Who was the “Krang” of this show?
 

As in, who was the better analogue to Pat Fraley’s Krang from the FW show? (Even though he was a character in the show himself lol)

Although he never teamed up with Shredder, I always felt like it was Kraang Subprime. Gilbert Gottfried nailed the humor aspect, even if Kraang Prime’s robot suit was vaguely reminiscent of the originals.

I think the reason they made the "Kraang" this weird combination of Krang the character and the Utrom race as a whole, might have been because they didn't feel like using the character at all initially. For whatever reason, it seemed like they didn't want the character in this show, otherwise they would have probably just used Krang and made him one of the Utroms. You know, the compromise everyone else settles on?

Well The Kraang were an important part of the story, but basically just evil Utroms.

Kraang Prime was in season 1, so I have to imagine he was there from conception too.

It was 100% Kraang Subprime.

The mere fact that they established him as 1987 Krang's cousin and their similar dispositions shows that they are meant to be parallel to each other.

We got OG Krang in this show...so...logically, OG Krang.;)

I think this is the case, look at how different the origins of other iconic villains are, they just wanted to do something new and it wasn't until they ran out of ideas on how to write the Kraang or evolve the storyline they decided to give an entity more of an character, which is also why both krang subprime and krang prime are kind of "the krang", sort of as if they changed their minds. And of course counting that eventually they retconned 87 Krang being a character from 2012, then technically there was never a "Krang" there since "krang" is "krang" already and he just changed universes. But that just opens up a whole bunch of questions that 2012 writers never cared to address or realize the problems it caused since it just doesn't make sense since the 87 turtles went to dimension x all the time.


I don't think the idea was there from conception, I also don't think The Kraang were originally intended to be evil Utroms officially, Clearly that was the inspiration but I felt like originally they didn't want utroms to exist in that universe.
Look at how much they changed Dregg, Bishop, Hun, Rahzar, Tokka.

Kraang subprime was clearly meant to be the closest thing to Krang. He was also the only one of the Kraang to talk normally and not in their backwards speak.

Kraang Prime was like some weird mother bee/hive type character.

I wonder, if Prime died then would the Kraang just revert back into normal Utroms?

I mean, that is what ultimately happened. Kraang Prime was killed by the triceratons in season 3, and season 5 confirms that the rest of the Utroms were indeed freed since then when the narrative checks back in on them.

What episode was that? As far as I can tell, the only episodes of season 5 to feature any Utroms aside from Bishop is the Worlds Collide two-parter and there is no explicit claim made there that the Kraang as a whole has turned into normal Utroms, in fact the only explicit reference to the Kraang I could get from just rewatching it was the statement that Newtralizer was brainwashed by them into wanting the Utroms exterminated. That and the whole Mad Max thing implies the Kraang are still around after all the "present day" episodes.

Were you just going by memory or is there something I missed?

You are correct that the only episode the Utroms are in post season 4 is "World's Collide." And while there is no time where a character says "Thank goodness Kraang Prime is dead and all the Utroms are back to normal!" the story, in a good example of "showing" instead of "telling," shows us that this is the case.

They show us Utroms first, after having three seasons of the Kraang, who we already knew were associated with mental powers. Then in season 4, they make it clear that the Kraang are a hivemind, being enslaved Utroms psycically controlled by Kraang Prime. During season 4, when we see the Utroms, we are basically shown a refugee camp, where they're few in number, hiding out, and living in fear. In season 5, they make sure to show us a scene of many more Utroms then before, all living in peace and being as far away from the behavior we've seen before, both from Utroms and Kraang, to an almost sacharine degree. The contrast is deliberate, to show us that things are back to normal (at least until the NEW aliens attack, but that's irrelevant here).

From all the information in the show, we know that that's what happened. The show just expects us to put it together, and to have an understanding of how a hivemind works. If Kraang Prime is controlling it, and he dies, then the things he's controlling stop being controlled. Likewise, If a movie had a radio tower blow up, I wouldn't need to check every radio in the area to see if any of them are still picking up signals from the radio tower. I would just know how radios work, and would know that none of the radios in that area would have a signal.

As for the Mad Max thing, that's a separate conversation, but even if you want to consider it canon, it could still be explained by Kraang Primordus from the comic, who did it by himself. Ultimately, as far as the show goes, there is no reason to assume the Kraang are still around with the information that we actually have and ARE explicitly told.

This all seemed fairly obvious, but thank you for typing all that so I didn’t have to lol

I'm not denying that it may have been the intention to have the Kraang out of the picture at that point, but the fact that they didn't take two seconds to just say "The Kraang are gone for good" (I timed it by the way, that exact sentence takes two seconds to say) at some point across 40 something minutes seems to imply they wanted to leave the door open on that one. If they really wanted you to think they're gone for good and that there is no possibility of them still being out there, then omitting a quick line making that clear seems like an oversight rather than a deliberate choice. While yes, you can infer that the Kraang are gone, but it's not like spending minimal time actually explicitly declaring that's the case would have eaten away anything important. Or was the "joke" about Mikey getting naked after losing his powers too good to cut in the writing process?

Why would it have been inherently better to flat out SAY a line, directly to the audience, instead of just showing the audience, and expecting them to be smart enough to get it? As I said, there is no reason to believe that they're still around based on the information we actually have. We don't always need explicit dialogue for every plot point. As much as I like the 2003 show, this kind of thing was one of its biggest problems; so much of its dialogue is WAY too on the nose and spoken to the audience. I would argue that turning to the audience to exposit is worse is most cases.

Because it is a major plot point and you don't want it to be in any way ambiguous unless the intention is to leave the door open, sometimes you actually want to be absolutely clear on this. The eradication of what is one of if not the most important villain faction should be clearly communicated if the audience should know for certain that is what happened. Aside from the Mad Max episodes hinging on the Kraang still being around in some way, it should be noted that the time travel did alter the timeline, Sub-Prime can't be present like in the original timeline because he got stranded in another world, so we can't really count on the rest being exactly the same in the new timeline. The interpretation that they have definitely been eradicated is dependent on the assumption that:

1. The Mad Max episodes aren't canon
2. That Sub-Prime's removal from the timeline and all the other changes that occured thanks to the time travel didn't change the events right before the invasion.

And I don't really feel like bringing up the sloppier elements of the Kraang/Utrom plotline because I'm not sure it's quite relevant for this discussion, but suffice it say that I have trouble taking anything about them on faith because of weird inconsistencies ranging from whether they can speak without their robot bodies to having two contrary explanations for why these two factions of their race exist.

Let's say that there are two hypothetical movies released to continue the plot of this show, one in which the Kraang really are depicted as having been eradicated by the Triceratons during their invasion, and other one in which they still exist albeit in a weakened state. Now, the way the show wrote this whole plotline, neither of these movies would actually contradict show even if they are incompatible with each other. So I can really only conclude that, unless it was just an oversight, that the reason for this isn't that they assumed kids could piece it together but rather because they weren't willing to commit to a definitive answer to this question.

I think you're finding ambiguity where there is none. There are plenty of stories, this one included, where I'm sure a lot of different authors may have written it differently if they knew that years later, people would insist upon not taking the story at face value and trying to find problems with it.

Look, I have admitted many times that this show is not perfect, but I think many of the flaws that you keep pointing out aren't really flaws. They showed us Kraang Prime dying. They told us it was a hivemind. Even with the minor timeline changes, the episode shows us that up until the second group of turtles arrive, the events played out the same, which would include Kraang Prime getting fried.

Taking Kraang Subprime, his earlier getting stranded is clearly part of the same running gag of him continuing to come back after seemingly dying. There's no real reason to assume he wasn't right back with Kraang Prime like he always was. We know that one WASN'T a joke because it involved another character, and because narratively he was being supplanted by another villain.

However, even if we assume that he wasn't there, he didn't control the hivemind; Kraang Prime did, and there is no reason to assume his fate is any different from what it was originally. Beyond that, we know from statements from the crew that Season 4 was the original end of the show, the original end of the story, and that season 5 was greenlit midway through season 4's production, so with that in mind, we can say quite confidently that they weren't trying to leave it open, because they weren't planning on going any farther, since season 5 was extra.

Besides that, even the comic in the anniversary special supports the idea that Kraang Prime died, because that's Krang Primordius' whole origin; he's the remains of Kraang Prime after being blown up, reformed into another thing. And if Kraang Prime dies, his control of the Utroms is disrupted, they go back to normal because that's how a hivemind works, and the show shows us that in "Worlds Collide."

You only mentioned two, but I'll address them: whether the Kraang can speak out of their exosuits or not, and the two contrary explanations of the Utroms. There are no contradictions in either case. The Kraang can't speak out of their exosuits. They are never shown speaking out of their exosuits. The Utroms can, because the Utroms aren't brainwashed and have a lot more independent thought. Kraang Subprime can speak because he was never part of the hivemind; He was an Utrom who defected, and the whole reason he was higher up in the hierarchy was BECAUSE he could think more independantly. Furthermore, there aren't two explanations; there's one. A scientist named Kraang used mutagen to give himself immense psychic power, enslaved most of the utroms, renamed them into the Kraang after himself, leaving the remaining Utroms. The turtles are told they're another faction first, before getting the full details when they meet the Utroms themselves later, and none of the information is contradicted. I really don't know what you're talking about when you mention these apparent inconsistencies.

And sure, if another movie comes out that shows that the Kraang are back, then I'll eat my words. But I don't think we'll get one, and with all the information we have right now from the show itself, there is no reason to not just take the story at face value, instead of insisting that the thing it says happened didn't happen. At that point, it's just speculation for its own sake.

Correct. We can either assume KSP made his way out of the Mirage universe (which fits the running joke of him always coming back) and died on the Technodrome, same as the first time. Or Kraang Prime was able to repair the Technodrome without him and everything with the Triceratons unfolded exactly the same. With Prime dead and the hive mind effect broken.


Right, it’s still compatible with the Mad Max arc.

I think the Kraang's fate was left deliberately vague.

They were "defeated" so the writers didn't have to bring them up again, but their demise wasn't explicit which leaves open the possibility of bringing them back for a future special if it ever gets made.

Can someone give me more info about Krang Primordius and his comic? A quick Google search didn't give me much.

I don’t think it was vague at all. But just like any other sci-fi fiction, there’s a way to bring back any character you previously killed off if you’re clever enough.

Case in point: Kraang Primordious.

I'm also kind of wondering about the people who consider Krang's appearances in this show to be canon to the FW show. Ignoring all the other problems trying to square these crossovers with that show (the nature of the Rock Soldiers for example) even though Krang always looked like an Utrom, it's kind of strange to say he is one in the FW show if his original form is that of a lizard monster.

Uhhh, yeah. I consider them canon to the extent of “oh the FW characters are back”.

But with all the stupid plot holes, I don’t necessarily consider those stories canon to the FW show. If that makes sense.

Even in the 87 show, Krang has two different backstories. But as for the crossovers, literally every single usage of the 87 turtles outside of the 87 show has continuity issues that don't really gel with the show.

These aren't really "consequential" crossovers, they're just "for fun" crossovers. Same with Turtles Forever, same here, same when old Sitcoms would just have other shows guest star for no reason other than to have the characters in the same room.

And honestly, the 87 show didn't agree with itself half the time. There's no real need to insist upon rigorous continuity analysis now.