Stop yelling at me. It’s been a year since the last real entry, yeah, I get it. You’re Furious. It makes you want to go out into the Jungle and… you know what? Go find a nice field of… Lilies and just… just Chill, man.

NAME: Lily Chilman
RANGER DESIGNATION: Jungle Fury/Master Yellow Ranger, Power Rangers Jungle Fury
BASE OF OPERATION: Ocean Bluff
FIRST APPEARANCE: “Welcome to the Jungle” – Power Rangers Jungle Fury
LAST APPEARANCE: “Now the Final Fury” – Power Rangers Jungle Fury
PERSONAL WEAPONS/GEAR: Jungle Bo; Jungle Mace
ZORDS: Cheetah Animal Spirit; Elephant Animal Spirit
PORTRAYED BY: Anna Hutchison

PROFILE

At the Pai Zhuq Center for Teenagers Who Can’t Fight Good and Want to Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too, three students were up for promotion: Jarrod, Theo, and Lily. But Jarrod was being a big jerk, threw a hissy fit, and knocked over a box that unleashed the ancient evil Dai Shi upon the world once again. Oopsie. Along with Theo and a new recruit named Casey, Lily sought out the wise and powerful Pai Zhuq Master that happened to run a pizza parlor and got a job working in the kitchen.

Oh, she also became the Jungle Fury Yellow Ranger. Is that the important part? Probably.

Lily was a headstrong ball of positive energy and a ferocious martial artist. Her specialty was going really really fast, which is no surprise when her animal spirit was the cheetah. Her fists could fly with such speed that you’d be on the ground before you realized she was the lady who banged Thor in The Cabin in the Woods.

Now that Casey was part of their lives, Theo and Lily weren’t a gruesome twosome anymore. Despite his claims that the pair were just BFFs and there was no funny business, it was still a team of 2 boys and 1 girl, which meant the two boys needed to fight over the girl for an episode. Lily is subjected to this childishness when she was just trying to show off some dance moves. The boys worked hard to impress her, but eventually got over it. Does it count as a Lily focus episode if she’s just the adult in the room? The world may never know.

The Rangers faced off against an armored pangolin monster whose plate armor was nearly impenetrable. RJ spoke of Master Phant, a reclusive Pai Zhuq master who hid himself away in some spooky forest somewhere. The legends (re: RJ) said he had some sort of weapon that they could use to crack that monster’s shell.

However, the Rangers were ambushed by some psycho in the forest who kicked their asses and told them to leave before just… running off. It became pretty clear who that guy was when they arrived at Master Phant’s cabin in the woods (will I ever stop referencing that movie?) and he turned out to be standoffish and defensive. Who would’ve guessed?

Casey and Theo responded to a distress signal, while Lily decided to park herself outside Phant’s house until he taught her how to use his Jungle Mace. Girl knew what she wanted from that stubborn old man and wasn’t gonna leave until she got it. Master Phant turned out to just be really down on himself after his retirement.

Through tending to his garden and a little heart-to-heart chat (and a casual Rinshi attack on his home), Lily convinced him to tap into his animal spirit once again and whip that Jungle Mace out. This new weapon and its accompanying Elephant Zord aided Lily and the gang to take down the pangolin guy. I still don’t know what a pangolin is.

Camille, Dai Shi’s reluctant right-hand woman, didn’t much care for how harsh her boss could be. Having a bit of a crisis, she disguised herself as a normal blonde lady and grabbed a bite to eat at Jungle Karma Pizza. She caused a commotion when she booted some customers and sucked up an entire pizza with her tongue.

In spite of how off-putting she was, Lily sat across from her to level with the mysterious lady and figure out what’s really going on with her. I’m not sure what the problem was. Any woman who can slurp up a pizza like that? Wifey. As Camille opened up to Lily, she realized maybe she just needed a new boss. She did what any jilted employee would do, and resurrected a weird underwater creature named Jellica to take over as leader of the villain troupe.

The Rangers met Jellica, Dai Shi, and Camille the hard way, with Jellica using her jelly power to glue Casey and Theo’s feet to the ground. Lily, having dodged the attack, was quickly wrapped in one of the monster’s tentacles, with Jellica telling Camille to finish the Yellow Ranger off. But when the opportunity presented itself, she hesitated. As Lily was demorphed, Camille could only see the kind-hearted woman who had given her a chance to be heard at the pizza parlor.

Jellica, disappointed by her new student’s lack of willingness to murder someone, knocked Camille out of the way. Even after having just tried to attack her unarmed, Lily still rushed to Camille’s side to make sure she was okay. Her willingness to see the best in others led Camille to later free the other Rangers from Jellica’s goo – but not without mocking Lily for her optimism and revealing herself to be the blonde customer from earlier.

The emotionally drained Lily got a little down on herself for the rest of the day at work. Theo reminded her that her empathy and willingness to see the good in everyone was what he and the others admire most about her, which brought her back down to Earth.

RJ got kidnapped by Dai Shi, so the Rangers had to rescue him. First they had to face their fears and believe in themselves, because that’s how Rangers unlock their power-ups. Lily stared a spider in the face and called it cute, so Master Guin gave her the power of the penguin animal spirit. This also brought with it an upgrade to Jungle Master Yellow Ranger, and subsequently, a rescued RJ.

This one time, Lily got poisoned by a porcupine monster and turned into Bad Lily. She refused to do any Ranger things and instead got addicted to chicken wings. This further emphasized how considerate she normally is. It’s a fun episode, honestly.

Master Phant had a niece named Gabby, whom Lily trained in the art of dancing. Well, tried to. Gabby was reluctant because she was afraid of failure, or the judgment that comes with dancing or self-expression. Lily sympathized with this and told her that if she wanted to dance, just dance. What a concept.

This gave Gabby the courage to join a freestyle competition. However, it seemed Lily wasn’t going to make good on her promise to be there, like a neglectful parent. To be fair, she was tied up trying to save Gabby’s uncle from the Phantom Beasts, a gang of monsters now loyal to Dai Shi. The Beasts defeated the Rangers – just in time for Lily to hurry up to the competition! Yay! I mean, they do win eventually. What show do you think we’re watching?

Once Dai Shi was destroyed, Theo finally worked up the courage to ask Lily to change their standing lunch break to a lunch date. Her answer was “What took you so long?”. Short kings, take notice.

RANKING

Lily is great, and only gets better as the show progresses. It got to a point where she was reminding RJ of his own lessons, like when he thought he destroyed his dad Master Finn. Her compassion proved to be a core part of the team’s dynamic, the glue that held them all together. Without her, Theo and Casey probably would have fought with each other endlessly and Dai Shi would have eaten them alive.

That’s one of my favorite things about Jungle Fury overall – just about every Ranger gets the right amount of attention, sans maybeeeeee Dom. And Lily reminds me a lot of a certain other Yellow Ranger, who also happened to be part of a three-person team and saw the best in others, even her enemies.

For all of this and more, Lily’s going just below Kim as the new number 8 in the Children of Zordon. Which I wasn’t expecting, but this is what makes it fun I guess.

Nowadays you’ll mostly find me just shitposting on @nocontextranger. You can basically call that the new official CoZ Twitter, cuz I don’t use that thing much anymore.

Check out the full list here, and be sure to check back next time. That entry is gonna be a doozy. Happy Power Month, nerds.