“Turtles, the Kraang have perfected the mutagen…”

– Leatherhead

Leatherhead is alive and on the run in Dimension X. Escaping briefly from the Kraang, he tries to contact the turtles on Earth, but he’s quickly captured before finishing his message. Meanwhile Donatello is hard at work on a new gadget for the heroes, when the Kraang dimensional gateway opens again. As soon as it does, Leatherhead’s message comes through, forcing Michelangelo to spring into action. Without a second thought, he jumps into Dimension X to find his friend, and his brothers go in right after him.

Arriving in Dimension X, the search for Mikey begins, and the others are forced to face off against freaky physics, strange electric guardians, and a whole host of other unknown creatures. Just when it looks like the fauna of this dimension is going to do in the turtles, Michelangelo arrives and saves them. He’s been there a great deal longer than his brothers, meaning time passes differently to go with its strange physics.

Reunited, the turtles make their way to a Kraang outpost, but are met by Traag and Granitor. Leonardo tries to lead the team into battle against the rock warriors, but it’s Michelangelo (who’s learned the ways of the dimension) that manages to defeat the two singlehandedly. Mikey leads the others into the Kraang facility, where they see the perfected mutagen in action. Earth can now be completely transformed into another Dimension X. They quickly find Leatherhead (who reveals that he’s been in the dimension for decades now), and head to the center of the facility.

The Kraang have opened portals to many different dimensions, and are ready to unleash a limitless army on the multiverse. The heroes spring into action, crushing as many Kraang as they can. While Leo, Raph, and Leatherhead kick butt, Mikey and Donnie shut down all the portals but one. They escape back to Earth, but not before Mikey blows up the entire Kraang facility and gets Donnie a power source for his new invention. This battle was won, but it’ll only be a matter of hours before the aliens recover, and the invasion begins.

The time for the finale has arrived, and this episode was the perfect lead-in. It’s full of the action the audience wants, gives just the right story (and ties together the overarching plan that’s been happening since the beginning of the season), and prepares for what’s likely to be the greatest battle of the series thus far. Many lingering plot points were addressed, like what happened to Leatherhead and Traag. The audience even got to see where the worms and the previously-thought-unique power crystal came from. Who would have guessed that it was just a Dimension X tree branch.

Perhaps the best part of the episode, though, was some very new and very interesting character development for Michelangelo. He’s had his moments over the last two seasons where his true cleverness and ingenuity came through, but this was a brand new showing by the youngest turtle. He proved that there’s something or some place for everyone to shine, and it’s just a matter of finding it. For Mikey, that was in Dimension X. The turtle was able to figure out everything within a matter of months (hours?), even though it had taken Donnie much longer just to get the modicum of knowledge he possessed. Truly, it was the brother-in-orange’s time to be a true hero.

This episode was perfect for what it needed to do, and even accomplished something great beyond that. It was a perfect setup episode, and teased at many great things to come in the season finale. Will the turtles stop a second Kraang invasion? What role does Shredder still have to play in what remains? Will Karai’s story take another step forward? The answers are just a few days away, so get ready shellheads!

Rating: 10/10