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After leaving the Rangers, Zack and Trini joined The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

After the League fell apart back in the late 60s, the American government spent the 80s and 90s trying to put together the best replacement they could find. They'd probably been studying the Rangers long before then, and jumped at the opportunity to recruit some former members when they showed up at the peace conference in Switzerland . Their martial arts skills and experience with supernatural and/or extraterrestrial threats made them invaluable additions to the team (even without their Ranger powers), and they defended Earth alongside many other famous Badasses such as Cordell Walker, Marty McFly, Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, and a suitably leashed Jason Voorhees.

Everything that happened between the fortieth episode of the first season and the beginning of the second season was all just a dream.

The ending of the fortieth episode doesn't appear to make sense in the context of the series: Zordon gives the Rangers the option of retiring after they undid one of Rita Repulsa's better schemes, which forced her back to the Moon. That looks like it's just the old status quo reestablished. Why would Zordon even consider disbanding the group then? Wasn't Rita Repulsa still a threat?

The answer lies within the two-part episode itself. Zordon and Alpha reveal to the audience that Rita's decision to land on Earth has backfired for her in the worst possible way. Because she landed on Earth, she inadvertently allowed Zordon access to her collection of spells. This would allow the creation of counter spells, and the Rangers wouldn't be needed after those were developed. Thanks to her own arrogance, Rita Repulsa has been neutralized.

• • This is why witches have spell books - you can't hack into a musty old tome. Its her own fault for trying to be so clever with computers.

That's also why Zed throws Rita out in the second season. Her entire arsenal has been rendered useless; she can no longer make a valid contribution to the war against Zordon.

But if Rita has been weakened so much that Zordon would consider retiring the Rangers, then how do we explain her efforts later in the season? Simple: all twenty of those episodes either took place before the fortieth episode -- that is, are flashbacks -- or were simply dreams. All Just a Dream was used in an earlier episode, so there is precedent. The difference with these is that we never see the bookends of the dreams; we don't even know who is dreaming.

This may seem far fetched, but this is WMG, and the retirement offer does not make sense in context otherwise.

• This doesn't account for why the Green Ranger has his powers at the start of season two.

• Speaking of the green ranger, I might be wrong but after the rangers were given the option to leave, and with the Green Ranger returning about ten or so episodes later in season one, wasn't Rita's new mission to be to weaken the Green Ranger?

They didn't change their costumes in season three because they kept the old powers as well.

They may have gained new ninja powers which, (judging by their Tenga fights) were far more useful than their old forms but they original ninja power coins had aged for thousands of years by the time they got to the temple. Thus, they needed more power to call the zords. It is conceivable that Ninjor built or summoned the same model of morphers or Billy or alpha probably had some laying around. So Ninjor recovered the suits as a means to summon the zords but made the ninja powers so they could fight better. This would also explain inconsistencies like why Saba is still around, why their suits look the same, how they don't need a morpher for their ninja forms, and why they can apparently summon their belt-morphers now.

Ninjor created seven Power Coins per set

When the ranger switched to the Ninja Power Coins, they retained their old costumes because they were still using their old morphers. But this doesn't explain why Tommy's ninja ranger form was white.

However, the only Dino Zord that wasn't shown to have a corresponding ranger and Power Coin happens to be white. If we assume Titanus was linked to a "White" Dino Power Coin, we can also assume that Ninjor created a White Ninja Power Coin and gave that coin to Tommy. This would also mean that Ninjor created a Green Ninja Power Coin.

A possible explanation for various inconsistencies involving the Dino Power Coins

• In The Power Transfer, the Power Coins are duplicated as shown, but the power within the old coins is transferred to the new coins.
• In Ninja Quest, the Power Coins are damaged and are no longer able to hold the power; the power in the new Mastadon, Sabre-toothed Tiger, and Tyrannosaurus coins then returns to the old coins. This is why Jason is able to morph in Forever Red without having any trouble sustaining the morph.
• Lastly, Adam's Power Coin was repaired and recharged by the Sentinel Knight in Once A Ranger.
• I don't think the Dino coins were damaged so much as Zordon no longer had the ability to power them due to the damage sustained during the overload from the battle with Rito. Alpha did say it could take centuries to repair their power core after all.
  • The coins were explicitly damaged, or at least Adam's was. (It's quite clearly cracked in "Always a Chance")
  • Alternately, Adam's coin was fixed in the time frame between "Always A Chance" and "Forever Red", just as Jason's was re-powered.

Rita did end up gaining the Green Ranger powers

The spell that Rita used said that once Tommy's powers ran out they'd be transferred to her. Tommy stopped the transfer by giving his coin to Jason before they ran out completely, while this appeared to break the spll it merely stalled it, Rita couldn't take the powers from Jason but the spell was still in effect. When Jason gave the coin back to Tommy in Return of an Old Friend the spell was reactivated and was just waiting for Zordon's power boosts to wear off. When Zedd finally made Tommy use up the last of his power the spell was finally completed and Rita gained his powers. Notice how, despite Zedd having removed her powers as punishment Rita manages to return twice? The second time explicitly shown that she was pilotting her dumpster under her own power, despite not having her powers anymore? The Green Ranger powers were enough for her to control the dumpster but not enough to actually break Zedd's shrinking spell. Then once she gives Zedd the love potion he restores her old powers and Rita is now a lot closer to Zedd's power level than before.

Rita created the Green Ranger Coin herself

We were never given an explanation of where Rita got the Green Ranger power coin, even though we're told Zordon found the other ones. We're also told that Zordon has created teams of Power Rangers before the team we knew so, after Rita past encounters with Zordn's teams she decided to make a ranger of her own. Rita's had possession of the power coins repeatedly throughout MMPR so it's not much of a stretch to think she's had them before, long enough to figure out how to copy the design. Also note that all the Rangers we know for sure that Ninjor created did not involve a green ranger but a white one instead.

• Given the existence of the Dragonzord in Fighting Mode, Rita must've had possession of the Mastodon, Triceratops, and Sabre-toothed Tiger Zords at some point.

Something EPIC went down at the Peace Conference.

While Trini, Zack, and Jason were at the Peace Conference in Switzerland, some weird evil crap went down. Trini died; thus, we never see her again.

• We never see Zack again. Maybe he died, too? Though Jason should have probably mentioned something like this...
  • Who says he didn't? We just didn't get to see it, much like we never saw Tommy getting back in touch with Jason or Jason's return to Angel Grove. Notice how even with the return of Jason nobody mentioned Trini or Zack? Might be a subject that's too painful for the other Rangers to discuss. Also, note that Zedd was a far more efficient villain than Rita and it would be in character for him to eliminate potential threats. Plus Rita was always a very petty villain and Trini, Zack and Jason had majorly ticked her off before Zedd took over.

The Dragonzord was cannibalised to modify Titanus for usage with the Ninja and Shogun Zords.

This is why Titanus was seen wearing bits of the Dragonzord's armour whenever it formed the Ultrazord in season 3.

• Except that it wore said armor in season one as well, and the bay is clearly unchanged.

Zordon didn't actually know jack about the phylogeny of prehistoric creatures in-universe.

This would explain the fact that four of the seven dinozords aren't actually dinosaurs. The guy's an alien, not an earth paleontologist. And he probably never saw a Tyrannosaurus outside of certain inaccurate depictions, explaining why it's body is off.

• While it is implied that all seven 'zords date back to the Battle 10,000 years ago, that just means that either the similarity to prehistoric earth creatures is entirely coincidental, or that he based them on fossils without any paleontologist to help him. He's a Morphing Master, after all, not a paleontologist himself.
  • He can't exactly consult one in the current age either, secrecy being what it is, so the decision to call them "dinozords" in English was likely based off of popular depictions on TV broadcasts Alpha picked up.
  • It could just be that dinozords rolls off the tongue easier than, multiple prehistoric creatures zords.
• And triceratops didn't exist!
  • Technically they did—they were just young Ceratopsians—and it even belonged to the Blue Ranger, sort of like the Justin before Justin.

Pythor, the rumored lost Zyu2 monster, is the most powerful being in the universe.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Ninjor is dead

Rita and Zedd killed him when they destroyed the Ninja Power Coins. There's strong evidence that Ninjor either uses the same power as the coins himself or is actually tied directly to the ninja powers (he can enter the Command Center without a power coin or any advanced notice, he could be used as a power source to power the Shogun zords, etc.) so when the ninja coins were destroyed Ninjor was destroyed by the backlash. This explains why he's never seen or heard from again after the Rangers get turned into kids. He was supposed to be in tune with their hearts and come to help whenever they were in trouble and yet he never does so afterward. Nor does he help during the massive battle of Good versus Evil two years later.

• Or maybe the destruction of the coins left him powerless, and unable to leave the desert.
  • Word of God is that Ninjor's counterpart, Ninjaman, was destroyed along with most of the mecha during Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger's backstory, the Legend War. So if Ninjor's not dead already, it seems he'll be dead in 2013.

Rita's Green Candle is the reason the Rangers needed new powers in S3

This is a bit long, and might it better in Fridge, but I promise its worth it.

Apparently the reason the rangers got the ninja coins is because their old powers were too weak to keep fighting Zedd with...why? I can't remember any real explainantion for this but I just thought: when Tommy gets his Dragonzord coin back in Return of an Old Friend (ROAOF), it almost immediately loses power and is then refueled by Zordon so Tommy can fight Goldar/get the dinocoins back, who (Zordon, that is) then needs to be refueled by the Rangers' power coins, which then accidentally spill all over Tommy, not only recharging his power coin but also providing enough power to heal him too. So, the coins end up doing 3 things at the expense of their own power: refueling Zordon, recharging the Dragonzord coin & healing Tommy. Now, since there was enough energy left over to heal Tommy I'm going to assume that the Dragonzord coin got fully charged, however, Tommy only fought half as well as usual so I'm also going to assume that the amount of "brain power" that Zordon was able to expend is equivalent here to half a power coin (hence Tommy's half-assed fighting against Goldar in ROAOF, by no fault of his own) and the amount to heal Tommy was equivaent to that (blatant guesstimate there).

Now, lets do the sums, thats a whole 2 power coins worth of power minimum that the other five power coins picked up the slack for, half for Tommy, half for Zordon and 1 for the Dragonzord coin itself. So, thats 2 powers coins acounted for by 5 meaning thats each of the original five rangers' coins contributed at least two fifths of their power, leaving each original dinocoin with only 3/5 (i.e. 0.6 times) their original power leftover (and the Dragonzord fully charged but rapidly diminishing with each use).

In summation, no wonder the rangers had trouble keping up with the Big Bad, five of the rangers had effectively been depowered ~1.6x and the most powerful ranger (Green, since he had the fully charged coin) was rapidly becoming the weakest due to the lingering effects of the Green Candle!

There are also tell-tale signs in the show that the rangers were weaker post-ROAOF :

• They succumb to monsters, including putties more easily than before, constantly calling out either the dragonzord, Megadragonzord or Ultrazord (that is, when they don't call on a combination of those three in the same battle). However, Rita's forced showed no indication of having strengthened in any way that would warrant such force and in the past the Megazord could probably have easily taken those Monsters of the Week out, so why the overkill? In fact, isn't such overkill against the ranger code [specifically, "don't escalate a battle"]? The only logical explanation (that I can see, at least) is that overkill was the only choice for their depowered forms.

• Correct me if I'm mistaken on this one, but the transitions between ground force and the megazord control room became much less smoother post-ROAOF. Indeed, there were some shots of the rangers appearing in the Megazord cockpit as if they'd just fallen into it rather than them just being there as was previously the norm, a sign of them losing control slightly due to weakness?

• Post-ROAOF the rangers can barely go one fight without Tommy and when he does show up he fights noticeably better and can take more hits than the others. This fits with the ideas that his power coin is charged more than the others. After all, doesn't it follow that if its more charged, he'll have a better quality of ranger powers, no?

Now, this is just wild mass guessing here, but I definitely think this is on to something.

• You seem to have put a lot of work into this...so I'm legitimately sorry to mention that the reason they got the Ninja powers was not because their old coins were "too weak." It was because Rito attacked the Command Center and did damage to it that indirectly damaged the coins.
  • You're confusing Rito with Ivan. Rito destroyed their zords in battle which indirectly damaged the coins. Furthermore, it's made clear that the zords weren't in peak condition during the battle which could be due to the rangers' powers being weakened.
    • I'm not confusing the two, but I am probably just misinformed. Nevertheless, like the above poster said, Rito indirectly damaged the coins. Maybe the Green Candle had something to do with how they could be damaged so easily, but there was still a canon reason why the old coins wouldn't cut it.
      • The coins power the zords. Obvious? When the zords are loosing the battle, they need more energy, and the command centre has to send more energy through. This has been seen time and time again, especially when the original Megazord and Red Dragon Thunderzord were against strong opponents. But in the battle against Rito and his legions of monsters, the Thunder Megazord and White Tigerzord were ambushed and outnumbered ridiculously by the monsters. They tried to infuse more energy from the command centre into the zords, so that they could gain the strength and power to rival the attacks against them, but it overloaded, causing the zords to basically destroy themselves. This energy is powered by the coins, the coins are the direct source of the zords. The more powerful the energy in the coin is, the more powerful the zord will be (ergo why Dragonzord was a bitch to take down early on, and then sorta decayed towards the end). When the zords overloaded, the coins overloaded too. There have been alot of situations where the rangers have infused their zords with more power, but purposely stopped before the zords overloaded, because their coins would have too, they knew this... but the battle against Rito left them no choice, because they were going to be destroyed anyway. The ninja coins and zords weren't more powerful, they were more agile and flexible to avoid the outnumbering slaughter, to the point where they don't need to infuse themselves with more strength, because they don't need it anymore. It didn't have anything to do with the green candle, not sure but it's possible that they had this issue even before they met the green ranger.

Saban knew what he was doing when he vetoed Tommy's death.

Saban analyzed the Zyuranger footage and somehow caught wind that Burai was supposed to be there for just the five episodes, but his popularity brought him back. He also knew that he was popular enough to have a writing campaign to bring him back. Saban then knew that Tommy would suffer the same fate of being the Ensemble Darkhorse. So what did he do? Milk that fact. He vetoed the death, so as to avert Histroy Repeats Itself.

The Dino and Ninja Power Coins are equally powerful.

The Power Coins simply work better when used by someone who has a matching animal spirit. When Zordon had to make do with what he had on hand. Ninjor on the other hand was able to give them coins that matched their animal spirits.

The earthquake in the first episode actually killed all the rangers

When Rita caused the earthquake in Angel Grove it was in fact a natural earthquake and the building the rangers were in collapsed on them. The rest of the series is inside Billy's head as he dies. This is why he's on the show for so long after he quit being a ranger.