Warning: this article contains spoilers for TMNT: The Last Ronin II - Re-Evolution #5!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin has always been a particularly dark and tragic take on the TMNT franchise. After all, this saga started in a futuristic world where Michelangelo was the sole surviving member of the Turtle family, a lone hero pursuing one final quest of revenge. The original series ended on a hopeful note, with the birth of a new generation of Turtles, but even that birth was countered by Michelangelo’s death.
As the sequel, TMNT: The Last Ronin II - Re-Evolution, comes to a close, it’s clear that darkness and tragedy are still at the forefront of this universe. No sooner do the new Turtles come out of hiding to save their city than they’re forced to grapple with the death of a beloved mentor and grandmother figure. That’s right, the series ends with the death of the one and only April O’Neil.
It’s pretty clear from reading The Last Ronin II finale that this story isn’t done yet. To find out more about the tragic but heroic sacrifice of April and what might lie in store in The Last Ronin III, IGN spoke with writers Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz. Read on to learn more about the grim new direction for this popular TMNT spinoff.
Pushing The Ronin-Verse Forward
Before we get to issue #5’s big death, it’s worth taking a step back to look at The Last Ronin II as a whole. There’s been a noticeable tonal and stylistic shift in this sequel. The original series depicted its futuristic version of New York as a classic cyberpunk dystopia straight out of Blade Runner or Akira. But with the death of Oroku Hiroto and the dawn of a more hopeful era, the series has shifted to a more grounded take on the Big Apple. The Last Ronin II shows us more of what it’s like to actually live in this uneasy future environment, and that was definitely intentional.
“I thought it was a little Star Wars-esque, in the sense that if you go from the New Hope era to the Abrams era, this idea that at the end of Return of the Jedi we feel like there's been a victory. And to a certain extent there was a victory. But if you don't take care of things, things can fall out of control again,” Waltz tells IGN. “And I think that was kind of our story here. Yeah, they had beaten the Foot Clan and they had beaten Hiroto, but what was the plan after that? It almost felt like things will go back to normal, but what is normal? The police were corrupt before, they're going to be probably corrupt now. There were three gangs before, now they're probably going to feel more empowered, the Foot Clan's out of the way.”
And I always think, power, when there's nobody in charge that invites, it creates a vacuum of power. Somebody's going to fill that vacuum. And that was kind of the overarching story we were trying to tell was, who was going to be the first one to take control of the city?
“When we designed The Last Ronin I, it was the end,” Eastmas says. “It was like, the final triumph, the final battle, the blood feud has ended, all these things that have been accomplished through these incredibly insurmountable epic terms that's like, ‘Okay, here is an ending, boom.’ Tom and I both loved the Ronin-verse, so when it came time people said, ‘Well, what would you do with a continuation of the series?’ And so we had a lot of conversations. And we dug deep and said, ‘Well, alright, we need to find, most importantly, what is that purpose?’ And that was the driving force for Last Ronin Re-Evolution, for sure, finding that purpose.”
There’s an obvious question many fans ask themselves when reading The Last Ronin - in what universe is this story taking place? Is The Last Ronin meant to be a continuation of the original Mirage Comics TMNT universe, or maybe the current IDW TMNT-verse? Is it a sequel to the cartoon series?
The Last Ronin II only further highlights that question because one issue delivers a specific callback to an issue from the original Mirage run, as April recounts her ordeal when she and the original Turtles fled New York for the safety of her father’s country house. Should fans take that as confirmation that The Last Ronin is a Mirage-verse story? Not necessarily. Waltz and Eastman make it clear that the Ronin-verse is still its own thing, and it’s intentionally left up to the reader as far as how the continuity works.
"I call it Mirage-adjacent. It's the dimension right next door to the project.”“When we approached Last Ronin, we both said, ‘Look, we have all these Turtle universes, let's make this our Dark Knight universe. Let's touch on a few of the other universes, but mainly lean heavily into the Mirage universe.’” Eastman says. “So we dismissed Bebop, and Rocksteady, and Mutants, and that kind of stuff. So this story was one unto itself, and it created a happy space that we didn't have to stick with storylines, or logic, or history, or just different things that Tom had set up. Again, we're talking about, when he wrote a hundred issues, that's like 10 years, almost 11 years of stuff.”
“Yeah, I call it Mirage-adjacent. It's the dimension right next door to the project,” Waltz adds. “I think what Kevin and I realized early on, I think early on we were looking at Mirage, specifically. And we knew we were veering off that course when Karai became Shredder's daughter, as part of this story. But it worked better for the story. And so in the Mirage universe, that wasn't the case. And so we said, ‘Well, that's different. That's a little bit of a retcon right here.’"
Waltz continues, “And then at that point, we started saying the term Ronin-verse. I think we're creating our own universe here, but I call it very Mirage-adjacent. The Dark Knight Returns, for me, works so well, because if somebody really wants to say, ‘It's Adam West's future,’ it could be Adam West's future, because all the basic elements are there for a Batman story… I think it works so well in a generic sense, because there's just certain elements of Turtles that you have to hit, and everybody knows those things by now. Most people know what those things are, where they come from, that you can write this kind of story and let people fill in the blanks as they want.”
April’s Heroic Sacrifice
The Last Ronin II has certainly added new layers to April O’Neil as a character. She’s become the figurehead of an underground resistance movement and a grandmother figure to the new Turtles. At the same time, the series has cast April in a somewhat darker light, revealing her hidden intentions in creating the new generation of Turtles and how she effectively played god by giving them each superhuman abilities.
Ultimately, though, April is given a heroic death in issue #5, as she goes out in a blaze of glory fighting the Purple Dragons gang. As Eastman and Waltz explain, April’s whirlwind journey in the sequel was all about serving their larger goals with The Last Ronin saga. This series needed to end with the last bastion of the original TMNT generation handing the baton to the new generation.
“What we wanted to say in The Last Ronin II: Re-Evolution covered almost this very important, I want to say chaotic, but also very trying time for the family,” Eastmas says. “April's decision to create these characters, was it necessary? Was it important? Was it specific? Was it something that she missed about the original Turtles? Was something that she was trying to create something that was the potential future protectors of New York City? As the foundation of the superhero concept that we love so much, not only with the original Turtles, but then finding their purpose.”
Eastman continues, “So what happens in The Last Ronin II is, of course, the unfortunate, but very critical, story concept of April passing. It really is handing the torch to a new generation that we wanted to make very specific. So she's kind of the last of the original series, last of Casey, last of Turtles, last of Splinter, last of everything. So that is officially handing the torch to the new Turtles, much like we did with Last Ronin I, which was having each of the Turtles have a specific, and very significant, and very important demise in that series, that transitions into a much bigger picture.”
“It's not only the end of the family side of things, when you think of Casey, and April, and Michelangelo, and the rest of the Turtles, and Splinter, but it's also end of the old enemies, because that's really the demise of the Purple Dragons,” Waltz says. “And so I felt like April settled some unfinished business, in a sense, in her final act, by taking out a threat that, all the way back to The Lost Years, she knew was posed to her family with Jigsaw and the Purple Dragons.”
Waltz continues, “This moment became even bigger than I thought it would be, before we got to it, because all the pieces were there, and it came together, and it was just a matter of putting words in their mouths and actions in their hands. And I had a hard time writing it. It was hard to write that with April. I like April, as a character across all iterations, very much. She's one of my favorite characters. But like Kevin said, it was time. All this work she's done, and the Turtles before, now what is the payoff? Will these kids be able to continue forward successfully? Was it worth it or wasn't it? And that's the story that's yet to be told.”
The Last Ronin III and Beyond
As Waltz alludes above, this clearly isn’t the end of the overarching Last Ronin storyline, given that this series effectively ends on a cliffhanger. No sooner do the Turtles and Casey Marie mourn April’s death than we learn the Resistance was betrayed by one of its own. Their ally Jiro is secretly allied with the Foot Clan, an organization that has survived the deaths of both Shredder and his grandson and is now seeking to reclaim its hold on New York.
IGN can confirm that another The Last Ronin sequel is in early development, with more to be revealed down the road. But Eastman and Waltz clearly have ideas about where their story is headed from here.
“What you see, the revelation of their powers in Re-Evolution, is a stepping stone towards what we want to do in Part 3. I said to [Tom] from the very beginning, ‘This is going to be our Empire Strikes Back/The Two Towers.’ This is the middle stage of where they're going. And those two were very important movies.”
Eastman continues, “So we lean probably very heavily towards The Empire Strikes Back, in that there is a darkness of the ending, there is a specific ending to the ending. But it very also, specifically says, this is going to continue, there's more to be told here. And that was with a great purpose. But that was with Part 2, we said, ‘We don't want to seem like it's a full cliffhanger, but we also made it as a cliffhanger.’ It is a complete story, it has a finale, and we wanted it to continue to a Part 3.”
“Kevin said, ‘Let Lucas and Tolkien be our guides, as far as structure is concerned.’ So it was definitely The Empire Strikes Back and The Two Towers,” Waltz says. “And it was funny, because when we were done, I said, ‘Some fans are going to be ecstatic that we're continuing, and other fans are going to come after us with pitchforks and torches because they had to come back for some more.’ But hopefully, it's something that people will look forward to. And we've got a big story planned for the third volume. And maybe some other surprises in between.”
Waltz continues, “But it felt right. It felt like this was the story we needed to tell for this centerpiece, and the bookends will be bombastic. We got the centerpiece that really just sets the tables for a lot of things that need to be said. And again, it kind of tells its own story sometimes, we're just following along, these characters have minds of their own.”
With The Last Ronin III shaping up to deliver a new take on the seemingly never-ending feud between Clan Hamato and the Foot Clan, it’s clear that the more things change in this universe, the more they stay the same. As Eastman explains, as much as the original Last Ronin series was about ending the blood feud between the Turtles and Shredder once and for all, the reality is that these feuds have a way of persisting.
“At the end of The Last Ronin I, we wanted the blood feud to end, with Michelangelo killing the, quote unquote, the last of Shredder's bloodline, ending his own life in the same time,” Eastman says. “So we wanted that end, but it's like, you'd like to think that should be the end. But if you've read anything about Japanese history, certainly feudal Japan, there were always different warlords, and shoguns, and different things that would rise up and create different situations.”
Eastman continues, “We came up with a global picture. And something we'll explore more in Part 3 is there's part of a dynasty and corporate business infrastructure in Japan, and Europe, mainly England, with our characters and New York City, that's creating this triad that could control the world economic powers, and create a very different universe. But what wasn't expected was having people that would stop the control of some of those things that would affect... It's like having a rebel base stand up against the powers that be, to affect the change that everybody thought would be.”
"When it comes to the family aspect, it's time for Casey Marie to step up and be that family leader."In the end, the goal with The Last Ronin II was to introduce a clear set of Resistance characters who can oppose the Foot Clan, the Crusader Knights, and the other global powers in The Last Ronin III. The new Turtles and their sensei have been tested, but the real challenge is still ahead of them.
“This is going to be very personal for our heroes, whereas, it's business for the powers that be right now. And I also think, a character that I really look forward to exploring more is Jiro, because he has had a relationship with Casey. And maybe that was more genuine right now than it appears to be,” Waltz says. “And so that's a dynamic I look forward to exploring. But I also think, when it comes to the family aspect, it's time for Casey Marie to step up and be that family leader. And we've thrown elements of the Hamato Clan into the mix too. So there's cool things happening behind the scenes that I think are going to make for some really, really exciting drama in the third volume.”
Finally, we couldn’t talk to Eastman and Waltz without bringing up the various adaptations of The Last Ronin that have been announced in recent years. We know that both a live-action Last Ronin movie and a Last Ronin video game are in development right now, though there have been few updates about either project lately. But Eastman wants to reassure fans that this isn’t necessarily because work has stalled on the projects.
“The video game was something that has been developed early on. Tom and I were brought in initially for looking at some of the concepts, looking at some of the development issues, and the things that were potentially happening there,” Eastman says. “There was a resting period, I think, or restructuring period. With the major developer, but I understand that, the last I heard from Nickelodeon, it's back on track. So we hope to all share news in the future. We've got nothing definitive. We hope to all share news on the progress on the video game.”
As for the movie, Eastman notes that the desire is to get the story right rather than rush something out to seize on the hype of the comic.
“I have had conversations and shared some details with Tom on the discussions on a Last Ronin movie,” Eastman says. “Hollywood is a very magical, confusing, challenging place as things develop. But some of the conversations I've had early on have been wonderfully positive, and they love what Tom and I have done. And I feel like, to quote the writer that I talked to a couple of times, he just loved what we did in The Last Ronin I, and said, ‘I just don't want to be the guy that messes it up.’”
Eastman continues, “So they're very sincere. They're paying attention to what's been done before, but we've got nothing specifically we could share. I wish we could. And I think we'll hear stuff more in the future as things go along, but there is definitely a desire from Nickelodeon and Paramount to do, not only a video game, but a live-action movie, and I've been told in the R-rated space.”
TMNT: The Last Ronin II - Re-Evolution #5 is in stores now. You can also preorder the collected The Last Ronin II hardcover on Amazon.
For more on the TMNT franchise, see what TMNT writer Jason Aaron had to say about the future of his series, and learn more about the newly announced TMNT: Shredder spinoff.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
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