#not be offensive or anything but having your fav character antagonized like this actually hurts

[000marie198]

Okaeee. I would normally agree but some of the tags were getting on my nerves so, my personal thoughts. These were formulated before I had even watched the movie:

The series itself had been subtly building up to it through the Leo centric moments of strategy, encouragement and inspirational speeches and the taking charge tendency when Raph wasn't able to for some reason.

Remember season 2 opening? Many Unhappy Returns? Or Man vs Sewers? Yeah...

It is a rule to have 10-11 long episode series to always end at a funny moment or a joke if there is not a cliffhanger so that last moment could be considered when thought of it as just for the finale episodes. But seeing it with the previous episodes of the season where there was subtle character development and exploration, it would make sense. So that scene could be considered both as a joke and as an actual decision.

Being a leader for two seasons straight And during the time when their mystic Hamato powers hadn't activated to their full potential yet, including the times when they were all actually in danger, Raphael had gone through the pressure and knows of the responsibility. Leo on the other hand hasn't gone through the same pressure and responsibility in the same way, where his brothers' lives were at stake.

It's his personality. Why would he wanna change his whole personality? Joking around and being a childish teen is part of who he is, and I think a Leonardo was long overdue to actually enjoy silly things and life when he could. I think he didn't even wanna be in the position instead of being carefree so he went with carefree. And y'all do remember that he copes with stuff by joking, right?

Comparing the moments of the movie's beginning to some moments in the series where the whole situation is actually serious, there have been numerous instances in the series where Leo was actually serious, like asking Splinter for training, protecting Karai etc. In here, there wasn't really much of a danger from his perspective. I mean, to him, it was just Warren and Hypno, they've been handling more dangerous villains then them during the series and now they've got mystic powers.

Why he be overconfident and impulsive? Well, remember how throughout many of the episodes in season one, his family never believed in him or trusted him with things and thought he was just clumsy and unable to do anything right no matter what he tried and they simply failed to realize his self confidence issues? And Leo coped with it half the time by faking that self confidence which only annoyed others further. They never even appreciated his "Punish me and let them go" moments and simply yelled at him. They were even doing it in Many Unhappy Returns till he revealed his plan and begged them to trust him so seeing Raph, the first person to fully trust him with something, being opposing of his crazy antics might've made him subconsciously associate that to those times and he reacted. None of what he did was sensible and was impulsive to an unplanned but emotionally reacting level. He was at fault, yes, made some really bad calls during the first half (aside from grabbing the key, that was the call which actually served to save that day but at what cost?) but that doesn't mean choosing him to lead was nothing but a joke or Splinter having a weird thought process.

Nobody knows a child better than their parents and Splinter knows his sons really well. He sees the potential in them, who they are and what they could do. He knows Donatello is astonishingly smart and wishes to spend more time with him. He knows no matter how gullible Raphael acts, he can always count on him to protect the family. He knows Michaelangelo is the purest of heart and not one to be underestimated but rather one to be fully trusted. And he knows Leo is the jokester but secretly a master strategist who was the only one to trick a master trickster and somebody who could do a lot more than meets the eye.

And ofcourse, op's point, he deserved some character development too. Ugh, at this point, I'm just reacting to the tags then the original post.

Also, Raph is a big brother and an anxious one too. All eldest siblings have that anxious fear for the younger ones that the younger siblings usually don't have to that big an extent. I mean, I am usually internally freaking out more than my Mom when my little brother takes too long to come home even though it could be possible that he's just stuck in traffic or something. Point being, Raph has that intuition that something could go wrong any moment now, he seemed too fired up and anxious for it to be routine. It's like his sixth sense was screaming at him that this was urgent.

Oh, and finally, remember how the turtles were behaving during first episode of season 2 of 2012 series? Overconfident and chill because they'd stopped the Kraang months ago and things were calm and all? And those were the more serious reincarnation compared to Rise turtles. If they were all celebrating and overconfident and chilling and being careless after just a few months of major victory for them and peaceful times, what's to say the Rise boys wouldn't act similarly after their own major victory and things being silent and peaceful for a whole two years and while they had rad mystic powers?

He wasn't acting that way after Casey revealed the future and was actually pretty serious. He even stepped out of the escape pod to grab the key, he wasn't joking around that time or being a jerk. But seeing his big brother sacrificing himself and getting taken away was extremely traumatic for him. To the point that all sounds were muffled and he was hyperventilating and could only properly hear his own pounding heartbeat. He just lost a brother and that broke him, that's what snapped on the Angsty asshole mode.

I think it’s hysterical how the rise movie never explained why Splinter randomly made Leo leader in the finale bc now, in retrospect, that leaves us with the default option of splinter just pointing at Leo like “you need character development.”