New mutants serving Shredder in future shows
 

If TMNT were to continue in the future, Shredder might have Bebop & Rocksteady join him.

But since Tiger Claw, Xever/Fishface, Bradford/Dogpound/Rahzar, how do you picture new mutants joining Shredder?

Like what animals do you all see used to serve him?

I can picture a chameleon, skunk & spider joining him. But as a "mutant ninja elite guard". As a means to rival the turtles.

I don't know if we'll continuously see new mutants join Shredder. New shows could continue to use Bebop/Rocksteady or Tiger Claw, Fishface and Rahzar again.

In IDW Shredder briefly had Alopex, Koya and Bludgeon under his command, but that was only for a short time.

How about not having mutant henchmen? Did you consider that?

Peter Laird said overuse of mutants kind devalues the theme of loneliness with the turtles, which is a fair point even though there might be some disagreements about how many are "too" many. Regardless of which, adding even more doesn't help.

And then there's the elephant in the room, it's usually just a flimsy excuse to market action figures. Bebop, Rocksteady, Mondo Gecko, Fishface, Tiger Claw, Muckman, Slash, Snakeweed, the list goes on. They're not really characters, characters serve a narrative purpose that move the plot and contributes to the growth of other characters, they just show up and fill the role a bunch of no-names could or disappear as quickly as they came, because they're glorified toys.

Bottom line, don't create new mutants or even use old mutants unless you have an actual reason to do so.

I agree the new series had too many mutants just to sell action figures, but having anything between 20-150 mutants on a planet with 7 000 000 000 humans doesn't devalues the loneliness so much.

However, the mutants could've been more spread around Earth and hide at different places, like when the Archieverse had the Mutanimals in Brazil.

The Foot Clan should have a grand total of zero mutants on the team.

But if they absolutely have to, I'd want Tokka & Rahzar. Big, brutal, & feral. Monsters, not goofballs or badasses.

We had the 2k3 series with virtually no mutants. Shredder's henchmen were Karai, Baxter, Hun and various Foot and Elite Ninja.

What I'd picture the Foot having?

Shredder
Karai
Hun (not the Bruce Lee version)

But also four elite ninja mutants plus Bebop & Rocksteady, but from the Purple Dragons.

They had those captured people turned into monsters in the underground.

I've been up and down with mutants on the Foot Clan. Personally I'd prefer if Bebop and Rocksteady joined Hun with the Purple Dragons (they'd feel more at home with them than the Foot).

Out of all of the more recent mutants created for the Foot, the only two I liked were IDW's Koya (being Shredder's pet falcon has it's advantages) and Nick's Tiger Claw (love his code of honor). The rest just felt tacked on!

Koya would be leading a mutant elite.

New characters are always welcome, mutants or not. We have Hun thanks to 2K3 not rehashing Bebop and Rocksteady and making a new henchman. We have Fishface, Rahzar (who is basically an all-new character with nothing in common but the name) and TigerClaw in the Nick show and IDW threw in Kitsune, Alopex (when she was evil), Koya and Bludgeon.

So while I don't mind Karai coming back, let's give Shredder an all-new henchman, mutant or not.

The only reason they created those characters was to fill a role that didn't exist before. Hun was created because they couldn't use Tatsu. Tiger Claw was created because the Nick cartoon is mutant heavy. They all function in the same role as Shredder's main enforcer. You really don't need tons of redundant characters, same reason Baxter has worked for Shredder in all 3 cartoons rather than creating a new generic scientist character.

Also Koya/Bludgeon were only with Shredder a very short time, they're mostly Karai's mutants rather than his. IDW went with the same Karai, Hun and Bebop/Rocksteady henchmen we're used to.

Why couldn't Tatsu be used (even if Hun is so much cooler, especially for a series)? Did he belong to New Line Cinema or something?

I think its because the 2k3 show was trying to stick to Mirage as closely as possible when it came to characters and Peter Laird would've not wanted to use characters exclusive to the movies and Original cartoon.

Basically. There was also a rumor going around for a long time that the movie characters like Tatsu, Prof Jordan Perry, Keno, or Walker and Princess Mitsu and Lord Norinaga were owned by New Line Cinema and couldn't be used elsewhere, but I never knew if that was confirmed or not. Probably because they were portrayed by real life actors.

Whereas mutant animals like Rahzar/Tokka were easily used in other things like the original cartoon and videogames before the modern era.

This. Yes, this.

Fun... but boring to me.

Yeah, good approach.

Doesn't make sense. Their likenesses get used here and there. Why should the names be a problem? The characters are owned by Nick, not the actors who portrayed them.

I think he's refering to the actors right to get royalties (I think it's royalties, please correct me if I'm wrong) in case someone feels like using their likeness. Regardless, it's not that relevant, just make them look noticeably different from the actors and there won't be any problems.