‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Fans Mistakenly Thought Glenn Howerton Was in a ‘Power Rangers’ Movie
Pretty much every popular movie and TV franchise from the ‘90s, no matter how goofy, seems to be pretty much immortal these days — from Full House, to The Mummy, to the existentially-distressing reboot of Barney we’re reportedly getting one day soon. Also, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are still very much a thing.
Even though it clearly just began as a way to recycle Japanese TV footage for unsuspecting, toy-hungry ‘90s kids, the Power Rangers-verse has continued into the 21st century in the form of comic books, TV specials and the 2017 feature-length film reboot, which doubled as an overlong Krispy Kreme commercial.
Last year, Netflix released Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always, which brought back several cast members from the TV series for a nostalgia-heavy hour-long special to celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary, and make everyone who watched it as a kid feel old as hell.
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Once & Always found the Blue Ranger, as well as some of the other original Power Rangers who haven’t been arrested for either fraud or manslaughter since the show ended, re-teaming to take on a robotic version of Rita Repulsa, who wants to use a time portal to prevent the Power Rangers from ever forming.
This week, the “Power Rangers Daily” social media account shared a clip from the special, obviously thrilling all those fans of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers that follow the account, while simultaneously confusing fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That’s because, for those users scrolling through their timeline, it sure looked like the Blue Ranger is really Dennis Reynolds, aka Glenn Howerton, who somehow isn’t battling Robo-Rita by trapping her inside of a burning apartment building during Thanksgiving.
The number of Power Rangers devotees reacting to the post was seemingly vastly outnumbered by those who did double-takes as the co-owner of Paddy’s Pub appeared to be performing martial arts moves in blue spandex.
Of course, we probably don’t have to tell you that this was not Howerton playing Billy Cranston/The Blue Ranger, but rather, his borderline lookalike David Yost, who famously played the role (and allegedly took a lot of shit from homophobic producers) back in the ‘90s. Yost starred in “more than 200 episodes” of the original TV show, as well as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in 1995.
But Yost didn’t seem to mind that people confused him with the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star. He even reposted one fan’s image of Howerton presenting the “D.E.N.N.I.S. System” modified to show off the “B.I.L.L.Y. System.”
The online popularity of this odd coincidence is clearly evidence that the two franchises need to one day find a way to crossover. “The Gang Get Superpowers From an Intergalactic Wizard” just has a nice ring to it.
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