Was Lord Zedd Already Past His Prime?
 

I was rewatching A Zeo Beginning today and I remembered an theory from an old member here that got me thinking. It's pretty common to see fans say "Oh Lord Zedd was so cool, but then he married Rita and went through badass decay (which is false. It's false)", but what if the decaying started long before he married Rita? Okay, from the beginning we know Lord Zedd was the ruler of the Dark Galaxy. The next time we hear from them they had recently constructed Serpentera for Zedd. Come Season 3, we hear the Dark Galaxy was being conquered by Master Vile. And in A Zeo Beginning, Finster says that they're "completely defenseless against the forces of the Machine King" and Zedd says even if they manage to escape, they had no where to escape to, and thus went to live with Master Vile for the first half of the season.

That's um... that quite a progression in the span of three years.

What the hell happen to your empire Zedd? Did you seriously deplete all your resources fighting the rangers or something? And that's where the theory comes in. Like, he was pretty much just relying on his name and rep for power and the real reason he took over in Season two wasn't because Rita wasn't doing her job but because he wanted to have a little resemblance of control again (like when your grandparents comes over to stay for vacation or the holidays and immediately starts running the house). What if Zedd didn't become weak or less badass from marrying Rita but already was that from the start?

Re: Was Lord Zedd Already Past His Prime?
 

Its likely that is true. The dark galaxies were probably already conquered or being conquered by the time Zedd came. It makes sense that he would use Rita's failures as an excuse to take over. Taking over Earth became more of a priorty if Zedd wanted to build a new empire in our galaxy. I do think adding the love potion to his life force did tone hin down to some degree.