Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Brings the Franchise to a Brand-New World

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a bold new vision of the franchise – unlike anything we’ve seen since the franchise first began in 1984. Director Jeff Roew and co-writers Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Dan Hernandez, and Benji Samit lean more into the “teenage” and “mutant” aspects of the characters, opening a lot of new storytelling doors, which lead to a destination that’s never been explored in the TMNT franchise before… 

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW! 

The major arc of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem‘s storyline sees the four turtle brothers  -Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Donatello (Micah Abbey), and Raphael (Brady Noon) – all suffering the teen angst of wanting to “fit in” and “be normal” like other NYC teens. That plan is harder than it sounds, as humanity is initially really hesitant to accept animal humanoid mutants into their midst. 

The climactic battle between the turtles, their mutant allies, and the kaiju-sized villain Superfly (Ice Cube) does the job of making the shelled warriors into heroes. That victory gives the turtles exactly what they wanted: a shot at a normal teenage life.

TMNT Go to High School

Due to their new status as heroes, the turtles get enrolled at April O’Neil’s (Ayo Edebiri) high school, where they are welcomed by the applause of their fellow students, and each of them finds their lane. 

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem mid-credits scene shows that Donny joins the computer club and finds his fellow nerds; Mikey joins an acting impro troupe; Raph gets his aggression out on the wrestling team, and Leo joins April on the investigation into TCRI. 

This new status quo for the Ninja Turtles is, as stated, a direction that the franchise has never really gone in before. The Turtles’ status quo as sewer-dwelling mutant oddities has been a standard for so long, but now there’s a whole lot of intrigue to see how they function in the human world. 

Paramount has already announced that Mutant Mayhem‘s story will continue into a Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Paramount+ series, which fill in the gap before the sequel film arrives. Tales of the TMNT seems like it will be the perfect platform for exploring how the turtles do in high school – and all the complications that come with mutants trying to live a normal human life. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is now in theaters.