[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shin Henshin

That they overcame their despair and had the right to become mages? That's all well and good but they barely really did much afterwards other than be attacked or captured and they were lazy with the Mage suits. Mage felt more like a shoe-horned in excuse for a third rider than anything else. Mayu and the others could have been trained as mages without the suits even.

The entire point was never for them to be heroes or even all that trained; Fueki needed four Mages to power his big magical ritual at the end of the series. He didn't want them to be that strong so they wouldn't be able to resist him or, worst case scenario, start creating their own powers like Haruto did with Infinity. They were never meant to be running around with Wizard and Beast, they were meant to just get powerful enough that Fueki could steal their magic.

As for why the suits were just lazy reuses from the movie, it's because they showed up so late in the show that there probably wasn't enough budget to design and build three more unique Rider suits. We're probably lucky that Todoroki and the kid got different colored helmets.