Board Thread:New on TMNTPedia/@comment-25877223-20150202042533/@comment-995426-20160507005146

On the subject of Leonardo and love, I highly, highly recommend reading two Mirage TMNT stories: Blind Sight and Swan Song. Also, Blind Faith, because the events of Blind Sight are its direct sequel, and will make the events of the story make more sense in context.

Blind Sight includes Leo experiencing a vision of another life, where he's a samurai in feudal Japan. But more than that, he has a wife...and a daughter. And in retrospect, I can think of one 2012 TV series character who greatly resembles them both.

But more interesting than their deep spiritual love, is what happens after Radical is murdered by Complete Carnage. She was alive, and then she was gone, just like that. The grief and unfulfilled desire for vengeance gnaw at Leonardo's soul, until he chooses to enter a monastery, where he trains for decades to become a bodhisattva in an effort to free himself of attachments. He then finds Radical's killer and tries to forgive him. But Carnage is irredeemably depraved, and he reacts to Leo's gesture by swiftly killing another innocent human being. Leo is still not as detached as he'd like to think he is, and in one last act of anger, hatred and vengeance, he kills Carnage. But this again taints his spirit, and he spends untold years longer getting back on track. It doesn't say exactly how old he is when he dies, but he's at least a century old (that ornately-decorated bokken was given to by him Donatello for his 100th birthday), and perhaps even two or more. And he appears to have finally obtained that buddhahood, or something close to it.

Many stories focus too narrowly only on the love people find in the here and now, and less on how that love continues to affect them after those loved ones are gone.