Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20160227225840/@comment-995426-20160412164945

Huh, something just occurred to me. (Yoshimickster, I'd love to hear what you have to think about this.) There is one more way a fast and easy Ramona romance can "work" without interpersonal consequences. They can...end up dying together for a greater good. I mean, the implications have been building for a while now. I'll explain.

Compared to the Ulixes, the Time Scepter never changes its own past&mdash;it just allows time travel to help ensure that the "correct" future is secured within its own timeline. However, the Ulixes went back in time specifically to change the past and alter the Earth's fate. If they succeed, it will necessarily create a different timeline where Earth isn't destroyed. This means the turtles on Earth may never actually go into space in the new timeline. Which means, there will be two sets of characters existing at the same time. And in genre-savvy terms, that means one of the two teams will likely have to go.

There are reasons to believe the space turtles (or at least some of that set of characters) may be doomed. For all we know, Salamandria may have been destroyed, right? And yet the last episode ended with Mona surviving. She may be in an among-the-last-of-her-kind situation. If the Earth turtles aren't necessarily going anywhere, then helping save the Earth may be a noble act of sacrifice for the space turtles, and Mona may be part of that, perhaps helping take out Newtralizer in the process. And Raph and the turtles could join her in one last selfless moment to ensure the Earth turtles have their future.

Alternatively, the space turtles can die, but Mona can survive on Earth, albeit in a timeline of Earth turtles where Raphael never loved her, and was never necessarily going to love her anyway without the same circumstances happening again. (And, if my theory of slightly different origin universes is true, earth Raph may never have had the same potential to love her at all.) But they could become friends, as Yoshimickster suggested.

Ultimately, I want for Raphael what made his character and story on this show so fantastic to begin with: More time with Slash. Slash is this Raph's Ninjara&mdash;the one dearest, most substantial love he can't forget about. I mean, season 3 seemed to abruptly change the characters in a lot of jarring ways anyway, right? Maybe season 3 from beginning to end was a slightly separate universe all along from what came before.

The likelihood of all this happening on-show? Not great, since the far more realistic explanation of continuity being lost is because of the higher turnover in writers and editors on the show and the changing whims of the producers and the demands of their merchandising partners. But as an adult comics reader, I've always been spoilt by strong long-term continuity, because adult comics readers tend to have long memories and pay more attention to detail. It could be that this show was inevitably always going to disappoint expectations like these.