The hero of most superhero stories is typically something of the idealized Tough Guy. They’re strong, confident, willing to take on any challenge that the day may bring them. Imagine if Superman had the opposite of those traits and it’s hard to picture them being the same character.

That character is probably closer to Clark Kent, pushing up his glasses, slouching and stuttering his way through everyday life. Poor disguise be damned, if I were an average Metropolis citizen and you asked me who I thought Superman really was, it sure wouldn’t be the meek reporter for the Daily Planet.

As Bulk and Skull would be the first to tell you, there’s no way in hell that geekazoid Billy Cranston is Angel Grove’s Superman. I wouldn’t believe it either. And that’s what’s so great about him.

NAME: William “Billy” Cranston
RANGER DESIGNATION: Blue Ranger/Blue Ninja Ranger, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
BASE OF OPERATION: Angel Grove
FIRST APPEARANCE: “Day of the Dumpster” – Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
LAST APPEARANCE: “Rangers of Two Worlds Part 2” – Power Rangers Zeo
PERSONAL WEAPONS/GEAR: Power Lance; Triceratops Power Coin; Wolf Power Coin
ZORDS: Triceratops Dinozord; Unicorn Thunderzord; Wolf Ninjazord; Blue Shogunzord
PORTRAYED BY: David Yost

PROFILE

As a lover of science and technology, Billy didn’t have it easy at Angel Grove High. He joined up with Jason Scott’s karate class at the Youth Center, presumably because the bullying he experienced was wearing down on him. With his big brain, he had a great understanding of the core values of martial arts, but he wasn’t especially great at implementing the physical parts of it.

Everything he knew got turned upside-down when Zordon kidnapped recruited Billy to become a part of Earth’s first team of Power Rangers. His nerdiness meant that he was more fascinated with the futuristic Command Center than scared of it. Initially he declined the offer and for good reason: his first battle with Putties didn’t exactly go in his favor. Billy was something of an underdog of the original chosen five. Jason and Trini were talented martial artists, and Zack and Kim had their own athletic abilities regarding dancing and gymnastics. Billy had none of this.

Then he used the Morpher that Zordon gave him and he transformed into the Blue Power Ranger, wielding the power of the Triceratops and turning him into a formidable fighter who could hold his own against Rita’s monsters. This resulted in Billy sticking along with the team instead of wimping out.

Billy may have been insecure at first, but the one thing he didn’t doubt about himself was his ingenuity. He was known to create various gadgets to aid the team in ways that their normal powers couldn’t. The Wrist Communicators that the Rangers use to teleport to the Command Center and… well, communicate with each other, were also his own invention.

Trini acted as a translator for Billy. He didn’t speak a different language (although he may as well have), but his techno-babble would usually go over his team’s collective head. Trini was the only one who was able to decipher it most of the time and put it into layman’s terms. The two were very close friends, with Trini overcoming her fear of heights to save an unarmed Billy from some Putties on a cliff.

A young boy named Willy (of course) was taken under Billy’s wing and together they worked on a virtual reality machine to enter in the local science fair. Having two smart guys in close proximity made them a prime target for Eye Guy, a monster with a craving for brainy kids. When the monster trapped Willy inside another dimension within his, erm, “main eye”, Billy stuck it with the pointy end of his Power Lance and freed his friend. Together they showed off their Oculus Quest prototype and scored first prize at the science fair. Professor Hart would later steal it for the VR Troopers. At least in my head.

If television has taught me anything, it’s that school dances aren’t the most fun time for those with corrective lenses. This was no different for Billy, as he was having trouble finding a date. Zack wanted to teach him some dance moves to attract a mate, but he declined, knowing that he wanted to find one by being himself. Cupid shot his arrow when Billy bumped into a girl named Marge, who happened to be similar to him in personality. He returned to her the necklace that he knocked off and asked her on the geekiest date ever to go to the park and talk about his latest invention.

Rita sent a monster named Madame Woe to the park to capture one of the Rangers. Just one. I guess that’s all she needed to succeed. All humans looked the same to Woe, though, and she wound up sucking Marge into another dimension instead of Billy, leaving only her necklace behind. When the Rangers attempted to fight Woe in her pocket dimension, she proved to be too powerful. The team combined the strength of their Power Coins to transport Billy back to the real world to fight Madame Woe on his own. The Blue Ranger 1v1’d the monster and successfully freed Marge and the Rangers all by himself.

Billy grew sick of being bullied by Bulk and Skull. He figured the best method of overcoming this obstacle was re-enrolling in Jason’s karate class. With the help of Trini’s Uncle Howard and his uhhh karate science, he was making some progress, but not before Howard was kidnapped. Billy focused his karate power or whatever to rescue Howard from a big ol’ bomb. He was also able to hold is own sparring against Jason, upgrading him to yellow belt. I assume this hyper karate focus was what also allowed him to overcome his fear of fish to defeat the evil Goo-Fish and save his friends.

Getting a B on a test probably wouldn’t phase your average high school student very much, but it’s different when you’re Billy. It’s especially sad when he missed a perfect score on a bee question. Rita took advantage of his insecurity in this moment and summoned Grumble Bee. Billy didn’t falter and with Trini’s help he successfully saved his friends. Also Billy managed to make the football team, which is a very accelerated character growth to say the least. I hope he sat on the bench a lot for his own sake.

When the evil Lord Zedd popped in and essentially took over Rita’s moon base, he caused a big ol’ ruckus and took control of the Zords. Billy and Trini created a signal blocker that allowed them to put a stop to this. After this, the Rangers were able to use the power of thunder (okay sure) to transform their Zords into the Thunderzords, with Billy’s transforming into the Unicorn Thunderzord (okay sure).

Following the loss of the Green Ranger, the teens were missing a very Tommy-sized hole in their hearts. Curiosity got Billy snoopin’ around and he was the first to discover that Alpha and Zordon were creating the White Ranger powers. And by golly, they were for Tommy.

Ever the ladies man, Billy fancied a girl named Laura who was part of Kim’s girl scout troop or something. The problem was exactly that — Billy liked science and stuff and she liked being outside. And he was too busy messing with his magnetic gizmo. Well, his magnetic gizmo got stolen for Zedd’s monster making, but Billy did a pretty damn good job holding his own against Goldar and some Z-Putties. The magnet monster messes with the polarity of the Earth and stuff. After beating up the baddies, Billy chats up Laura and it turns out she’s kinda into science too. She probably likes “IFL Science” on Facebook, but a man can’t be too picky.

Trini left the team to go to a peace conference in Switzerland (okay sure), so Billy went without a translator for the rest of his life. He did start speaking a bit more clearly and even stopped wearing his glasses sometimes!

This one girl in Billy’s art class – no joke – made a little statue of him. Most men would probably be creeped out by this (or I’m overestimating other straight dudes) but Billy apparently really appreciated her creepy-ass crush. Sadly, Violet’s work was transformed into an evil Billy clone.

 

 

Bad Billy got a hold of the Blue Ranger’s Morpher and posed as the real boy. Everybody grew suspicious when Billy decided that working out was important. Tommy is the first to truly wise up, not giving up his communicator when asked. Alpha discovered he wasn’t the real Billy and rescued the true blue. The team was able to blast Bad Billy to smithereens. As a… reward?… Violet created a Gold Ranger version of her Billy statue. Girl’s got straight crazy running through her veins, Bill my guy. But sure, go see a movie with her. Don’t let this narrator stop you.

In his later years as a Ranger, he clearly became more confident and capable. It was more likely that you’d see him in a man-some tank top rather than oversized overalls. After Katherine joined as the new Pink Ranger, Rita tried to turn her evil again, but wound up creating the Brick Bully instead. With the others turned into bricks, Billy had no choice but to fight the monster on his own, eventually taking him on mono-y-mono with his Wolf Shogunzord. Maybe that hard training paid off after all.

Rita and Zedd sent the Rangers to a time when they were just little kids, prompting the twitchy Alien Rangers of Aquitar to fill in for them. All the while, Billy was working on a gizmo that would return them back to normal. He only had enough time to transform himself back into a teenager with attitude before Rito and Goldar could capture the regenerator and destroy their Power Coins for good. Billy would hang back and assist the Alien Rangers as the Kid Rangers sought out the mythical Zeo Sub-Crystals.

After the Zeo Crystal was restored and the Command Center was destroyed, the Rangers used their crystals to harness the Zeo Ranger powers. Problem being, there were six teens and five crystals. Billy made the decision to step down as a Power Ranger and offered his power to the new girl Tanya. He would serve in a more utilitarian role, assisting Zordon in the new Power Chamber as an extra pair of arms. Billy had reached his peak anyway: he essentially stepped up as team leader during the timey-wimey stuff. It was just a bummer that he had to start wearing grey.

That wouldn’t stop his team from dreaming, though. When a mysterious Gold Ranger hit the scene, Billy didn’t exactly make it hard to believe that he could be his secret identity. He was always working on a secret project, which wound up actually being true. He did eventually try to weild the powers, but they came up with some dumb excuse involving the explosion of the Command Center that blocked him from receiving it. Jason hogged it instead. Bummer.

You know how Billy was real smart? Apparently he was so smart that he overstuffed his credit hours and actually graduated a year earlier than everybody else. It’s a good thing he acquired some newfound time on his hands, because Cestro of the Alien Rangers paid him a surprise visit. Something to do with Aquitar’s hydro computer or something. It borked. Cestro helped him fix the Zeo Power Blaster and went back into space to assist him with his computer, leaving his friends worried. Don’t worry, he made it back relatively safely with the help of a satellite.

As a result of using his aging gizmo back when they lost the Power Coins, Billy’s body suddenly aged into his “we gotta put this guy in a home” years. Many attempts by the Aquitians to restore him to his proper age proved unsuccessful. He thought it best to go with the Alien Rangers and his lady friend Cestria back to their planet and take a chance using their magic youth water. Though he was restored to normal, he never returned. Billy lived the rest of his life doing all of his favorite things: chillin’ in space doing science and hanging out with a hot alien babe.

RANKING

They really don’t make nerdy Rangers like they used to. Up until recently with Nate from Beast Morphers, many had tried to replicate Billy’s mannerisms and charm, but never got as close as they could have. Although, given his tenure as a Ranger with one of the highest episode counts, the boy had a loooot of breathing room.

His zero-to-hero arc is what truly sets him apart from the rest. Billy changed the most out of any of the Mighty Morphin’ crew (one could argue Tommy, and trust me we will have that argument eventually, but there was a big gap between here and Dino Thunder ok) and I genuinely believed every second of it. He went from barely being able to handle a couple of Putties on his own to taking on a monster 1v1 irl n00b in Another Brick in the Wall. Not to mention that glow-up. Funny what a tank and some contacts will do for a guy. Hell, he didn’t even need that to get all the ladies that he did. But he did it anyway. What a man.

Billy is a treasure and we are all better off for having him around. He’s the reason blue is my favorite color and was the first guy on TV to show me that maybe dorks like me have a chance after all. His story puts him above Kimberly in terms of MMPR, and I’d like to wedge him somewhere over our pal Ziggy since, to be fair, the guy didn’t really wanna be a Ranger to begin with. I’m trying to separate nostalgia from the truth, and my instinct is telling me to place him as the new number four on the Children of Zordon.

Also, I love ya Jason, but Billy 100% got snubbed in Zeo. For real.

 

Make sure you follow me on Twitter (and also no context power rangers, of course) and check back every Monday eventually for new entries on the list. I might do some other stuff in-between, and @childrnofzordon is probably the first place you’ll hear about it. As usual, I don’t make promises. If you wanna see where other Rangers stand on the list, make sure you take a gander at that link.

Tune in next time when we have a little chat concerning the greatest in a line of white samurai masters, Jayden Shiba. It’ll surely be uh interesting.