Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is a five-issue comic book miniseries published by IDW Publishing. The series is written by Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz, based on a story by Eastman and Peter Laird, and drawn by Esau & Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop, and Eastman. The story follows characters from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise in an alternative future, wherein the last remaining turtle seeks to avenge the death of his brothers by killing the grandson of one of the Turtles' arch-enemies, the Shredder. Despite being published by IDW, it is unconnected to the IDW series' continuity and is set in its own universe, dubbed the "Roninverse".
The Last Ronin was followed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin - Lost Years and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin II - Re-Evolution in 2023. A video game adaptation, developed by Black Forest Games and published by THQ Nordic, is in development.
Plot
In the future, New York City is ruled by Oroku Hiroto, grandson of the Shredder and son of Karai, running the city with meticulous fascism and totalitarianism. A lone turtle, haunted by hallucinations of his deceased brothers, works to end Hiroto, whom he blames for his brothers' deaths. He traverses through the now heavily guarded New York City, fighting against synthetic ninjas (dubbed Synjas) on his way to the Foot Clan headquarters. He crashes out of the building, having failed his mission, and retreats into the sewer as a teenage girl called Jones follows. She finds the turtle attempting seppuku before passing out from blood loss, and wakes up to see an older April O'Neil, who identifies the turtle as Michelangelo.
Flashback sequences in a sepia tone and in the style of the original Mirage comics reveal the events that led up to the present. After Shredder's death, the Turtles and the Foot Clan originally made a truce, which fell apart as Karai tried to end the conflict between their families once and for all. An ambush leaves Splinter severely injured, and an enraged Raphael confronts Karai in an attempt to kill her, but Raphael drowns and Karai is put in a coma from the fight. Baxter Stockman sends an ambush to retrieve Professor Honeycutt, which kills Leonardo and Casey Jones, and a deceitful peace meeting set up by the Foot Clan has Donatello and Splinter killed as well. Mikey left New York and lived in solitude for years, accompanied by Splinter's journal, but a fight with a gang makes him realize that it is his duty as the final remaining member of the Hamato family, the Ronin, to kill Hiroto.
Mikey catches up with April and meets her daughter, Casey Marie Jones, who is part of a small resistance movement and is training herself to fight the Foot Clan. As Mikey grapples with his feelings on the resistance movement, Casey's inexperience, as well as his advancing mutation, Hiroto puts the entire city under Martial Law in order to wrestle more control over it, which forces Casey Marie to gather resistance forces to stage an assault on Baxter Stockman's Fortress to disable the technology used by the Foot Clan. April, Casey, and Mikey get the remains of Professor Honeycutt to kill Stockman and send a power outage throughout the entire city.
The power outage causes a flood in the sewers that threatens to drown the resistance members and April. April reveals to Casey Marie that Casey is a mutant due to the former's extended exposure to the mutagen inside the turtles. While Casey Marie tries to stop the flooding and rescue her mother, Mikey confronts Hiroto, who kills Karai and is now equipped with a special metal suit, and they both engage in a battle. They both land in the city outskirts, where Hiroto electrocutes himself to death and mortally injures Mikey, where Casey and April bid farewell as he dies. While Mikey reunites with his brothers, Casey Jones, and Splinter in the afterlife, Casey Marie begins raising a new generation of mutant turtles to train them in the ways of ninjitsu.
Development and publication history
In December 2019, it was teased that a new TMNT project, dubbed The Last Ronin, would begin publication in the summer of 2020. In April 2020 the series was properly announced, Kevin Eastman revealing the story was based off an old story outline written by Eastman and Peter Laird back in 1987, before he updated it with Tom Waltz. While Laird did not write the series, he is credited with the story behind it along with Eastman and Waltz. Andy Kuhn was set to be the original artist for the series, before being replaced with Esau & Isaac Escorza, with Ben Bishop joining the project to illustrate the flashback sequences.