Jason Aaron wrapped up his best-selling and critically acclaimed run on IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles today, alongside artist Juan Ferreyra, with issue #12. But rather than tidying things up with a bow, the issue ended with an absolute shocker of a moment that has to be picked up in some fashion in the upcoming run by Gene Luen Yang and Freddie E. Williams II. That’s because — and spoilers past this point — Splinter is back. And not only is the rat master of the Turtles back in action, he’s definitively alive and well, though somewhere else entirely.
To take a step back, Splinter was killed in the continuity of the IDW comics way back in 2019’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #100, sacrificing his own life to give Shredder — of all people — a second chance at redemption. Throughout Aaron’s run, the spirit of Splinter has infused the proceedings… First, it seemed thanks to Donatello losing his mind and talking to a dead, rotted rat he believed was his “father.” But over the course of the issues, it’s been clear that something more has been going on. April O’Neil has been fighting crime backed by an army of rats, and eventually all the Turtles seemed to hear the voice of Splinter through the rat corpse as well.
That leads to the end of TMNT #12, where the four Turtles gather around the gross rat… They believe he’s “trapped somewhere between life and death” and needs them to save him, or at least show him there’s a way back. The Turtles all gather around, a strange green mystic energy (or mystic ooze, if you will) starts to flow, and they see the form of Splinter in the green flame. Splinter is clearly trying to tell them something, but it doesn’t work. Instead, the rat corpse burns into a pile of ash.
The end, right? Nope! Cutting over to Karai, the daughter of Shredder, we discover what secret project she’s been working on for the past 12 issues and change. As she explains, she’s “Trying to pillage the secrets of the afterlife, the Yomi-No-Kuni.” Instead, she’s found something that is not the afterlife, but instead looks like an alleyway, complete with a fire escape on the side of the building.
As Karai laughs, the narration states that “I fear serenity is not in [the Turtles’] future. Or my own. The first thing that hits me is the agony. I’d forgotten how much it hurts… To be alive.” And yep, there’s Splinter, bathed in the green energy the Turtles conjured up a few pages earlier.
So where is Splinter? And why is Karai so tickled to see him back in the land of the living? While we can attest that at least the first few pages of TMNT #13 don’t deal with this directly, it’s a cliffhanger that will have to be dealt with sooner or later. Because Splinter is back, the daughter of Shredder is on his tail (perhaps literally), and things are just heating up in the world of TMNT.
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