Mutant Apocalypse: Alternate timeline?
 

Recently, I've been reading reviews/descriptions of the latest Nick tmnt episodes, and what stands out to me about the Mutant Apocalypse is that it is always described as an "alternate future" or "alternate timeline".

Is there any confirmation about this from the writers of the show? I always saw the Mutant Apocalypse as canon, and see no reason to exclude it from the rest of the series, so I find this term for describing it as confusing/puzzling.

awh Fredwolf, oh no you didn't... :)
Meant to be canon I believe by the writers, alternate universe to those who see it that way due to various 'things not adding up' and also Nick call it a 'tale' (not canon) That is why you have found some confusion. I'm stepping away now LOL

Yeah this does seem to be a bit of a can of worms.

Its one of those pecularities I think. Possibly a disparity between the staff at Nick studios and the writers for Nick TMNT.

Essentially, it was written to be intended as a canon finale for the Nick TMNT. However, that original intention seems to have waned a bit - with most of the subsequent marketing describing it as 'alternate'.

The honest answer is *shrug*

As Newfan noted, its a bit of a sore topic for many fans it seems. Some see it as being the intended conclusion - others find it such a strange way to end the series that its simply easier to think of it as non canon and an 'alternate future'.


Take it as you will I guess.

It's canon. It's the intended future. Maybe if the Nick show is revisited in a movie a few years from now, they can do a crazy time travel adventure with Renet and Fugitoid to go back in time and stop the mutagen bomb from going off....but if that never happens than this is it.

It's canon. Period. Some fans are just butthurt & spinning a theory to spare themselves the babyrage.

It's not an alternate future until it's been altered, this was it. It even ends on a hopeful open ended conclusion, so the butthurtness of some is a bit eye rolling.

Someone who worked on the show said it can be seen as either while word of god has said yes.

Then again, Nick owns the show so whatever Nick may say is the true canon, as far as we know until Nick says otherwise it's meant to be canon since it aired and there were no indicators that it was an alternate timeline or anything of the like. People who say it shouldn't is because they don't want it to be but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Bitter sweet.


Word of God always loses to whoever owns the story, creators come and go but franchises continue, so whatever Nick decides would be the real deal. Now, Nick hasn't said anything so it's basically them giving their blessing on whatever word of god said, if it somehow changed then yeah, but it hasn't so far.

It's up to you really, the creator of the show says it's the end of this show and it's canon, Nick is too yellow to have it end in such a dark and sad note and says it's just a possible future for the boys going to great lenghts to make it seem so by changing the airing order so little kids can have a happy ending with the crossover instead.

In other words is Word of God against Word of a couple of suits that only care about money and ratings.

Why is there so much talk about "The Word of God"?

It has nothing to do with this topic.

Mutant Apocalypse being an alternate timeline? That's what Nickelodeon and some of the staff said.

"Word of god" refers to the show creators and writers, very much to do with the topic.

In one of the news articles about season five they discribed one of the arcs as a “Possible Future” for the TMNT. The event takes place quite a few years into the future when the Turtles are well into their adulthood while the Turtles when they complete the Usagi arc are about 19 years nearly 20 years old.

So it largly depends on how you view it personally. If this is how you believe their future happened, then this is their future. However if you don’t like this future, then this future never happened and you can come to your own conclusion as to what happened to the awesome foursome.

That future will happen no matter what, I remember in the Archie Series comic, Future Raph warned his younger self about losing Ninjara, but he still ended up losing her either way, so I guess there future was still gonna become the one in that story arc.

It’s really up to interpretation. There’s evidence for, and against it being canon.

No, that is different, in that one we see them travel to this future. They in the past however can do things to change it, sure the Ninjara thing happened but we don't know if it would play out exactly.

In the Nick show they didn't travel to this future, as far as we know it IS the future whether we like it or not.

For me personally I don't like it being the future even though it's my favorite episode(s) of the series but it's still technically their future.

I made no secret that the finale hurt me but I know that it is how the writers wanted to end it and that they did not intend it an AU.

Edit: That being said, People are free to choose their canon given the situation, it's the opinion pushing that I grew tired of.

It is definitely a better finale than "The Big Blowout". Some just want TMNT to end on happy fun times. Apparently Nick does.

I imagine Nicks reason is that this is kids show, they may have considered that young children probably don't want the last they see of their hero's to be them looking like that, instead remember them as they've known them.

As for your point about the Big Blow out, yeah.. I felt that was a triumph for Bebop and Rocksteady rather than the turtles. If the order was going to be changed to finish up with something more triumphant with everyone in it I think the first arc would have been better... but this was a last minute decision I think?

It was a Matrix style trick by Baxter Stockman to get revenge for his restoration. He got pissed when it didn't work, brought them out of it, they kicked his ass and resumed business as usual.

... What? It's not less plausible than anything that actually happens in the show. Did you think they made a million illusion/hallucination episodes just because?

Me too. As much I like the Big Blow Out, I definetly think its not season finale material for this show as it is more centered on Bebop/Rocksteady and the 80s characters.

Mutant Apocalypse on the other hand, ends with all the 2012 turtles happily re-united after many years which I thought was perfect. Only thing I didn't like was no April (and to an extent Casey) since she was with the turtles from the beginning.

It's the finale. Some people just don't like depressing or apocalyptic endings to kids shows, otherwise nobody would care.

I'm cool with TMNT ending like this I rather enjoyed it a lot.

For this particular example it doesn't, right now Ciro has the upper hand, now if down the line Nick makes a continuation that directly contradicts the finale then yes, Nick has the final say, but right now, with the way things are, this is these Turtles future and the series finale, no ifs nor buts.

Yeah, kinda noticed that AFTER I posted it lol sorry about that :trazz:

This. Deny all you’d like but this is how the story goes folks.

It just that after five seasons and getting attached to the characters, I really wished for them to have a happy ending and growing old together.

But what also bothers me is that there's such a huge gap in the time-line between the series and the finale. (How much, 30-50 years?) It felt detached from the series. It could have easily used a mini-series to flesh out the years inbetween, to feel more of a connection to the characters in the finale, and not just going for a shock effect.


Before someone jumps on me, I agree it's meant to be canon. I can't deny that fact.

There are a lot of shows out there that skip ahead decades for their finales just to show all the characters older.

I'm satisfied with the series as it is but I'd still rather have this movie happen sometime in the future.

Alright, sort of interesting I guess? Might just have ended up feeling like a pointless prequel though.

Yeah, no. It's dead, Cubed. They're not going to make a continuation when the plan is probably to reboot over and over. Being the first under Nickelodeon barely makes it more notable.

Even if they were to make more of this version, it's likely they would just ignore the apocalypse arc, it's what I would do. Hell, I might even take the step further and straight up negate it, just to mock it.

Who knows, I'm just speaking hypothetically. I doubt Nick's first incarnation of TMNT will never be revisited. In fact I often say I think the 2018 show will eventually do a crossover with Nick's TMNT at some point later on in its run.

Isn't it like a 'tradition' in TMNT shows though? Whatever happy times they might have now, their future is always destined to suck?

It kind of makes them depressing to watch.

I'd just worry about how they would treat them in a crossover, otherwise I'd even take that if we aren't going to get a special or anything else.

Life at best is bittersweet

We all do, but this is supposed to mimick life, not a fairy tale, living happily ever after isn't real, life sucks... and then you die, it's the whole life lesson of the TMNT.

And for all we know they DID end up growing old together, they're Turtles, they have long lives, they're only around 70 years old in the finale, pleanty of years left to live happily together.

Assuming Ciro gets to write the crossover or co-write it, and all the voice actors return, it should be well done. The difference is this is the first time two incarnations of TMNT were made by the same company, Nick. The 2k3 series was by 4kids, and the original cartoon by Fred Wolf. So they were all different companies who got the rights of the TMNT IP from Mirage to develop a cartoon.

But nowadays since Nick owns TMNT 100%, it's basically their own series incarnations one after the other now. We'd also get to see the Nick Turtles in 2D, since the next cartoon is 2D. They'd likely look very similar to the comics based on the Nick show that IDW put out, so we already have an idea what 2D versions of the 2012 Turtles look like.

How does it mimic life? Most people's lives (at least in the US) don't live out the rest of their lives in an apocalypse-type situation, and unless you come up with some serious bad luck, your life just tends to end in an ordinary fashion.


The only 'life lesson' I see coming out of the TMNT is no matter what heroics you try, no matter how many lives you save, or how many times you stop the villain, the planet and everyone on it will still end up a merciless hellhole and you will be unable, completely, to stop it.

There is no victory, there is no peace, and so there is no point.

Technically they did all they could and if they hadn’t gotten involved at all the world would have went to hell years ago. Personally, while I get the knee jerk reaction of wanting things wrapped up happily ever after, I love that they had the balls to tell a story like this. People complain about the turtles being treated with kid gloves? Well here you go!

That's exactly it, no matter how hard you try, **** happens and there's nothing you can do about it, there's no saving the world and make it a better place, the best you can hope for is to live your life the best you can and hope you get to live another day, but ultimatly in the end you die and that's it. You're not supposed to think of it as a perfect reproduction but as a metaphor for life and that even though the world sucks as long as you're with your loved ones it's all bearable.

The Turtles are not superheroes, they're not in it to save the world and to bring in peace, they're in for themselves, things always come after them, not the other way around, they only end up saving the world because they're trying to save themselves and the ones they love, so yes, there is a point, they're just "human", the best they can do is try their best, and sometimes your best is just not enough, and that's life for you. And like Kirby said, Life at best is bittersweet

True, but this is also a show that features time/dimensional travel, magic, and aliens coming to visit. Whenever I've grumbled about some of this in the past, I've always been told that 'it's a kid's show, it can have that stuff.' So now all of a sudden it has to have a 'realistic' grimdark and depressing ending even though the whole show before that tried to show as much fantasticical, unrealistic and comidic (defended by fans) stuff as possible?

I could buy it if the whole show was more gritty and more like the Mirage comics, but it wasn't. It tried to be the 80's cartoon all over again to an insane degree, even going as far as including outright cameos by them and having Bebop and Rocksteady take over the spots of this show's original mutant duo. Eventually one might expect a more lighter ending rather then one that tries to be so 'grownup' and 'real' when the whole premise of the show was anything but.

I would also point out that they were not thinking only of their friends and family when they did all of that stuff through the show. If they were only thinking of them, they could have allowed Shredder's mutagen bomb to explode and left the falken canisters because it would have spawned more mutants, because that would have allowed a chance for their rat father and mutant friends to walk more openly in daylight, because they then would not then be the 'only' mutants that existed in the city. They did it for the people, they weren't only thinking of each other. They also could have avoided helping anyone in trouble, but they chose to assist rather then stay 'safely' in the shadows.

I was refering to the franchise itself, not this show in particular...

But that's the thing, they felt an obligation to stop Shredder and anything related to him, and the canisters was their fault, people would suffer for something they did and they where honor bound to fix it and they always help people if they can, but never if it risks themselves.

I never watched tmnt to learn some sort of life lesson.

I'm open to both happy and bittersweet endings, as long as they are entertaining.