In 2023, one of the best reviewed films of the year starred an unlikely group of established characters. While only a modest success with a $180 million haul from a $70 million budget, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, critics loved the film, praising its bold art direction, which mimicked the look of “overworked” art done by teenagers, and the decision to cast actual teenagers for the main foursome for the very first time. That last move, in particular, infused the movie with a sense of youthful energy that made it unique in the history of the long-running franchise.
A sequel is in the works, planned for fall 2027, but in the meantime, the TMNT parent company, Nickelodeon, has made efforts to keep those versions of the characters active with action figures, video games, a new comic book series from IDW comics, a theatrical short in theaters now and an animated series that just quietly dropped its second season on Paramount Plus.
Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brings back the four actors who voiced the Turtles in Mutant Mayhem, along with some of their co-stars and a shocking lineup of guest stars like Pete Davidson, Kieran Culkin, Ralph Ineson, and Peter Stormare. Working on a limited budget for streaming, the art style isn’t — and couldn’t be — the same as the film, but it adapts the designs into a sketchy, lively animation style which looks a bit like living doodles. The look works well for the spinoff series and compliments the young vibes of the Turtles themselves.
The first season, which arrived in the Summer of 2024, consisted of 12 episodes. While it included inspired reimaginings of classic characters and great new mutants, the way the stories were structured left room for improvement. The 12 episodes were divided into two stories of six episodes each, and the long arcs sometimes seemed to drag things out. Fortunately, Season 2 was restructured to give each Turtle a three-episode arc. This ensures each Turtle has their time to shine and keeps the stories tight and fun. Showrunners Christopher Yost and Alan Wan also manage to find some new ground for the Turtles, which is not always an easy thing to do with a 40-year-old property.
The first story arc centers around Raphael, who joins an underground fight club to get out his excess aggression. The club is run by the Purple Dragons, a street gang that has shown up in most versions of the TMNT — they were actually the first villains to appear in their very first comic. Tales did a good job establishing them in season 1 and expands on the group in season 2. Raphael’s fight club story also delves into the dynamics of the four brothers and what sets him apart.
The second batch of episodes, which focus on Donatello, is the best of the bunch, full of bold new ideas for the franchise along with some nostalgic character callbacks. If you’re a fan of the vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you might remember Tokka and Rahzar, the mutant snapping turtle and wolf from the 1991 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Secret of the Ooze. For Donatello’s story, new versions of both appear on an island run by Dr. Jordan Perry (a reimagining of the character who created them in The Secret of the Ooze).
Here, Perry is a disgruntled scientist trying to replicate mutagen, but he creates creatures with an unstable mutation, which means the mutants essentially explode (they don’t die, however, they just revert to their original animal forms). There’s also a few other classic villains from the original toy line — Wyrm, Antrax and Scale Tail — none of which will be remembered by casual fans but are much-appreciated deep cuts for die-hards.
Donatello’s story also has an utterly hilarious running joke that needs to be called out. In Mutant Mayhem, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saved the city and became celebrities in the process. So in Tales, they’re often fawned over by the public and people randomly come up to them and snap selfies with them. The joke comes when Tokka shows up and everyone thinks this hulking eight-foot snapping turtle monster is one of the Ninja Turtles and rush to snap selfies with him.
Leonardo’s story is up next and, much like Mutant Mayhem put Leo front and center and explored him like no movie has before, Tales expands upon the TMNT leader’s story and adds even more layers to the already nuanced take of what can sometimes be a flat character. In his Season 2 Tales arc, Leo isn’t content with having saved the city just once, he wants to serve the city on a regular basis, so he becomes a Batman-like vigilante known as Night Ninja.
Stories of a Turtle gone rogue — and even dressing up like Batman — have been done in the past, and this version has a lot of fun with the premise, particularly with Leo’s Christian Bale-like vigilante voice. The standout moment comes with its villain, a cat named Scratch who tangled with Splinter before his mutation, causing him to lose an eye. While Scratch was the name of a classic Ninja Turtles toy from 1993, here he’s much more like Old Hob, an original character established in 2011 by IDW comics. Besides the name change, it’s a faithful adaptation of the most interesting characters from the modern era of TMNT.
Finally, there’s Michelangelo’s story, which sees his human friend Rod (Davidson) get kidnapped. The nunchuck-wielding Turtle sets out to find him. Rod was introduced in season 1 and, honestly, can get a bit tiresome, but this version introduces a bold new take on the classic character of Muckman, and there is some Big Lebowski-like fun to be had in the story.Tales is not without its faults. While most of Mutant Mayhem’s core cast — like Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne and Post Malone — revive their roles in the show, some do not, like Jackie Chan’s Splinter, Paul Rudd’s Mondo Gecko and John Cena’s Rocksteady. The absence of such big names for a streaming kids cartoon on a limited budget is understandable, but instead of replacing these core characters with soundalikes, the characters just don’t speak at all. Instead, they make strange noises. It’s less bothersome in season 2 as we simply see less of those characters, but it’s a frustrating choice that would have been solved by employing soundalikes, a common practice in cartoons adapted from films.
There’s also the same storytelling device where the Turtles recount what happened, so that each arc is led into by a turtle essentially saying “Let me tell you a story” before going into the story itself. This echoes back to the original Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series from the 1990s, but it also makes it unclear if the events being portrayed are taking place in their universe, or just tall tales fabricated by the Turtles.
Beyond those two nitpicks, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a fun, funny, action-packed cartoon with really strong art direction, which makes it a real shame that, before this new season dropped on December 12, it was reported a month earlier that the series was canceled. This leaves almost two full years without new TMNT on the big or small screen before Mutant Mayhem’s sequel arrives. It makes you wonder if Paramount is invested in this take on the Turtles at all. While there have been rumors reported about a potential third film in the Mutant Mayhem universe being considered, canceling a solid show like Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doesn’t inspire confidence.
Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is streaming now on Paramount Plus.
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