Which Characters Did Not Receive Closure?
 

While this thread is meant to focus on the 1987 cartoon it can branch out into other iterations. Some characters even if we wanted to see again did not necessarily need a follow up while others were in need of a proper wrap up of a plot. In the 1987 cartoon for example Baxter Stockman had six appearances as a mutant fly. Each time he sought revenge directed at both Shredder and the Turtles for the state he found himself in usually getting stuck in another dimension or limbo. The 2003 cartoon saw him restored to human form in the future and reformed. The Nicktoon made a point of demutating him even though he is never shown again. We can assume Archie's TMNT Adventures he was returned to the asylum. However, I wanted to see him demutated in the 1987 cartoon and a plot resolution for the character that never came.

Usagi appeared twice beginning his long association with the TMNT (often mistaken as a TMNT character, but their ally nonetheless). Usagi stays with Obento until Donatello can find the correct frequency to return him to his home dimension. He is never said to have returned home or even mentioned again. I would have liked to have at least had a reference stating he had returned home, it would have worked in particular when Holcume met the turtles and had to wait for his return home.

Bebop and Rocksteady lasted appeared in Turtle Trek. At this point we are led to believe by Splinter's dialogue that we have not seen the last of the Technodrome gang. While it turned out to be the case for Shredder and Krang, Splinter implied not for Dregg to bring them back, but for them to come back on their own and strike. Bebop and Rocksteady are assumed to be wondering around Dimension X, but where and what became of them?

I would also argue the Channel Six News crew. It would have been perfect for Burne Thompson to be the human face leading Dregg's campaign even if April quit and became freelance. Also, it would seem if Irma was a close personal friend she would not need to see her only at work. She also disappeared at the end of Titanus's storyarc along with Burne and Vernon.

Who else stood out to you needing a proper closure?

Regarding Bebop and Rocksteady, my guess is Mung did meet them too. But since Shredder and Krang are their superiors, why bring the "help" when you can have the brains? It's like how in the CW crossovers whee the heroes disappear but return to their team as if nothing happened. My guess is life went on for everyone after Shredder and Krang were returned to Dimension X.

One I would have liked to see was Zach given all the negative propaganda against the Turtles at the time. Or maybe he was strictly forbidden to see them again since he;s essentially a minor. For what matter, what about Walt?? He's older.

A couple of those crossed my mind after the initial post. While only receiving a single appearance Razhar and Tokka had a memorable appearance in Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter and had well characterized showing especially for Razhar. Are they wondering the streets? What became of them?

Also, Muckman and Joey Eyeball are another one shot pair that needed closure and never got it. In the cartoon the characters are promised a cure for their mutation after the radioactive nature has been cured. They were in no rush to be demutated, but it would seem like a follow up with them would have occurred.

The only other characters that come to mind are Darius Dun and the Dark Turtles from the 2003 series.

Mutagen Man from the 2k12 series never had any closure.

True, the plot to make Pulverizer into Mutagen Man was planned out, but after he was mutated it was forgotten about. April's father was cured. It would seem that it would have happened at the same time. Unlike the latter I think of a real-life reason I cannot think of a reason for this one.

I found it interesting that the Turtles would leave Cody there without protection and Darius not incarnated due to it being all but said that Darius had his sister and brother-in-law killed to get the Jones fortune for himself. It is perhaps a side effect of cutting off the Fastforward direction when it did since more episodes were planned like Space Usagi and Triceraton Shredder.

Carter was last seen going to the future with Landore and Merrick to try to find a cure for his mutation but after that he was never seen or mentioned again. Would have been nice to see him return or hear if the cure worked.

Also Titanus’s mutants from season 8, they were originally humans kidnapped by Titanus but we never heard about them getting back to normal after the end of the Titanus episodes.

I mean, if you think about it this way, 87 Bebop and Rocksteady reappeared during both the 2K3 and 2K12 crossover. They at least appeared again.

I assumed Carter got cured and remained in the future working for the police after he was cured. Never confirmed, but at least he had a send off.

Well, while that is true its hardly the same continuity of the 1987 cartoon. The overly campy nature that was not the true 1987 cartoon and the fact the Channel Six building was standing in the same place it once was suggest it is not the same. Even if it was chronologically it would not fit so the last seen is still Turtle Trek.

I didn't follow the 1987 adaptation for too long, but I've heard of some characters having a really little frame of spotlight instead of others.
Some of the characters you just mentioned have a way better role in the 4Kids adampations, such as Stockman and Usagi.

Sadly, even that show has characters like Mr.Touch and Go who never got a spotlight of more than 2 episodes.

Bunch of villains, in particular from Night of the Rogues episode from Season 7 of FW: Leatherhead, Scumbag, Anthrax, Tempestra, Slash, Rat King (he appeared in Season 8, but once again no closure). Baxter from FW, Muckman, all mutants from Dirk Savage episode.

I would disagree with Usagi not receiving any sort of closure in the 1987 toon.

His first episode explicitly states that the chance of him returning home are slim to none, and the second episode ends with Usagi saying that he might get used to planet earth after enjoying a pizza.

That to me, sounds like Usagi made the turtles' dimension his new home and left his old life behind for good.

Rocksteady and Bebop only appear as cameos in the 2003 adamptation, they don't appear as real characters.

Rat King was captured in Season 8. Leatherhead probably just returned to Florida swamp.

All the main villains were wrapped up, with Baxter trapped in limbo, Shredder/Krang stranded in Dimension X and Bebop/Rocksteady lost somewhere there too.

Yes, that too. But I know one of the examples D-ray is mentioning was one time a visiting Rhino alien friend of 2003 Usagi's is lost in New York and buys an outfit that makes him look exactly like FW Rocksteady. I don't know about a similar Bebop character.

http://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/t...20091121154839
Kojima was hired assassin from their world assigned to hunt down Usagi and Gen. Kojima is a humanoid warthog as Gen is a humanoid rhinoceros who briefly donned Rocksteady's clothes. The closest we ever got to a nod to the 1987 cartoon in the series.

The whole title Usagi Come Home title is misleading since he remained stuck in the dimension. If Halcome can be returned I don't see why Usagi could at least had a reference to being returned home. I find it odd that he was never even referenced again.

While I desperately wanted an origin for the character Rat King is in jail so okay. Leatherhead okay. It never say well with me that Dregg struck from Dimension X in the last three episodes and not Shredder. Also, just wondering Dimension X really is not plot resolution for Bebop and Rocksteady.

Baxter definitely needed a resolution. The irony is he almost did in his last episode but the TMNT quite out of character stopped that from happening. Obviously Bebop and Rocksteady are the other two.

I don't think Leatherhead got a resolution in the 80's cartoon although I could be wrong.

Leatherhead in the 1987 cartoon appeared four times, Leatherhead:Terror of The Swamps, Leatherhead Meets The Rat King, Splinter Vanishes, and Night of The Rogues. Like the others he ran off instead of fought after the reward was destroyed. It seemed out of character for the group to that, but at risk of it being a two parter they were out of character. He assumingly went back to the Flordia Everglades. So no true resolution, but it may not be needed like Baxter and Bebop and Rocksteady. The former caught in limbo after the TMNT act out of character and the henchmutants just wondering around Dimension X is not satisfying for characters that became such a big part of the show and to Laird's chagrin, the franchise.

It's satisfying endings for them. It's not like any villain would be literally killed off in the show. It's the best ending they could get for an old cartoon.

Why anyone expected "closure" in the Fred Wolf cartoon character "arcs" is fvcking beyond me.

Because the show takes itself semi-seriously?

As long as we're adding characters who never saw closure, I will add Mona Lisa. She had one episode, and was implied to be working (possibly with Donatello's help) on a way to reverse her mutation at the end of it. But nothing was ever said or shown about her again.

Because fans took the show more seriously than it was meant to. If you actually think about how characters are treated, there shouldn't be much of a reason to care.

Fred Wolf characters largely exist in the "bubble stories" that come with the episodic format. Their arcs are more or intended to begin and end in the same episode, with a "I think we haven't seen the last of X!" added at times to signal a possible but not required return. Expecting characters to get "closure", or even come back, in such a show is rather odd because their arcs were usually over in whatever episode they last appeared in (or were at least meant to be regardless of how unsatisfying it might have seemed like). If the show had an actual ongoing narrative (and trapping the Technodrome in a new place every season finale does not count as progress), then it would make sense to be bothered that characters did not come back, like in the Nickelodeon cartoon where the Mutagen Man was promised a return that never happened.

There are of course characters who did appear a lot more, and in that regard I'm somewhat more sympathetic. Characters like Burne, Vernon, Irma, Bebop and Rocksteady were major characters and the fact that their last appearences were not treated as special in any way is off. In such cases I will agree that it is off that they just went away without any indication that they would and without explaination for what happened to them. Shredder and Krang also just sort of go away but to me it seemed they were saved for a potential season 11, just in case they got one and felt like returning to the status quo, not really the same thing as dropping them. The reason I think it might have been considered easy to drop Bebop, Rocksteady and the Channel 6 crew, might have been because those characters were designed to serve a function in the dynamic, a dynamic that was altered and no longer had a place for them. Not that they were all that interesting characters to begin with, but it's where I can see it both being reasonable on the creative side and annoying for the audience.

Then you have characters like Baxter Stockman who fall somewhere in between. They're not frequent enough to be consider major characters but their appearences are not exactly insignifigant either, that's where it gets weird and the cracks show. The Baxter example itself shows how poorly handled a character can get if they're neither a one off or one of the main stars. Basically every episode to feature him after he turns into a fly begins and ends with him being trapped in a different dimension, and the last two episodes to feature him doesn't even keep that straight. Baxter Stockman's treatment works more like a demonstration of why the writing of the show sucks, more than it does as a character arc or status quo.

To sum up, There are three basic reasons you shouldn't really care:

• Characters who appeared in less than five episodes were meant conclude their arc in whatever episode ended up being the last.
• Major characters were only meant to be around until they stopped having a purpose.
• Minor characters could just end up being a demonstration of how the writers failed to keep things straight.

Sure it did.

Since your awesome CKD let's just agree to disagree on that. We both agree that Rise does not so let's go with that.

Were there any characters in the 2003 cartoon that did not get a proper closure aside from leaving Darius Dunn free? I like to think that Tom saw this and decided to use Darius as fodder to build Splinter's Foot to bring him to justice.

Funnily enough, the non-endings of Shredder, Krang, Irma, Burne, Vernon, Bebop and Rocksteady didn't bother me at all, since as you said, there was no place for their dynamic in the Red Sky seasons as opposed to the turtles, April and Splinter who were central characters so they still got one last hurrah in the final episode.

With that being said, I thought that all the above listed characters (barring Burne) who weren't fully wrapped up in the Red Sky seasons, were given a fair ending in the last episode of season 7, which was the last season that revolved around them:

1. Shredder and Krang's last appearance in season 7 has them finally stripped from the technodrome, something which they had for the rest of the show prior.

2. Bebop and Rocksteady are effectively the same as Shredder and Krang, but as the henchmen, prove their loyalty by the end when they rescue their bosses from capture.

3. Irma showed off her badassery in full form in 'Shredder Triumphant', proving herself to be a useful ally to the turtles.

4. Vernon ran away in the end, which is to expected of him because he is a coward.

5. Admittedly, Burne just faded away into nothingness during 'Shredder Triumphant', but he did get a pretty conclusive, albeit bitter change of character in the following episode when he declares that he will do everything in his power to give the turtles a bad name (not to mention, he lost the Channel Six building too).

That is why I like the copy and paste job of the last scene of Divide and Conquer pasted at the end of the Turtles To The Second Power. Also, this is why I felt that Burne should have been used by Dregg. It was like the storyarc was forgotten. Also, it would have been a perfect reason for April to walk away from Channel Six and become freelance.

Yeah, it's sad we didn't see the conclusion of that. It seemed they were certainly taking Donnie's character towards a plotline or outcome. After all, Splinter had warned Donnie that by making the conscious decision of training the Pulverizer at all he would be responsible for whatever happened to him as a result. Even if he wasn't teaching him anymore that responsibility just doesn't go away.

As you said, Mutagen man was planned out as it was mentioned by the staff that he would be a reoccurring character. I guess I blame the staff-change between season 1 and 2 for why it never played out.


There was actually some plotlines from Season 2 of "Fast Forward" that were released by were never completed.
One of the episodes that had Darius Dunn and the Dark Turtles was called "Turtles Turtles Everyware"

Tired of the constant failures of the Dark Turtles he created, Darius Dunn decides it’s time to build a better mousetrap - - or gang of henchmen, if you will. Turning his technological know how to the task, Dunn creates the TechTurtles…and what better way to give them a test run than sending them after the now obsolete Dark Turtles? Reeling from the high tech onslaught of the TechTurtles and desperate to survive, the Dark Turtles have no choice but to turn to their enemies, the Turtles, for help. In the heat of battle, the Ninja Turtles teach the Dark Turtles what honor and sacrifice is truly about. After this battle, things will never be the same.

In other words this would be when he gets jailed and the Dark Turtles reform and maybe take up residence with Cody? I don't remember that script of the set. Thanks.

It wasn't really out of character. Baxter needed the Retromutagen gun to finally return to being human and the Turtles needed it to restore everyone Baxter had turned into insects. The Turtles would've let him become human under better circumstances. The same thing happened later in Doomquest when they had to sacrifice the Vortex Crystal and the fact that their unstable mutations would destroy them. Saving the Earth was more important.

If Baxter had successfully returned to whatever dimension he was headed to, they would never find him in there and everyone would be trapped in their new forms. Another scenario is that Baxter got returned to normal, regained his smarts and zapped the Turtles like Shredder had been about to a minute before.

Leatherhead never got a resolution. He disappeared into the night with the other rogues and was never seen again. At least the Rat King got one more chance.

There are other characters who did not get any closure in the 2k12 series. Such as Snakeweed or Spider Bytez. We don't know what happened to them ever since.

Also Pigeon Pete. We don't know what happened to him either.

Guess it's probably how some stories are meant to end, as open-ended. Major plots and stories end, but the characters always live on to fight another day.

It's shown in the futures of the 1987 and also the 2003 shows though, the turtles helped make the technologically-convenient futures clean and crime-free, all criminals locked up and/or reformed.

^ That's correct. TMNT's future was unknown at the time since Night of the Rogues was in Season 7; the last to have an hour block. Also why Shredder Triumphant ended the way it did.

Why anyone would make such a nonsense comment is beyond me. :lol:

Ten seasons and we're not supposed to care for reoccurring characters? Huh? :o

I agree completely.

My comment is they destroyed the gun and then kicked him into the portal before he could transform back. A bit much.

I suppose if they wanted to phase out every supporting character from the original era of the show they should of given everybody closure at the end of Season 7 and then started afresh with Season 8 instead of having characters drip over into the season.

Yeaaaahh but this is 100% a crossover film. For "appearing" I mean as real characters that are part of the series storyline. The movie versions are probably out from the events of the 4Kids adaptation and rmeain only during the plot of the movie.

Mindblow...
I thought that Kojima was just a Usagi Yojimbo character, not a specific character only made up for the reference.

Regarding the frogs, it was hard to give them closure since Atila and Rasputin never had speaking roles during the CBS run. Mondo Gecko got his closure in his first episode and just appeared in Dirk Savage just because. Or maybe the writers knew what was coming and had to quickly pad things out.

I think in the case of the Punk Frogs they should of had a final episode where they were being targeted and the TMNT had to help them.

They did, though; with Leatherhead in Season 3. Dirk Savage and even their origin episode had that subplot too.