Sentai Speculation: Why Empress Meadow Was Written Off as an Illusion Projected by Vulgyre?

One of the most unusual plot twists is how Meadow was just an illusion of Vulgyre.  Now I even think that the plot itself revealed by the real Meadow was already dumb and stupid... that Vulgyre lusted after her and she's human, he's some kind of giant organism.  Now I would like to speculate back to my childhood on why Meadow was written of as an illusion and Vulgyre was introduced as the REAL big bad of Fiveman.  It's really too sudden if you ask me... note I didn't see Changeman back then so I didn't take too much notice!

In episode 42 of Fiveman, we see that Vulgyre has some strange red energy hinting that there was a plot twist.  Meadow turned all red.  For me, even with that hint, it felt like the finale had a forced twist than a necessary one.  In what way?  There were ZERO HINTS before that episode that Meadow was just an illusion.  Now I haven't seen much of Changeman and I'm only reading synopsis but at least, Bazoo had several hints of who he was until the finale.  This one was just very forced indeed and I want to think why did Empress Meadow get written off as just an illusion?  I thought she was a really fearsome villain and how are they going to defeat her?  So I guess he decided to do a Bazoo-like death was going to be the only way to conveniently defeat the big bad.

I guess for Hirohisa Soda who was now running out of ideas or just wanted to do a plot twist, decided it was time to write off Meadow.  I even suspect he couldn't imagine the Fivemen fighting a god-like enemy in the sky nor how to destroy her.  Which made me think... Meadow could have been written as the Universe' minus energy personified like Grandienne was in Gogo V.. but I guess nobody thought of it back then for Meadow and again, the villain was an experimental concept that was later repeated in Zyuranger in the form of Dai Satan.  Or that Meadow could have remained as she was some kind of supernatural being who rules Zone... but I guess there was also Soda feeling the need for a plot twist.  So by episode 45, Gaku reveals Vulgyre is a giant organism, by episode 46 we discover Meadow is just a projection created by Vulgyre.  So what was in Soda's head anyway when he forcibly inserted the Vulgyre plot anyway as another Bazoo?  To be honest, I really can't tell why it happened.