivalent Burai straight up died.
The original series didn’t shy away from having a Ranger die on-screen. Twice, in fact. With his powers dwindling, Burai was confined to a cave for most of the time, resting in suspended animation when he wasn’t badly needed. He eventually ended up being crushed in a cave-in, which as far as Power Rangers deaths go is right up there in terms of childhood trauma. This explains Tommy’s lack of appearances in Power Rangers, mostly hand waved as him being off doing karate, or sleeping in, or forgetting his communicator, or some other excuse that makes him a terrible defender of the Earth in his early days.
Later briefly resurrected, Burai was able to last a while longer before his powers were finally exhausted, and he died again, this time for good. That was until one of the many, many specials in which he was brought back because nostalgia mixed with merchandising profits is a combination potent enough to literally wake the dead.
That Awful Dragon Shield Replica
Speaking of differences between versions, of which there are many, there's also that Dragon Shield. It’s perhaps the main reason fans can recognize the Mighty Morphin Green Ranger a mile away, because without it, he’s just another member of the team in ill-fitting spandex. It also just looks really great…except when footage switches from grainy Sentai shots to any of the original American stuff, when it turns into a floppy paper nightmare that couldn’t defend anyone from a particularly antagonistic stiff breeze.
Saban either had their props shipped over, made them in-studio or just tried to splice together footage to make it look lie the American suit actors and that monster are fighting each other in real time. The monster fired a weapon and the Rangers fell down. It might not have been flawless editing, but it worked for the show.
The iconic Dragon Shield was unfortunately damaged in transit, leaving Saban to hastily cobble one together. What the audience then got was a sad, floppy bit of fabric that had no place drooping wearily around the neck of a planetary defender. They’d make their own, more solid version for future seasons, but for the Green Ranger’s actual career, he had to wear a shield that was obviously not sturdy.
Green Became White (With Stock Footage Trickery)
Tommy quickly established himself as the most popular and profitable member of the team. Even with all the Sentai footage exhausted, he was just too much of a fan favorite to be written out; thus, a costume from another series entirely was shipped in for Tommy to continue as the White Ranger. New fight scenes in the Ranger suits were filmed and spliced together with footage of villains from the other series. The White Ranger became the leader, and Tommy managed to hold onto this position for a good few years until halfway through Turbo. By this time, he’d been through five Ranger suits (ninja, Zeo and Turbo on top of Green and White) and even then, the character wasn’t quite done.
Jason David Frank would return as a Power Ranger veteran in "Forever Red", and later in Dino Thunder as a Black Ranger, before again donning his original Green suit for the Legendary War.
The final tally? That’s six Ranger powers, six Zords, four different colors and over 200 episodes. It’s pretty safe to say he is the face of Power Rangers, even if a certain generation mostly remembers him as the long-haired guy in green.
Evil Green Doppelgängers, Everywhere
If there’s one thing Power Rangers loves, it’s flashy, ineffective high-kicks. Second on that list is stock footage. Third are storylines where the Rangers are either turned into wacky things or put under spells to make them act weird, and in fourth place is reusing plots.
Running with that last one, there have been countless versions of Rangers having to fight evil doppelgängers of themselves, spawned from one evil source or another. This tends to happen to Tommy a lot, particularly in regard to the Green Ranger. In MMPR alone he tussles with evil versions of himself several times, be it either dark illusions or actual clones brought to life by magic. The trend continues in Dino Thunder, where a comatose Tommy has to engage in mental warfare with Zeo Ranger Red, the White Ranger and finally the Green Ranger, which sort of makes sense. Green is his greatest challenge, since he had his origins in being Rita’s brainwashed fighter, and it’s probably been a sore point ever since.
Tommy wasn’t alone in this, of course; the other Mighty Morphin’ Rangers had their fair share of evil clones, ranging from transformed putties to creepy stalker statues brought to life (Billy had a very tangled love life). Still, with so many colors and powers to choose from, Tommy always seemed to get hit with this the hardest.
The Green Ranger Was Never Meant To Last
Fun fact: Power Rangers was only ever meant to get one season before wrapping up. It’s a bizarre thought, looking back at how it’s still going strong on TV three decades later, but that was always the deal. Saban was adapting a bizarre Japanese series and splicing footage to try to make something that kids would want to watch, for a little while at least. It wasn’t a foolproof plan.
Obviously, things didn’t go quite the way they were expecting, and the series became a mega-hit and a merchandising juggernaut. And what of the Green Ranger? His story was meant to end pretty early on as well. Footage for the character was limited, given that he was kind of sporadic in the original, meaning that he was always planned to be a character who came, went, came, went, and finally lost his powers before returning to a normal life of street karate.
Cue the popularity explosion, and it’s really not hard to see why he became the star of the show. The Green Ranger saga shook up the tired formula like nothing else, marked a huge shift in the mythos, and introduced the mother of all breakout characters. When the footage ran dry, it was purely down to Tommy’s popularity that he was dragged back into the fray in a costume that never quite fit the aesthetic.
Jason David Frank's Achievements In Breaking Stuff
Jason David Frank hasn’t done a huge amount of acting outside of Power Rangers, but he certainly kept busy in the intervening years nonetheless.
Originally auditioning for the role of Red Ranger Jason at the age of 17 before later returning as Tommy, Frank was continually kept on in Power Rangers due to his popularity with the viewers, which eventually ran out around the middle of Turbo. This led to him focusing on mixed martial arts, which was one of the reasons he scored the role in the first place.
Frank did pretty well for himself in terms of accomplishments and records broken, with even a Guinness World Record under his belt for "Most pine boards broken in freefall."
Zyuranger: Not Quite The Same
Tommy Oliver’s Japanese counterpart as the Green Ranger was Burai, or more accurately "Yamato Tribe Knight Burai." It’s really impossible to understate how different Zyuranger and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers really are, because aside from colored suits and Zords, there's almost nothing in common. For example, the Blue Ranger is not the most intelligent of the group, the Yellow Ranger is a guy, and there’s no Zordon or Alpha; just an older man with a staff.
The team from Zyuranger are all from prehistoric times and are reawakened to fight evil in the modern era, hence why they hang out with dinosaurs and have wacky, fish-out-of-water adventures when not piloting their gigantic mechs that the Power Rangers franchise calls zords. The Green Ranger saga has a few similarities, with Burai carrying out a vendetta against the team and working alongside Rita (or Witch Bandora), but things otherwise run a lot deeper. Burai has a serious grudge against Red Ranger Geki going back millennia which drives all of Burai’s actions.
After coming to his senses, Burai joined the team, but since his powers were tied to the green candle, he could only fight for short periods of time and when the team needed him most. Afterward, he’d return to a cave where time was stopped, preserving his life. He eventually died for good after his cave was destroyed, prompting a furious letter-writing campaign from fans to bring him back to life.
Tomberly Shippers On Deck
Once Tommy came on the scene, the show included a long-running romance with Pink Ranger Kimberly. Other characters had one-off crushes or love interests, but they were in it for the long haul, or so fans thought. The two remained an item even after Kimberly left the show and passed her powers onto Katherine. Things would all come to an end during the course of Zeo, when Tommy received a breakup letter from Kimberly.
The former Green Ranger’s love life has scarcely been revisited since then, though one episode of Zeo featured a possible version of the future in which Tommy is married to Kat and their grandchild is a Power Ranger, and an appearance from Kat as an adult in a later series teased that they had a son. Even 30 years after the original series aired, fans still debate whether Tommy should have ended up with Kimberly or Kat, and the Boom Studios comics have continued to explore both relationships.
All Of Tommy's Suits Are Different Sentai Characters
Super Sentai has always had a slightly stronger continuity than Power Rangers, with multiple crossovers and guest appearances to really solidify it. Still, the team rotations have been a staple from the start, starting pretty much every time there is a team of fresh faces.
That became the state of Power Rangers for over 15 years, but in the early days, the same characters moved through powers like they were just switching clothes, with Tommy sticking around the longest. Tommy continued into Turbo and became a sort of relic of the old times, at least until he passed the powers on. Years later, he’d be back as the Black Dino Thunder Ranger…which at this point meant he’d technically played five different people. MMPR Green, White, Zeo and Turbo Red, Dino Thunder Black; the Sentai versions were all different characters from completely separate seasons, most of whom had never even met each other.
Footage-wise, they managed to get away with this by casting Jason David Frank as roles that were either leaders or mentors (so the folks in the suits acted more or less like he would), but it’s most telling in his role as the White Ranger. The original had an actual child in the role who grew to full size when morphing (don’t ask), meaning that Tommy could often be seen bouncing up and down like an excited toddler or generally emoting in ways that didn’t really suit him.
Tommy Almost Headed A Global Organization
Fun fact #2: the audience got pretty close to having a Power Rangers series titled Hexagon, and it would’ve been awesome. An ambitious project from the start, it would’ve focused on a central, public organization of hundreds of Power Rangers that protect the world from global threats. Think Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D., but with more colorful spandex outfits. The series would’ve focused on new recruits, tied up loose ends from all the seasons that came before, featured appearances from many past villains, and cameos from a ton of past rangers, including Jason as the leader of a group of renegade rangers.
Tommy would’ve been in the mix, of course, this time as the director of the organization and pretty much Zordon for the group. The series was meant to adapt Hurricaneger, which eventually became Ninja Storm after the Hexagon plans fell through. Remember Cam, the Green Samurai Ranger? Had Hexagon gone ahead, this would’ve been Tommy’s Ranger form, as it resembled the original MMPR Green Ranger in aesthetic.
Sadly, Hexagon was dreamed up at a time when the future of the series was in flux, and the plans were abandoned in favor of another conventional series. Still, it’s spawned no shortage of fan fiction over what could have been.
The Green Ranger And The Legendary Battle
The more recent Megaforce was intended as an homage to all that came before, with the team using Ranger powers from all seasons and the whole thing culminating in a massive battle with every past Ranger fighting to save the Earth from an alien invasion. Tommy was right in the thick of things, naturally, only this time he was using the powers of the original Green Ranger.
It shouldn’t have been possible at the time, but the Green Ranger form was just too iconic not to use for the Legendary Battle. Thus, Jason David Frank once again donned the green suit, now with a Dragon Shield that didn’t look like it was made of soggy cardboard and a few modifications to his helmet.
Doctor Oliver's Suspicious Credentials
By virtue of sheer screen-time, Tommy was fleshed out more quickly than some of the original Rangers. The audience knew that he loved karate and Kimberly, had a memory like a colander, and wasn't exactly academically inclined compared to his new friends. Any school subject that wasn’t ‘spin kicks’ seemed to leave Tommy baffled, which is why his resurfacing years later with a hastily-acquired PhD had many a long-time fan confused.
Cue the fan theories as to how he pulled this off, ranging from batting his perfect eyelashes at the professor all the way to gaining advanced intelligence after having his brain scrambled. Power Rangers villains mess with the Rangers’ heads so often that fans would expect Zordon to schedule regular psychiatry sessions, but at one point during Zeo, Tommy was kidnaped and brainwashed into thinking the Rangers were villains. This seems to be the incident that many have latched onto to explain Tommy’s sudden scholastic excellence. Of course, some fans even believe his clone, who was sent back to a past timeline, could even be the real Doctor Oliver.
Rita: The Former Green Ranger
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television series never fully explored just why Rita Repulsa had the Green Ranger power coin. The comics from Boom Studios explored how only those with pure intentions could wield the power of the coin successfully, but even that wasn’t explored in the television series.
The Lionsgate Power Rangers movie in 2017, which attempted to reboot the franchise for the big screen, took a new and interesting approach to Rita’s possession of the coin: it was hers. Thousands of years in the past, Rita Repulsa was the Green Ranger, and she decided to use the power for herself, turning on her team, and leaving Zordon as the only Ranger alive. Her own desire for power corrupted her, and influenced her fractured armor of a costume for the movie as well.
When the trailer for the 2017 movie first debuted, many fans theorized that Rita Repulsa’s wardrobe was reminiscent of the new Ranger suits, and they weren’t wrong.
The Future Of The Green Ranger
Knowing how interested fans have been in the character of Tommy Oliver, Jason David Frank wasn’t shy about voicing his hopes for a new chapter for the Green Ranger - whether on the page or the screen. He hoped for a story for the character he’d played for so long akin to Wolverine’s Old Man Logan storyline. While that likely won’t come to pass on screen after Frank's death, seeing it in the Boom Studios comics isn’t out of the question since multiple books have explored multiple timelines, including an apocalyptic one featuring Tommy Oliver as the evil Lord Drakkon.
With Hasbro having the rights to the franchise now and having plans for a sprawling Power Rangers universe, it’s entirely possible that another reboot of the original series could take shape with a new version of Tommy Oliver for the big screen. If Lionsgate had made a sequel to their movie, after all, there were plans to include the character in it. There will be more Green Rangers on future television series teams as well, but they won’t be Tommy Oliver.