Skully is a recurring object in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Description[]
Skully is a dark purple tea kettle with a silver spout, a brown wood handle, and angular silver accents. On its back is the design of the Kuroi Yōroi's faceplate.
History[]
Skully was originally the face piece of the mystic Kuroi Yōroi 500 years ago, but sometime after the defeat of the Shredder and before the main events of the series, the piece came into the possession of the Hamato Clan, who somehow fashioned it into a tea kettle. This kettle was passed down through generations of the Hamato Clan as a family heirloom until it was passed to Hamato Yoshi, who remained ignorant of its true nature until "End Game".
Skully was first depicted in "Mystic Mayhem" on a shelf of Splinter's Do Not Touch Cabinet within the lair TV room.
Skully reappeared in "Down with the Sickness" depicted on the counter in Splinter's bedroom as he stumbled to the lair arcade.
Splinter poured himself tea from Skully in "The Longest Fight" while listening to his sons bargain for use of the TV room projector.
The Foot Clan knew that one of the pieces of the Kuroi Yōroi was in the Hamato Clan's possession. Their infiltration of Montes Auction House in "Hot Soup: The Game" was motivated by intelligence that an object once belonging to Lou Jitsu was being kept there. When they discovered that it was only a vintage video game cartridge and that it was the only item in the auction house associated with Lou Jitsu, they withdrew their forces. Splinter later poured himself tea from Skully before settling to play Hot Soup: The Game.
In "Turtle-dega Nights: The Ballad of Rat Man", Skully appeared on Splinter's Do Not Touch Cabinet.
Skully was used by Splinter to pour himself a cup of tea in "Snow Day".
In "End Game" when April O'Neil learned that the Foot believed that Yoshi possessed the last piece of the armor, she informed Splinter and they started searching the lair, not sure what the piece would even look like. But it didn't take long for them to realize that it was actually Skully sitting on the kitchen stovetop. Splinter consulted the Mystic Aura for advice on what to do, and the Mystic Aura instructed Splinter that he should simply keep Skully concealed for the rest of his life. But the Turtles were captured on a mission attempting to take the rest of the Kuroi Yōroi. When the Mystic Aura further advised that Splinter should let his sons die as martyrs so that the Foot would never collect the Kuroi Yōroi, Splinter went against this advice and planned to rescue his sons himself. He and April managed to infiltrate the Hidden City shrine where both the armor and the Turtles were being kept; they did not locate the Turtles, but they did confront Baron Draxum. Draxum, who at the time was the leader of the Foot, had himself captured Splinter's sons, offered a trade of the final armor piece in exchange for the lives of the Turtles. Faced with the offer, Splinter thought he was no closer to freeing his sons, so he reluctantly opened a portal to his lair with Leonardo's ōdachi and handed Skully over to Draxum, who used it to complete and start wearing the Kuroi Yōroi. In the process, Skully had mystically changed shape from a tea kettle to its original form as a face piece for the armor. Splinter was too late to discover that his sons had actually freed themselves from captivity, and he had in fact traded the armor piece for nothing. Draxum had wanted to possess the Kuroi Yōroi for himself, and the Foot allowed him to believe they were cooperating to gather the armor so Draxum could wield it. But prophecies known to the Foot had foretold that the Kuroi Yōroi would require a sacrifice of a being of great power before the Shredder could reawaken within the armor. The Foot had planned to allow Draxum, who coveted the armor, unwittingly sacrifice himself the first time he put it on. But this did not happen, and Draxum was still fully conscious and in control while wearing the armor. This bothered Foot Lieutenant and Foot Brute, and later they discussed why the armor was not behaving as foretold, and they concluded that it must possess a flaw. April overheard this and informed the Turtles. Donatello recalled that, when he and his brothers were still very young, they were trying to play sports ball in the lair, but lacked a ball to play with, so Raphael grabbed Skully to use it as a substitute. Raph threw the kettle to Donnie, but no one caught it, and it shattered. Splinter had come to investigate the noise and ask if the Turtles had seen Skully. Luckily, and bizarrely enough, the kettle had mostly inexplicably reassembled itself in time for Leo to hand it back to his father. But Michelangelo noticed it still had a hole in it. Fearing that Splinter would discover Skully had been damaged, Mikey hurriedly forced his Jupiter Jim figure into the hole. This deception worked; the kettle continued to function as normal, and Splinter never noticed the hole or that a toy was plugging it. The Turtles were able to spot the toy still poking out of the Kuroi Yōroi's helmet, and with April's help, they used the force of a baseball to eject the toy out of its hole. This instantly also ejected Draxum from the armor, which could now finish reassembling itself. The Kuroi Yōroi fed on Draxum's power to within an inch of his life, and with this the Shredder finally showed life within the armor for the first time in 500 years. Skully would not be separated from the armor again, nor the armor from the Shredder, and therefore would never again be used as a tea kettle.
Skully, along with the rest of the Kuroi Yōroi, was finally destroyed in "Finale Part 4: Rise" by the combined spiritual power of the Hamato Clan and their Hamato Ninpō, with the additional help of two of their former enemies who had originally helped assemble the armor pieces for the Foot Clan: The now-penitent Draxum, and the former Foot recruit Cassandra Jones.
Trivia[]
- Splinter seems attached to Skully despite not knowing its true importance and refers to Skully as "he" in "End Game".
- Splinter remarks that tea made with Skully consistently tasted like "plastic and evil", however, he may have merely been joking ("End Game").
Appearances[]
This list only contains Skully's appearance as an object separate from the Kuroi Yōroi.
Season 1[]
- "Mystic Mayhem"
- "Down with the Sickness"
- "The Longest Fight"
- "Hot Soup: The Game"
- "Turtle-dega Nights: The Ballad of Rat Man"
- "Snow Day"
- "End Game"