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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are one of the most beloved entertainment franchises in the world—spanning comic books, hit animated series, blockbuster movies, and toys that defined childhoods. But in the late ’90s, the franchise made one of its strangest moves ever: introducing a fifth, female turtle named Venus de Milo in the live-action TV show TMNT: The Next Mutation.
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I am Shinobi
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Hey, a girl turtle? Since their creation in the early 1980s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have become iconic fictional characters
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as have many of their allies and enemies. But you can certainly be forgiven if you've never heard of Venus de Milo
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The relatively obscure fifth turtle was retconned into the story of Leonardo
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Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael as part of a short-lived 1990s television series called Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation
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And you can also be forgiven if you've never heard of that either, because The Next Mutation is the turtle show that time forgot
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Hey Donnie, come watch Leo turn his noodle into strudel. In 1984, comic book creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird published the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
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A parody of comic book trends of the era, the book quickly became a hit. And in 1986, the characters made the jump to television in an animated cartoon
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Aimed squarely at children, that show depicted a more lighthearted version of the teen
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I don't know who you are, but thanks. You're not human. Bingo
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We're dealing with a real mind here. It would run an impressive 10 seasons
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Thanks to that success, its goofier, pizza-obsessed version of the Turtles became the one that most of the world would come to know
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The cartoon's popularity would also convince New Line Cinema to produce a live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie that brought the team to life using actors in turtle costumes
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That movie, which hit theaters in 1990, effectively split the difference between the dark tone of the comic and the light tone of the cartoon, and it turned out to be a massive hit
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Sequels were produced in 1991 and 1993, but those sequels were both noticeably more kid-friendly and increasingly less successful at the box office
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Several alternate plans were made for the fourth installment, one of which was called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4, The Next Mutation
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But due to the poor performance of Part 3, it was never actually made. It seemed like the concept had run its course
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and in 1996, even the Turtles decade-old cartoon show was finally cancelled
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But they wouldn't be gone for long, because in 1997 Saban Entertainment the company behind Mighty Morphin Power Rangers agreed to produce a live Turtles television series That series would be Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation And like previous iterations it found its heroes living in the sewers of New York City
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devouring pizza with strange toppings, and doing battle with Shredder and the Foot Clan
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Across the world in China, however, Splinter's old friend, Chung-E, learns that the evil Dragon Lord
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who leads a force of humanoid dragons called the Rank, is planning to escape from a prison dimension
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and into a realm of dreams that Splinter visits when he meditates
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When Splinter then becomes trapped in that dimension, Chung sends his star pupil to New York to help the turtles save their master
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That star pupil turns out to be a female mutant turtle named Mei Pei-Chi
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who eventually acquires the name Venus de Milo. After capturing her four male counterparts
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Venus reveals she was a previously unmentioned fifth turtle that was in their bowl when they were exposed to the mutagen that made them what they are
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Unlike the boys, however, she was washed down the sewer to Chinatown, where she was found by Chung-E, who took her to China and trained her in the art of Shinobi
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That training gives her weird mystic powers, which she uses to immediately defeat Shredder
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and the Foot Clan then disbands. It's over! The Foot is alive, and your master is insane
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You were never his family. Shredder is totally without honor! Then, the rank becomes the chief antagonist of the series
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Despite its title, Next Mutation was not based on the unmade 4th live-action Turtles movie
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In fact, some early promotional materials indicate it was once intended to be a continuation of the animated TV series
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but the show that was actually produced clearly was not. Characters like April O'Neil and Casey Jones are disappointingly absent
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as are fan-favorite villains like Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady. The turtles also aren't related by blood as they are in all previous versions
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and their behavior is even more juvenile than it was in the cartoons or movies
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Moreover, compared to those films, the turtle suits seem ugly and clumsy
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The combat is unconvincing, and several of the turtles have almost interchangeable voices
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making it occasionally difficult to tell them apart. Those voices, along with the turtles' personalities, also quickly become grating
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And despite its light tone, the show is never, ever actually funny
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A ninja must always keep his teeth clean of food That not an official rule is it But of course none of that is the real problem It not entirely clear who insisted that next mutation introduce a female turtle Some of those involved believed it was Fox executives
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while others believed it was someone at Saban or Playmate Toys. But whatever the truth, the situation was apparently such
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that the show would only be greenlit if Eastman and Laird would sign off on the new character
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Eastman, for his part, didn't love the idea, but was willing to make a go of it so the show would be made
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Laird, on the other hand, absolutely hated Venus. Why? Well, for starters, Laird had always
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considered the concept of a fifth turtle to be, in his own words, a weak, facile, creatively
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bankrupt idea. To be sure, he and Eastman had previously tinkered with the possibility on
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several occasions, including a potential fifth turtle named Kirby, who was designed for an
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unproduced movie plot. But Laird insists they were always careful to try and make any potential
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fifth turtle feel very different from the original four. Kirby, for example, would have come from an
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alternate dimension. Venus, however, who was lazily retconned into the turtle's origin story
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then coincidentally found and trained by another karate master, was the exact thing Laird always
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feared. In his blog, he even recalled that in the early days of the franchise, he would frequently
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get fan mail pitching a fit turtle. And according to him, many times the brilliant idea to explain
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this extra turtle was that instead of there being just four pet shop turtles in that glass bowl in
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the origin story, they were really five. Sigh. It's easy to see his point, but it's really just
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the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what didn't work about Venus. We can, after all
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appreciate the impulse to make the turtle's universe more inclusive through the addition
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of a female turtle and a culturally Chinese one to boot. But even from that perspective
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Venus was a disaster. And we're not just talking about her awkwardly shaped design
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which implied she has shell bosoms, although that was super weird. No
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it's more about her relationship to the other turtles. Despite believing they were the only
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four of their species, the boy turtles, right from the first moment they meet her
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seem to regard Venus solely as a potential love interest. And they don't seem to care about
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anything but how cute she is In fact it was to accommodate a possible romantic pairing of her with one of the others that the turtles were explicitly no longer a blood family and as a result she never really feels like one of the team There also the fact that Venus doesn get to fight like the boys do instead using ill shinobi magic and goofy mystical
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orbs to contribute to combat. And far from providing meaningful representation for a foreign
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culture, she's mostly portrayed as being cringe-inducingly ignorant of modern society and naive about life in general. Laird would grudgingly sign off on Venus for the television
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show, but Eastman's enthusiasm for the idea and the money it would make them would lead to a
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falling out that would eventually cause the dissolution of their partnership. The sad part
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though, is that it didn't have to go down like that. Venus could have actually been good. What
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makes us so sure? Well, to be sure, Venus was neither the first nor the last fifth turtle
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Not counting Zack, a human boy who was made an honorary fifth turtle in the 1987 episode of the
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cartoon called The Fifth Turtle, the first fifth turtle was actually Slash. Introduced in another
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episode from 1987 called Slash, the evil turtle from Dimension X. Depicted as both hero and
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villain, depending on the occasion, Slash has since reappeared in turtle cartoons, comics
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and video games. There was also Toca, a mutant snapping turtle introduced in the second live
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action movie, who has made occasional appearances in other media as well. And even April O'Neil
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was briefly transformed into a fifth turtle in the Archie Comics version of the comic books
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All of them came before Venus, and in 2015, the IDW Turtles comic series introduced Jenica
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a human assassin who was transformed into a mutant turtle after receiving a blood transfusion from Leonardo
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IDW would even introduce a new version of Venus herself in 2022
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Created in a lab by a Frankenstein-like mad scientist, this version of Venus was a whole new character who would accompany Donatello on a series of time-traveling adventures
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before sacrificing her life to save the other turtles. All of these fifth Turtles, including Jenica and the new Venus, were well-received
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And that's likely because they were all, as Laird insisted, different from the original four
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The original Venus, on the other hand, was completely rejected by fans
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and even a crossover with Saban's Power Rangers couldn't change the next mutation's fortunes
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It was cancelled after just one season, and, much to the relief of all involved
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it disappeared into history, as the Turtles show that time forgot