Current ages of the IDW TMNT Characters
 

In a post on Tumblr, Sophie Campbell answers a fan's question about the age of the Splinter Clan, And she seemingly just confirmed the current ages of all the Turtles, Including Alopex, Zink, Zanna and Mushroom.
https://www.tumblr.com/mooncalfe-art...x?source=share

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...04089ecee1357&

Wait... but didn't the IDW TMNT mutate at the same time? How does them having different ages make one iota of sense?

Remember they are reincarnated humans in this series, Hamato Yoshi's sons were all different ages in the past. Some of the Turtles were drawn younger as humans than others.

Huh? Wouldn't that mean they'd be like 500 years old, by that logic? Also, that's stupid. If my brother and I are twins and it turns out we're reincarnated from two brothers 500 years ago, and my brother was older than I in the past life, that doesn't make him older than me now. It doesn't even make anybody anything.

That’s weird, I always thought that Donatello was “younger” than Raphael but was just ridiculously smart.

Yeah, but they were dead so that don't count.

I forgot Tumblr was a thing. All I saw were a bunch of hand-wringing alphabet people on twitter complaining about Alopex being 17. Ultimately... who ****ing cares what any of their ages are. The series is called TEENAGE Mutant Turtles. They could have pretended they were teens for the entire series and those shippers would have been fine with it. But once an arbitrary number is attached, "Oh noooooooooo~"

Someone can post a pic, but in the Turtles human lives they were all very different ages. Leo looked the oldest, Mikey almost looked like a toddler/kid, Don and Raph inbetween. Obviously the time they were dead doesn't count, so they continued those ages once they were mutated.

Something just occurred to me. Leo is 22, Donnie is 21, Ralph is 20, and Mikey is 19. Tang Shen was firing one out every year! How much breast milk was she packing?

I know that it was a different time, but dammit woman, that’s a vagina, not a clown car!

I mean, by the time she got to Mikey, he practically strolled on outta there.

But that isn't the way reincarnation works. If I find out I lived for 35 years as a used car salesmen in a previous life and, like, 5 years as a dog in another one, that doesn't add 40 years to my age now. That's stupid beyond belief.

Who's to say how this works? We're dealing with something that's entirely fictional, whose rules were made up by various people. The only basis of comparison is other versions of the same made up thing. If the way it works here is that they lived their human lives, then their souls pick up where they left off in the turtles, then that's the way it works. Who are we to say different when it doesn't exist in the first place?

I think this is right.

But if you were a used car salesman, would you even have a soul to reincarnate with?

Seriously though, I think this is more about mitigating any criticism if any of the turtles were to have any “adult” relations with humans or human born mutants, ie, Leo with Carmen or Karai, or Donnie with Mona or April.

It makes me wonder about the legal status of animal-born mutants in the IDW comics.

I think the idea of reincarnation has been wasted. This is actually about the grudge between Yoshi and Saki, and the other one is about Saiki's past life being related to a dragon god. The Turtles are nothing, just because they were Yoshi's children in their previous life.

It might be interesting if some turtle actually had its own independent previous life story that wasn't even related to the Foot Clan or Homato family.

For example, perhaps Leo was once one of the demigods of the Pantheon or a powerful spirit who was an enemy of the Pantheon. For some reason, he lost his power and was reincarnated as an animal, but due to fate, he became a mutant turtle. But he is still most spiritual one than other turtle brothers, and mastered astral projection faster than others. But the gradual awakening of his previous life memories has also affected his current personality, whether good or bad, and even made him look like a schizophrenic. His story arc is related to the Pantheon, another is how he achieves a harmony and balance between his personality in this life and his previous life.

Do not forget that "QNA" samples were taken from the Hamato bodies. I thought this was something behind the "reincarnation".

Yes, but the writers did not follow up on this. If Krang need this to deal with Saki, why couldn't he reincarnate Yoshi and his four children into more powerful forms? There are still some unexplained foreshadowing in this book was forgotten or ignored. We also don't know four turtles japanese name in their previous life.

I can’t find this anywhere (I suspect it was over at the now defunct IDW message boards), but I distinctly remember someone sharing a script excerpt from #5 and it listed Leo as 4, Don and Raph as 3 and Mike as 2.

I remember asking Bobby or Tom if Raph and Don were twins, and they said yes.

Not because I think it’s “problematic”, but her being listed as 17 doesn’t really make sense to me either.

Using Leo as an example, I think Sophie and I have the same timeline for IDW. If he was 4 when Shen died, 15 when he was executed/reincarnated, 16 at the time of Change is Constant… I have 6 years passing between #1 and #150, so yes I agree he’s 22 by then.

But working backwards for Alopex, she’s only 11 in her first appearance? Seems wrong. Also, the turtles are different because you can just pick up from their human lives and count from there. But how do you convert adolescent arctic fox years to human years? She was probably not even 1 year old when she was mutated. It’s completely arbitrary.

Personally, I just consider her to “mentally” be the same age as Raph.

There’s also the aspect of the psychotropic serum. Splinter was injected directly before being mutated, so he immediately regained all of his memories.

Both the psychotropic and super soldier serums were part of the ingredients that made the “ooze” become “mutagen”, so the turtles had a different experience, but they still regained their old personalities and settled into their own maturity levels. So Sophie isn’t going chronologically or biologically, she’s just saying that’s their age “mentally”.

Which yeah, doesn’t really matter. I know 18 year olds that are more mature than others in their 30’s.

Also, IDW is the only universe where this can be applicable at all. I hate when people get in the weeds about their birth order in other versions. They’re all the same age, dummy!

:lol: underrated post.