Official Episode Discussion S2 Finale: The Invasion

[oldmanwinters]

Oh, man, this episode was like the ultimate twisted love letter to the old 1989 "The Turtle Terminator" episode:




Image credits:
http://turtles-ninja.narod.ru/pics/old/055.html

I actually will miss Irma's presence on the show. She seemed to be a nice balancing "third wheel" for the April-Casey dynamic. Plus, the show has dropped from three recurring female characters down to basically 1.5 within the last five episodes. Aw, well, little girls should probably look elsewhere than Saturday morning cartoons for finding relateable characters, I guess. (sarcasm latent)

But as far as her actual reveal, it was a ton of fun to behold, even if it did sorta come out of nowhere. There's a ton of unanswered questions that make me think that twist might have been a knee-jerk decision that got made very late in development. I mean... if the "Kraang Subprime" spy was ordered to infiltrate April's social circles within the past year:
(A) why didn't "Irma" betray April during the events of Season 1 when April's capture was the Kraang's priority #1, since she clearly already knew her enough to have each other's cell phone numbers.
(B) how is it that Kraang Subprime seems to speak perfect (and annoying) English dialect while almost the entirety of the species still struggles to grasp basic slang and sentence structure?
(C) considering Irma was captured and nearly killed multiple times this season by other threats (Rat King, Pizza Face, Chinatown Ghost, etc.), how long was Kraang Subprime going to wait to reveal its true nature? Was he that hardcore of a spy?
(D) if Kraang Subprime's primary directive was to get April to reveal the location of the Turtles's lair, then why did it seem to waste a year doing stuff that served no purpose in the mission? Irma seemed really dedicated to her school work even when it didn't serve the purpose of leveraging info out of April.
(E) in fact, this episode may have been the first time Irma showed any prolonged interest in getting April to come clean about her "friends introduce friends to each other's friends" angle. Hence, I never suspected Irma had any ulterior motives until the early scenes of this episode... especially with her admission that she rarely notices the cold even in a mini-skirt.
(F) April has these special powers of perception but can't figure out there is something seriously messed up with her "best friend" [from the past year anyway]? Clearly, Casey Jones is the much better judge of character: "Irma... she's so nasty!"

Originally Posted by The Big Bad

No matter how many times they failed at getting April, getting her was always going to be more cost-effective than more random trying—especially since a) they can easily do both at the same time, and b) the more they wait to catch April, the higher the chance that she'll just eventually end up dying, meaning they'd have to wait more millennia for their perfect match. It makes no sense that they'd have an asset like Irma and not use her to, as you say, kidnap her when she's alone.


This isn't EVERYTHING, though—it's a change in what has been one of the more consistent bits of series lore. What's more, the weird thing isn't that April turned out to be not as important as advertised, but that what should have been treated as a game-changer goes completely unremarked. Even April-obsessed Donatello apparently has nothing to say about the fact that kidnapping April was apparently optional.

I totally agree. All the work of the past two seasons just seemed to be disregarded for the sake of an explosive and shocking season finale. I never watched Heroes, but I heard that the famous "save the cheerleader, save the world" mantra kinda became pointless during the 2nd season. I sense some possible parallels in TMNT.

Originally Posted by evan2000

I just found something freaky, Kraang sub-prime's android body actually has part-organic-part-mechanical organs that looked to resemble human lungs and heart! So that's how he successfully impersonate a human without being noticed about not breathing or heart not beating etc. He even fooled a ghost!

http://i.imgur.com/kpyafWN.gif

http://i.imgur.com/nx6B2Su.gif

Loved all these tiny details that Ciro & co. actually spent effort to put into the show!

Those are some great shots!