Big egos aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. Some people are so invested in themselves that they believe they can charm their way out of anything. Many of these people probably happen to work in the White House at the moment. That being said, I’ve yet to meet anyone who has named their technique after themselves.

Xander Bly is… different.

NAME: Xander Bly
RANGER DESIGNATION: Green Mystic Ranger / Green Legend Warrior, Power Rangers Mystic Force
BASE OF OPERATION: Briarwood
FIRST APPEARANCE: “Broken Spell” – Power Rangers Mystic Force
LAST APPEARANCE: “Once a Ranger Part II” – Power Rangers Operation Overdrive
PERSONAL WEAPONS/GEAR: Green Mystic Staff (Axe Mode); Mystic Muscles; whatever the gloves were called
ZORDS: Mystic Minotaur; Mystic Lion (w/ Yellow/Pink/Blue Rangers)
PORTRAYED BY: Richard Brancatadada Brachiosaurus Brancatisano

PROFILE

Straight out of Australia, Xander Bly was a “supervisor” at the Rock-Porium music shop in Briarwood. His day of hard work was interrupted by an earthquake and a kidnapping in the nearby forest. Xander and his coworkers — as well as a mysterious new guy named Nick — entered the woods. Legends told of people wandering into the forest and never returning. I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about, though.

This legend appeared to be true when the five teens were ambushed and attacked by some ugly demon things. They were rescued by a sorceress named Udonna, who basically kidnapped them in her giant magic tree fort. Here, Xander was granted his Mystic Morpher and the power to morph into the Green Mystic Ranger. His signature powers were mostly plant- and earth-based, because green.

Xander was a big goofster, but he was never one to back down from a challenge. The only stipulation to this was he must begin every encounter by enacting “Plan Xander,” which mostly just means trying to negotiate with the enemy. Most of the time his ego would get ahead of him and cause more issues for the team, or wind up making him the butt of a joke. Xander did show his true colors at one point when trying to comfort and relate to Nick, being a loner himself and a foreign outsider when he first moved to America.

Nothing throws off a man’s overconfidence than a gigantic zit. Xander managed to get himself one of these smack-dab on the tip of his nose. Like, really. This thing was practically eating his face. And I mean, I’ve been there. I’d almost 28 goddamn years old and I still have days where I wake up and look in the mirror and see big fat giant blemishes at the summit of my schnoz. This probably says more about my skin care routine – or lack thereof – than it does about my age. After learning about Clare’s perfection potion that could make flowers pretty again, Xander figured it would be a good idea to spritz a bit of it on himself. It wound up doing its job, restoring his perfect profile.

On the search for the legendary dragon Fireheart, Xander managed to unlock an evil wolf monster and Vida had to save his ass. It was shortly after this that he realized the perfection juice was causing the mild side-effect of slowly turning him into a tree. Also, Clare’s potion eventually caused all of her plants to wilt and die, so that didn’t bode well for the green boy.

Vida explained that his confidence comes from the inside and humbled him a bit until he took root in the ground under his feet. Clare made it just in time to administer the antidote and turn Xander back into a handsome gentleman. Also this whole ordeal somehow unlocked a spell code that gave him boxing glove powers.

During a training exercise, Daggeron chastised Xander for not focusing enough on his Ranger duties. To remedy this, he is tasked with making an acorn grow into a tree without his Mystic Morpher. After yelling at it and getting frustrated, the tree barely grows to 2 feet tall and promptly gets burnt to a crisp by Fireheart. Daggeron’s next trial was to board all of the the Rangers in his train Zord and transport them to an island in another dimension. They were instructed to find his train ticket hidden on the island with little but the clothes on their backs.

 

Everyone except for Xander got captured by a giant and tied up in a cave. This (reluctantly) prompted him to go on a rescue mission. He theorized that the giant was just hungry and was going to eat them, so he grew a big-ass apple from the dirt and offered it up. After Xander grows a whole bunch of fruit trees for the giant, they were granted the train ticket and made it back to help the Solaris Knight fight a bull monster. He also got a new spell code that gave him one of those Halloween muscle suits.

After Imperious made his “Dark Wish” and stripped the Rangers of their powers, they traveled to the Tribunal of Magic to plead their case. Once they were able to prove themselves, Xander joined his friends in obtaining a powered-up mode, becoming the Green Legend Warrior.

After stopping The Master from eating everything (basically), Xander was promoted to store manager of the Rock Porium. Now that the people of the forest and the town of Briarwood had come together to live in harmony, the store clientele doubled and he had to train some new employees. Including some that were not-so-human.

After the evil Thrax arrived in San Angeles and took out the Overdrive Rangers, Xander was part of a team of stand-ins that would serve as Rangers until they got their powers back. The two teams joined forces to take out the son of Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa. He also tried to Plan Xander some of Flurious’s minions, which went about as expected.

 

RANKING

Xander is great, but Chase did the whole “charming slacker white guy with a foreign accent” thing better 10 years later. Dom may not have gotten a whole lot of air time, but he had a bit more depth to him and, hey, quality over quantity. He’s still more interesting than Leo though, and I think the endlessly entertaining “Plan Xander” schtick alone would put him above Mr. Corbett. So Xander’s gonna sit at a cozy #12 on the Children of Zordon. That’s all I have to say about that.

Petrified Xander is still a cute – and pretty original – episode.

Make sure you follow me on Twitter (and also no context power rangers, of course). Eventually I’ll get to our next entry. 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 put your dirty finger on that link.

Next time I’m gonna talk about Tanya Sloan and I’m just happy I get to watch some Zeo. Seeya then.