Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review – Season 3, Episode 3: Buried Secrets

It’s time for a Halloween episode! This is the episode attendees at New York Comic Con got to see at the TMNT panel in almost finished form, and believe me when I tell you I’m considering not having my six-year old watch it because it’s a little scary. If you like that kind of thing, though, this shouldn’t disappoint. Let’s get to it!

Not So Quick Summary: Is everyone ready … to clean?

Turns out ninja skills can also be pretty handy in cleaning an old farmhouse, provided the rivalry between Donatello and Casey Jones for April’s affection doesn’t mess things up. But it does, and in the chaos, Michelangelo stumbles onto a trap door. It looks pretty spooky down there, and everyone except Leonardo calls “Not it!” to see who has to go down into the basement first.

And … it’s a Kraang stealth ship that looks like it’s been buried there for years. Donnie doesn’t want anyone to touch anything inside, but Mikey does by accident, revealing a woman in stasis. Not just any woman either — it’s April’s mom, missing for over a decade. The mutants make Mrs. O’Neil faint, and the reunion does the same thing to April.

When she comes to, Mrs. O’Neil tells her story: the Kraang ship has been there for decades, and was activated by her great grandfather. The Kraang ended up experimenting and Great Grandpa O’Neil and his entire bloodline, figuring the family was the key to unlocking the potential of the mutagen. The aliens knew April was especially important, and when the family attempted an escape, Mom ended up getting caught and placed in stasis. Seems plausible, I suppose.

The Turtles have to lie when she asks about April’s dad, with Leonardo saying Kirby is on a safari in Puerto Rico.The only one who isn’t thrilled about Mom is Mikey, who says he’s getting “ninja vibes” and that he doesn’t trust her. Later, as April and her mom talk outside, Mikey charges to attack. April isn’t having that, of course, and the other Turtles interrogate Mikey and point out his track record of making outrageous claims and not having them pan out. Undeterred, he says he’ll prove it to them.

Later, Mom wants April to go away with her and leave the Turtles behind since “they’re just a bunch of freaks.” Mikey is emboldened by the fact that Ice Cream Kitty also doesn’t like Mom, and he follows here into the woods, where he sees her with an alien face. She’s also about to dump mutagen out there, but when Mikey confronts her, he finds out Mom is pretty tough. We see shadows of her changing into a monster of some sort, and Mikey’s scream echoes back to the farmhouse.

In the Kraang ship, April tells off Mikey, storming out while Donnie works on finding out the truth. He’s just about to blurt it out when “Mikey” starts sprouting tentacles, and whatever the Mom-thing is, it takes Donnie’s form next. Leo notices that Donnie’s laptop is smashed and gets suspicious, but he also gets attacked.

Raph is back in the house watching something with a flashing jack-o’-lantern on the screen when Leo comes in. They head to the basement and it’s tentacle time again, and Raph narrowly escapes by using a smoke bomb. April and Casey are outside, where she tells him about her mom’s ultimatum. A panicked Raph comes running outside, but the others are naturally skeptical of his story — especially since the creature has reassumed Mom’s form. A few seconds later, Mom shows her true colors when she tries making off with April, eventually turning into what must be her actual shape: something straight out of a nightmare with a long neck, spider-like body, multiple legs and a head that splits down the middle. Yikes.

The remaining trio hides in the barn, but Mom-thing smashes its way in. Casey tries electrocuting it, but that proves useless, and Raph and Casey are soon taken and swallowed up inside the creature’s body. It tries convincing April to join her and become “one of us,” even producing the heads of the first three captured Turtles through openings in its body. Okay, that’s spooky and gross. It grabs April as well and all seems lost, but her psychic powers kick in and bring things to an explosive, not to mention messy, conclusion.

That was intense! In the aftermath, after Mikey says they feel like what puke pukes up, Donnie reveals that he discovered that “Mom” was an early Kraang infiltration experiment made up of alien and O’Neil DNA. The Kraang stashed it in stasis after they decided it was too dangerous. Leo wonders if they should be discussing this around April, who says she feels like she lost her family all over again. Leo offers an encouraging word about how they are her new family, and Mikey gloats about how he was right. Alas, when asked about where the mutagen that the Mom-thing was spilling earlier in the night, Mikey can’t remember where that might have been.

You know what that means … And the camera pans to show us we’re probably going to be dealing with a mutant frog next episode.

Favorite moment: Mikey makes Ice Cream Kitty a hat made out of whipped cream and a cherry. And it’s adorable.

Final thought: I’m not a horror movie fan, but this episode should be a lot of fun for people to dissect references to famous scary flicks. I recognized The Thing, Halloween 3 and Night of the Living Dead homages, possibly a little Invasion of the Body Snatchers in there too, though I’m sure there are a bunch more. And, of course, the characters getting picked off one by one is just a classic horror movie meme in general.

Just be cautious about this one around the younger Turtles fans in your household. They might find it a little too intense.