Wonder if there will be a Mona Lisa?

[Kingoji]

First off, I really like that first persons take on redesigning her. That really captured the aesthetic of the new series, IMO.

I'd never seen the episode with Mona Lisa because to my knowledge it never aired over here, along with pretty much anything after the first maybe three seasons. What I knew about her I had picked up from fans online, and their opinions were divisive. So on the one hand she was this adorable yet self-empowered mutant that compliments Raphael by holding a mirror up to his character, but has a personality and motivations unique to herself. On the other hand she was a token female that was written in primarily to give one of the Turtles a love interest, but whom to be fair seemed to mostly get hate because there were so many people who saw and insisted there were more to her than that.

Sooo, this morning I've watched her episode for the first time. And I think I'd lean more to the former than the latter, but there are definitely elements of both. What I was surprised to discover after watching it for myself, and that I had never heard anyone talk about before, is that she doesn't seem to have a particular interest in Raphael at all. She was a bit flirtatious at first, but that was before she realised he wasn't just some schmoe in fancy dress and were just using him to get her where she needed to be. After that she's basically just a fangirl of the whole team, and Raphael just happens to be one she's most comfortable with because they spent most of the episode working together. Yeah, Raph seems to be into her, but that felt a bit one-sided and, honestly, could easily also be viewed as having just made a fast friend. I certainly didn't get the impression that this was a romance for the ages. In fact I seem to recall that Leonardo had a MUCH bigger thing for Lotus, but I never see anyone demand that gets revisited.

But anywhoo, I guess my opinion of her now as formed for myself for the first time is that she was one of the less-stupid things the old show ever did, and I can see her getting a reworking and/or update could work pretty well. If she were done as someone who was say, mutated by careless waste disposal becoming something of an eco-warrior. Someone who would have been at the front of a protest rally when she were human who now has the power to take more direct action. Someone who is maybe so blinded by her own cause that it could lead to conflict with the Turtles. And yeah, it'd be a nice nod to have Raphael be the one to reach out to her, I honest to god see absolutely no need, historical canon or otherwise, to pair her off with someone in a romantic way.

That said, maybe she could be Mondo's older sister or something.