WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #3 by Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Tom Waltz, Esau, Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop, Samuel Plata, Luis Antonio Delgado and Shawn Lee, on sale now.
Across all of the time-traveling adventures and ominous warnings that they have had, the dark future of The Last Ronin is by far one of the worst that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have ever seen, especially since only one of them is alive to bear witness to it. For all of the fighting that they did in their youth, the world of Michelangelo’s lone future is still rife with the war of the past, and the last ally that Mikey has left is still fighting it from the shadows. April O’Neil isn’t alone in her crusade against the Foot Clan, though, as her daughter Casey is right there by her side. Unfortunately, seeing that has only made Michelangelo realize one of the harshest truths about the childhood he was forced to live as a soldier.
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Even though his brothers passed on years ago, Michelangelo can still hear them speaking to him. The discovery that April O’Neil was still alive was shocking enough, but that she and Casey Jones had a daughter that is continuing her parents’ legacy was almost more than he could stomach, especially once his brothers began commenting on the subject. While his brethren are astounded by the young Casey’s incredible prowess at such a young age, it is precisely her age that Mikey is concerned with.
Michelangelo asks his brothers if the situation sounds familiar at all, though they are quick to point out that they not only had the benefit of their lifelong training but their mutant nature as well. As true as that all might be, highlighting how amazingly capable Casey has turned out isn’t the point for Mikey. He drives home the fact that while Casey might be a child and that they all were when they began taking up arms in their father’s war. Karai began fighting on behalf of her father, Oroku Saki, as well as her own son Oroku when he took up arms in her name. In fact, with few exceptions, the Splinter Clan’s war on the Foot has almost always involved child soldiers, and it has rarely turned down taking in an orphan to turn into another warrior.
Even in the present, Lita’s future self is another perfect example of how the Turtles’ benevolence often ends up falling prey to more violence down the road, no matter how hard they try to avoid it. Both sides may be guilty of this, but it is an unshakeable fact that Michelangelo doesn’t appear able to accept.
The subject of how super-heroics might effect a young person is one that comics have grappled with for decades, through Batman’s own assortment of various teenage sidekicks over the years to the far more wholesome adventures of Power Pack, but even at its friendliest, the genre still comes with some difficult and complex questions to reflect on. While the Turtles have gone through many iterations of themselves over the years, there is no doubt that every version of them still carries this same sense of a burdened, violent childhood, no matter how infrequently the topic is broached in the media itself. Now that it has been, maybe there can be some more direct conversations regarding the nature of childhood during times of war. Then again, maybe that talk, for the Turtles at least, would be best left until after the war itself is over.
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