Leo Nardo Stands Alone (2024)

“Leo Nardo Stands Alone!”
Tale of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode
Season Code:	001
Episode:	1
Originalairdate	August 9, 2024 (Paramount+)
Written by	Christopher Yost
Producers:	Louis J. Cuck
Episode chronology ←Previous Next→ – "Mikey Does the Right Thing"

"Leo Nardo Stands Alone" is the first episode of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The episode aired on on August 9th, 2024.

Synopsis[]

The Ninja Turtles are on the run and... alone. Leonardo is a leader who is without anyone to lead. Leo now has to stop Bishop and her Mechazoids while trying to save his brothers.

Appearing in Leo Nardo Stands Alone[]

Major characters[]

• April O'Neil (Ayo Edebiri)
• Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu)
• Mechazoids (Colin Heck) (debut)
  • Mechazoid 01

Minor characters[]

• Bishop (Alanna Ubach) (debut)
• Carl (clerk) (Isaac Robinson-Smith) (debut)
• Carl (handyman) (Isaac Robinson-Smith) (debut)
• Donatello (Micah Abbey)
• Michelangelo (Shamon Brown, Jr.)
• Paulie (off-screen)
• Raphael (Brady Noon)
• Rod (debut) (flashback only)
• Roger (off-screen)
• Splinter (Fred Tatasciore)
• Tommy (debut)
• Wendy (Kimberly Brooks) (off-screen)

Species[]

• Human
• Mutant rat
• Mutant turtle
• Robot

Objects and vehicles[]

• Bō
• Katana
• Nunchaku
• Sai

Locations[]

• New York City
  • Jose's Grocery
  • Turtle Lair

Plot[]

Two months after the defeat of Superfly, the Turtles are now heroes and regular high school students. Leonardo works on his comic book, "Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", and as he narrates the events, it transitions to the Turtles' warm welcome from the city two months earlier. They are being spied on by a mysterious woman who declares that they are monsters and not heroes.

Back at the Lair, the Turtles are prepping for a costume party that April has invited them to. Suddenly after April hangs up the call to them, mutant alerts flash on the screen and Leo convinces the others that it could be Bebop and Rocksteady, who would require calming down and corralling, or perhaps a new mutant that needs their help, and they should still arrive fashionably late to the party. On their way out, Splinter worriedly yells at them in "vermin" but the Turtles assure him they'll be fine.

After a few flashes of the Turtles being ambushed by Mechazoids robots, the scene changes to Leo falling off of a roof and into a dumpster. He cannot find his brothers, but on his way out of the alley, Mechazoid 01 arrives and (after scaring off a nearby dog owner and his pet), the Mechazoid gives chase to Leo. They head to the rooftops, where Leo tries to lose the Mechazoid. As Leo prepares to make a long jump across rooftops, the Mechazoid catches up with him and tackles him into a water tower. They bounce off and crash on the rooftop where the tower is. After they recover and Leo kicks the Mechazoid off of him, he thinks about what Donnie would do and tries to "reprogram" it by shouting commands. This fails and the Mechazoid continues its assault.

Leo drops his katana and attempts to take on the Mechazoid hand-to-hand, but is shocked when it suddenly displays ninja taijutsu skills. Leo is roughed up a bit more, and tries throwing shuriken at the robot. It catches two of them but takes the third one straight to the "eye". Leo gloats, but from her lab, the mysterious woman commands 01 to reacquire its target. The Mechazoid simply plucks the shuriken from its eye and resumes business as usual. Leo, however, uses this time to hide inside the water tower, and since the Mechazoid has lost sight of him, runs off to find him.

Leo sits on the edge of the roof and panics, but a man nearby, Paulie, yells at him from his apartment to keep his monologue to an inner one. Paulie's neighbor, Roger, yells that he's the one that is yelling, and the two begin to argue. Leo sees a billboard for "Dads Against Phones" and realizes that he can have April track Don's phone. At the costume party, she worries that the Turtles aren't going to show, and her phone battery dies. She plugs it into a charger and walks out of the room, just as Don begins panic-texting her.

At a convenience store, Mechazoid 01 stomps in. The clerk, Carl, tells it that it has to buy something if it's going to use the bathroom, not even looking up from his magazine to see that his "customer" is a robot. 01 spots the security camera and takes it, then stomps out. Outside, it takes apart the camera and replaces its eye with the camera's lens. It looks up in time to see Leo hopping rooftops overhead.

April walks outside and realizes she's still left her phone plugged in. Leo drops down and startles her. He tells her the "mutant alerts" from earlier were a trap and he points to the explosion in the distance, then begins telling her what happened a few hours earlier.

The alerts lead to the shipping yard, where they find the "mutant" which turns out to be fake. The instigator of the trap introduces herself as "Bishop". She declares that all mutants must be destroyed "for the survival of humanity" and sics the Mechazoids on them.

After the flashback, Leo implores April to help, telling her they need her phone to track Don. She insists she needs a second to wrap her head around the events, and they then go inside to find her phone. Meanwhile, Mechazoid 01 spots them from a nearby rooftop....

As they head toward the party, an elevator opens up with partygoers inside, and they greet "Nardo", asking where his brothers are. The Mechazoid suddenly breaks into the apartment building, and Leo and April flee to the now-empty elevator. The elevator doors do not close in time and 01 catches them before they do, and while it struggles to keep the doors open, April and Leo slip out and head down the hallway. The proceed to the stairs, and April says they need to get to the tenth floor. The Mechazoid begins scaling the banisters and they exit out onto the third floor in an effort to lose it.

As they run past a couple of handymen working on a light fixture, Mechazoid knocks into them. They continue up flights of stairs, and the Mechazoid catches up with them and pushes Leo out a window onto a fire escape. Leo tells April to keep going and get the phone. April returns to the party and locates her phone, seeing all of the texts she missed from Leo. Leo shows up at the window, saying he finally lost the Mechazoid, and she lets him inside. April says she hasn't been yet able to locate Don, and Leo has another panic attack, worried that his brothers have already been captured and are being dissected. April slaps him and tells him that he should believe in himself as much as his brothers and she do.

The Mechazoid suddenly smashes through the window and attacks Leo. April tries to get it off of Leo by throwing books at it, but to no avail. April points out that the phone is behind him, and Leo rolls away to grab the phone and finds out that Donnie is in Times Square. The robot recovers and begins spinning Leo over its head. Leo jams a katana into the ceiling and the Mechazoid spins instead, knocking it out of a window, but it telescopes out its arm and grabs Leo as it falls, pulling him with it.

The Mechazoid catches onto the fire escape and the brawl resumes there. April runs to get a fire axe, and Leo tries to reason with the Mechazoid. Bishop's voice comes on over an intercom and she tells Leo she's pursuing them because "mutants are a threat to humanity". After letting slip that she hasn't found the other Turtles yet, Leo is relieved when he realizes they could still all be alive. April storms in and hits the Mechazoid in the "junk" with the axe, but it does nothing to slow the robot down. Leo distracts it while she runs to get the fire hose.

April returns with the hose and blasts the Mechazoid with it, but it telescopes out its arm and knocks it out of her hands. She has hit it just enough to cause it to start shorting, though, allowing Leo to stab it with both of his katana and kick it over the fire escape banister, where it crashes onto the roof of a police car. Leo thinks it's beaten, but it begins stumbling away, heavily leaking oil. Leo prepares to follow it so that he can find Bishop.

Bishop watches on monitors as the other Turtles are menaced by Mechazoids.

See also[]

• Leo Nardo Stands Alone/Gallery
• Leo Nardo Stands Alone/Animations
• Leo Nardo Stands Alone/Transcript