The Power Rangers movie reboot announced the casting for the Black Ranger today, and it’s Ludi Lin — a relative unknown who didn’t appear on the original short list of rumored Black Ranger potentials.

Fans of the original American version of Power Rangers remember the embarrassing truth that a black actor played the Black Ranger and an Asian actress played the Yellow Ranger. Although subsequent re-castings in later Power Rangers episodes didn’t match up any actor’s ethnicity with their team title in such a cringe-worthy way, no one has forgotten that original cast — and since the characters in the reboot are based off of that cast, there has been an underlying assumption among fans that a black actor would play the Black Ranger this time as well. However, it seems clear from the list of other casting potentials, as well as the final decision to cast Ludi Lin, that the creative team behind Power Rangers has other ideas in mind.

Last time I wrote about the rumored cast list, I said that I thought it would be cool to see more diversity among the rest of the rangers, but I definitely didn’t care if they “matched” their former counterparts. I stand by that statement, although of course the responses I’ve seen so far to the casting of the Black Ranger have already included a lot of embarrassing “jokes” about Lin’s race.

Anyway, we’re still waiting on the casting of the Yellow Ranger and the Blue Ranger.

(via Coming Soon, image via Instagram)

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