So yeah, the second half of Beast Morphers season 2 has already finished airing in the UK ahead of its US broadcast. After having watched the rest of it online, oh mama, this season had so many callbacks and continuity nods to past seasons. Not just in the big triple-dino-team-up, but in episodes both leading up to and following it. Without spoiling anything, we got references to all of the following past seasons:
- Mighty Morphin season 1
- Zeo
- In Space
- Lost Galaxy
- Lightspeed Rescue
- Dino Thunder
- SPD
- Mystic Force
- Operation Overdrive
- RPM
- Megaforce/Super Megaforce
- Dino Charge/Dino Super Charge
- Ninja Steel/Super Ninja Steel
Some of these references were minor bits of Easter eggs and fanservice, while other were actually pretty major and vital to the plot of this season. One in particular was so huge a reveal that it massively affected the greater narrative of the entire two seasons of Beast Morphers, and not in a negative way.
This big reveal (which I won't spoil for those who want to see it for themselves, just stay away from RangerWiki since the spoiler is already on there) got me thinking about something else related to the larger timeline of the Power Rangers universe. In particular, when was Grid Battleforce actually first established?
Going back to the very first episode of Beast Morphers season 1, we are told in that episode that Nate first joined GB as a child prodigy when he was 6, and then at Age 10, he tapped into the power of the Morphin Grid for the first time ever, giving GB access to it. In real life, Nate's actor was born in 2000, which would have made him 18 when they first started filming Beast Morphers in 2018. However, Power Rangers is no stranger to casting actors to play characters who are younger than their real-life ages.
In the penultimate episode of season 2, there is a flashback to a scene of Nate when he was still a kid (played by a child actor, even) working in a lab trying to experiment on some old ranger morphers from past seasons. For the sake of the timeline, it would make the most sense for this flashback scene to take place maybe a year or two after when he first tapped into the Morphin Grid at Age 10 since he was trying to create a new method of morphing in this scene. He would need to have already tapped into the grid in order first to understand how morphing already works before trying to revolutionize it. This would then make him about 11 or 12 during this flashback.
However, one of the old morphers seen in his lab during this flashback is a Gosei Morpher from Megaforce and Super Megaforce, which took place in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Unless the Mega Rangers' mentor Gosei had some kind of unseen/unmentioned connection to Grid Battleforce, the presence of this Gosei Morpher in Nate's lab would make earliest year in which this flashback can occur within be 2015, the very next year that came after the Mega War and the Legendary Battle.
So, if Nate was about 11-12 in 2015, and since Beast Morphers' two seasons take place across 2019-2020, that would make Nate either 15-16 or 16-17 during Beast Morphers. And since he first joined GB at Age 6, then the year in which he first joined GB was either 2009 or 2010, two years that currently have no recorded ranger activity in the main timeline since those were the years in which RPM and the reversion of MMPR aired, and RPM is in another universe while the MMPR reversion was just reruns with added special effects.
But to get to my main point, this means that Grid Battleforce has existed for all of that time since at least the years between Jungle Fury and Samurai! This means that they were around for the entire Neo-Saban Era without out ever having known! And that they were around during Megaforce and Super Megaforce.
This could possibly mean that Grid Battleforce were the ones who brought together all of the past rangers for the Legendary Battle that occurred at the end of the Mega War in 2014. How they would know about it ahead of time is anyone's guess, but both Jayden and Tommy did mention in their respective appearances during Super Megaforce that they had been observing the Mega Rangers from afar. If they had access to Grid Battleforce's surveillance technology, then they could easily have watched the Mega Rangers and kept track of their progress against both the Insectoids and the Armada.
In fact, GB existing back then would make them a likely candidate for who created Tommy's Master Morpher, which he probably had during the Legendary Battle since that episode implied that he had access to White Ranger powers at the same time as his Green Ranger powers. It would also make GB the ones who most likely restored or recreated any lost ranger powers that were utilized during the Legendary Battle.
And, heh, here's a crazy conspiracy theory that's just for fun. What if the whole ordeal with Gosei mentoring the Mega Rangers back in Megaforce and Super Megaforce was actually a charade operated by Grid Battleforce? Like, if Gosei really wasn't an alien mentored by Zordon, but was instead just an artificial construct built and controlled by GB, with all of his Ranger tech and equipment being given to the Mega Rangers all willy-nilly actually being a test platform for GB's Transport System? The Mechazords from those two seasons even feel similar to those from both RPM and Beast Morphers, being animal/vehicle hybrids. And all of the weirdness and inaccuracies from Gosei in those two seasons could be attributed to whoever at GB was speaking through Gosei having gotten his information wrong. The Mega Rangers could have been guinea pigs for GB's technology without their ever having known the truth behind the great and powerful
Oz Gosei.
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