If you could travel through time, where would you go? The distant past, a future nobody has seen, or a few years of your own childhood? The possibilities are almost impossible to narrow down.
The Ninja Turtles know someone who can make that trip: Renet Tilley, an apprentice Time Mistress. The Time Masters oversee time and space, protecting history from interference that could throw its course off balance.
Time travel turns up throughout TMNT, from the comics to one of the franchise’s best-loved games, Turtles in Time.
Renet first meets the Turtles in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8, by Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Dave Sim. She steals the Time Scepter from her teacher, Lord Simultaneous, and arrives in the Turtles’ era while trying to escape him.
Renet quickly befriends the brothers. Lord Simultaneous, however, catches up with his apprentice and intends to punish her for the theft.
She asks the scepter to send them somewhere else in history. They land in 1406 and encounter Cerebus, Dave Sim’s independent comic-book character.
Cerebus is an aardvark who began in a parody of sword-and-sorcery adventures. Across a 300-issue series, his comic grew into a much more complicated work, moving through literary, political, and historical material far beyond its original fantasy jokes.
The crossover reflects Eastman and Laird’s enthusiasm for independent comics and Cerebus’s prominence in that scene. Its chaotic trip through history also recalls the 1981 film Time Bandits.
The scepter’s power draws the attention of Savanti Romero, Lord Simultaneous’s demonic former apprentice. He wants the device and sends his forces after it. Renet, the Turtles, and Cerebus fight back until Simultaneous intervenes, defeats Savanti, sends the brothers home, and disciplines Renet.
She becomes a recurring guide whenever TMNT stories venture into time travel. In IDW’s continuity, she even refers to experiences involving the Mirage Turtles. The 2014 TMNT Annual, by Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz, brings the IDW brothers into another dimension and the dangerous Battle Nexus tournament.
Other comic appearances include IDW’s Turtles in Time miniseries, with writing by Paul Allor and Erik Burnham, and Bebop & Rocksteady Destroy Everything!, where the pair’s interference makes time travel a much bigger problem.
Her first animated incarnation appears in the 2003 series. Much like her Mirage counterpart, she is Lord Simultaneous’s inexperienced apprentice, steals his scepter, and brings the Turtles into another era. Savanti kidnaps her and tries to claim the device, forcing the heroes to untangle another time-travel disaster with her teacher’s help.
She returns in the two-part “Return of Savanti Romero” and appears at April and Casey’s wedding in “Wedding Bells and Bytes,” the Back to the Sewer finale.
In the 2012 cartoon, Renet debuts in “Turtles in Time.” Savanti Romero is again after the scepter. She brings the brothers into the conflict and explains that she comes from a future where they are celebrated as legendary heroes who saved the world repeatedly.
Michelangelo is immediately smitten with her—just after insisting that falling in love is something he would never do.
Renet mentions historical figures such as Billy the Kid, Genghis Khan, and Socrates. The combination recalls Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which brings those same figures into its time-travel comedy.
Savanti’s reanimated warriors also recall the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts. This series places more emphasis on Renet coming from the future, rather than introducing her primarily as a visitor from a separate realm.
Renet appears in the mobile game TMNT: Mutant Madness. Collectors can also find her as a HeroClix miniature and in NECA’s Mirage-based figure line, including the 2022 release and its Signature Edition variation.