To practically everyone’s surprise, Michelangelo showed his more serious side in The Last Ronin–though one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic proved that, while fans were definitely shocked by Michelangelo’s metamorphosis, they really shouldn’t have been, as his darker transformation was teased long before The Last Ronin.
2020’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is a five-part miniseries set in the future of the TMNT universe following the last surviving member of the original four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One of the biggest initial appeals of this series was the mystery behind which Turtle it was who outlived his brothers–and out of the four of them, it is fair to say that Michelangelo is the one who was the least likely to devolve into a dark, brooding lone warrior, tortured by the trauma of his past. Michelangelo is TMNT’s resident ‘party dude’, after all, so seeing him in this light definitely took a lot of people by surprise, especially when compared with the other Ninja Turtles, who have each exhibited more ‘lone wolf’ attitudes than Michelangelo ever has. However, being alone wasn’t what defined the Last Ronin (despite the series’ namesake), as that was just a byproduct of his survival skills–and Michelangelo proved that his skills are god-tier (literally).
TMNT’s Michelangelo Outmaneuvered a Hunting God, Confirming His Survival Skills
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #83 by Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz, and Dave Wachter, the Ninja Turtles have ventured into the realm of the gods in search of one who would help them defeat the sinister deity, the Rat King. After already having met most of the Pantheon, the Turtles decided that the one most likely to join their fight is the God of the Hunt, Manmoth. Manmoth deliberately lived in the harshest conditions, leading his seemingly eternal life in a perpetual hunt, as he believed that to be the only true way to live. So, naturally, when the Ninja Turtles came to him, he responded by hunting them. While every member of the TMNT were able to effectively avoid and dodge all Manmoth’s attacks, only one was able to out-hunt the deity and trap him in a makeshift snare: Michelangelo–thereby earning him Manmoth’s respect and cementing himself as the superior survivor of his brothers.
This comic issue came out in 2018, two years before the launch of The Last Ronin and even longer before it was widely known that Michelangelo was the titular dark and tortured Turtle–and it sets up his transition perfectly. When Mikey and his TMNT brothers were being hunted by Manmoth, they were perhaps closer to death than they’ve ever been before, and only Michelangelo found it within himself to overcome the deadly obstacle at hand and find a way to stay alive. On the surface (just like with The Last Ronin mystery) it seems as though Donatello should have been the one to design a trap capable of stopping a god, or Leonardo should have bested him with his skill set and bravery, or Raphael should have thrown caution to the wind and defeated the god with sheer rage and willpower alone–it certainly didn’t seem as though ‘party dude’ Mikey should have been the one to take Manmoth down, just as it didn’t seem like he’d become the Last Ronin.
In essence, this is one of the first times Michelangelo has proven himself to be superior to his brothers in such a side-by-side comparison, especially given the seriousness of that situation–and that alone makes the fact that he’d end up being the last surviving member of his brothers totally believable, as that dark transformation was teased in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before The Last Ronin.