Leonardo (2012)

Leonardo is the oldest of the four brothers and is the leader of the Ninja Turtles team.

## Appearance

Leo is an fern green colored anthropomorphic mutant turtle ninja warrior.

His eyes have cobalt blue irises with black pupils, but like his brothers when they are shown fighting or being stealthy, they disappear, leaving his eyes white (similar to the 2003 incarnation).

He wears a royal blue bandana mask (Although he wears a black bandana in Broken Foot and Owari) where the tails length range between Donnie and Mikey's.

Leo is the most skilled fighter, and he doesn't have much changes to his physical appearance like all his previous incarnations.

His height ranges between Raph and Donnie's.

His ninja gear includes brown knee pads and elbow pads, and beige rolled bandages wrapped around his wrists, ankles and fingers.

However, unlike previous incarnations, Leo's hands have two fingers and a thumb and has 3 little toes (like his brothers).

## Personality

Leo is an enthusiastic ninjutsu prodigy, who wears a royal blue headband, and fights with twin katana swords.

He leads the various missions of the Turtles.

Like previous incarnations, he is named after Leonardo da Vinci.

Because of his persevering dedication towards ninjutsu, and his level-headed discipline, and partly because he asked for it, Splinter wisely chose Leo to be the leader of the Turtles.

Leo is the big brother of the turtle quartet.

For the most part, he tries to be the mature and responsible older brother, but there are occasional times where he can be a very typical older brother, such as mocking Raph for reading The fantastic four food groups, beating up Mikey after using his comic book as toilet paper, or arguing with Donnie over Donnie‘s robo invention to take down the Kraang invasion.

However he reassures his brothers especially Mikey when chaos emerges.

Overall he’s very helpful.

Since the episode "The Deadly Venom", he is the only Ninja Turtle who is capable of using the spiritual, healing abilities of "the healing hands" technique to heal himself and others which enshrouds his body in a white aura by chanting the mantra and the right hand seals.

Leo is a perfectionist.

He wants to make his friends and family proud of him.

When he makes a mistake he would go hard on himself.

Although Leo tries to keep his brothers in line, he can be also very bossy and controlling at times which would trigger his brothers especially Raphael.

Being leader and later the sensei is a lot of responsibility, but it’s sometimes even harder when his three younger brothers talk back to him or team up to mock him.

Leo loves his favorite TV show called Space Heroes.

He attempts to do impressions of Captain Ryan.

He tries appear strong but it can also backfire as he makes rather cliché or ridiculous statements while trying to intimidate his enemies, such as introducing the team as the 'Mighty Mutants' or 'Turtles of Justice', while trying to appear heroic, or telling a scientist experimenting on a monkey that they'd had enough of him 'monkeying around'.

Even Leo can sometimes make rash decisions too, like doing crazy one man missions or his choice to spend time with Karai instead of helping his brothers.

Although Donnie and especially Raphael are the ones who would really erupt when angry, Leo rarely erupts.

The 2012 series presented Leonardo as his typical self, retaining many of his developed character traits.

His leadership qualities are ever-present (though several times already in the show’s short life, they’ve been the cause of much strife for the turtle), he maintains a strong dedication to his training, and he’s always fighting to protect his brothers’ lives.

However, this time his achievements and struggles make sense, because the “teenage” part of the turtles is actually worked into the story.

The leader of the Turtles, Leonardo aspires to be a brave, decisive, perfect hero.

Unfortunately, he's an inexperienced teen (for the moment at least) with three rowdy brothers.

It's the gap between his aspiration and current situation that is the greatest source of frustration in Leo's life.

He's the most driven of the four Turtles, training and studying relentlessly.

He tends to be hard on himself, but his diligence does not go unnoticed; he is the favored student of Splinter, whose approval he very much craves.

Overall Leo is a helpful, adventurous, courageous, responsible, hardworking, protective, honorable, respectful, and enthusiastic ninjutsu prodigy with a "can-do" attitude.

He is the most serious, disciplined, cool-headed mature and focused of the team.

## Skills & Abilities

Leonardo is the most stern, serious, focused, disciplined, responsible and among his brothers, being able to take on much larger opponents quicker and more easily in addition to coping with hectic stress.

Like his brothers, Leonardo has been extensively and intensively trained by Splinter to become a highly skilled ninja warrior, but to a much greater extent.

During his training session with Splinter and his brothers, Leonardo managed to be the only one to land a hit on Splinter.

Throughout the series, Leonardo's martial skills increased even further, as he can take on Karai and best her in skill, and eventually defeated his arch-nemesis, Super-Shredder in one-to-one battle.

After becoming a sensei, Leonardo's martial art skills is enough to nearly match his mentor, Splinter.

Because of this, he has great knowledge of pressure points as he used it on Raphael to impale him during their argument fight and other martial art techniques, making Leonardo not only the best fighter in the ninja turtles team, but also one of the most skilled fighters in the series.

* **Mutant Physiology:** As a mutant, the Mutagen Ooze heightened Leonardo's physical attributes to considerable extraordinary levels. He possesses strength, speed, reflexes, agility, endurance, recovery speed, and stamina much greater than those of the finest human athlete.
	+ **Enhanced** **Strength:** Leonardo is the second physically strongest of the turtles, as he was shown to be beaten by Raphael during their early scuffles and training sessions, but he had also beaten him at times too. However, he is stronger than Donnie and Mikey (as seen in Mousers Attack! where he and Raph consider themselves as the two strongest fighters). Leo possess enhanced strength that gives him an advantage in a fight, such as overpowering humans like the Foot Clan ninjas in The Pulverizer Returns!. Not only is he able to deliver powerful blows with his physical attacks, but he is able to throw heavy objects (including people) over his head. He is also able to knock back and hold his own against larger and/or physically stronger opponents.
	+ **Enhanced** **Speed:** Leonardo is able to move at great speeds, able to free run on rooftops without losing momentum. Despite being a turtle, he is not slow. He can also move things at enhanced speeds too, like twirling his katana blades. In Rise of the Turtles, Leo was shown to deflect the laser fire from a Kraang weapon with both of his katanas.
	+ **Enhanced Reflexes:** Leonardo possesses great reaction speed, allowing him to dodge projectiles such as lasers the Kraang's blasters, and enemy attacks. He can run fast enough to avoid laser fire from a Kraang weapon. He can also spin swing twin katana at incredible speed to deflect incoming attacks.
	+ **Enhanced Healing:** In the events of The Deadly Venom, Splinter taught Leonardo a unique ancient secret art and healing technique known as the Healing Hand. With the technique, Leonardo is able to heal himself and others, and even remove Karai's venom from his body despite there being no known cure for it. According to Splinter, he shows great gifts as a healer, and that being at the edge of his life had given him "a power that few martial artists can tap." His healing factor seem to work while in water, where he woke up after being ambushed by the Foot Clan during the Kraang Invasion 3 months later, but the fight left him injured.
	+ **Enhanced Agility:** Leonardo is very agile and shown to be more agile than his brothers except for Michelangelo. His agility and dexterity allows him to achieve great acrobatic flips from one building to another building at further distance as shown in New Friend, Old Enemy. Leo was agile enough to scale an apartment building by using each step of his foot in I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman.
	+ **Enhanced Stamina:** Leo possesses a high stamina and much more than Olympic-level athletes. During The Invasion, he was able to handle and stay much alive while fighting the long Foot-Bot challenge and defeat all of Shredder's henchmen, but all that work worn him out giving Shredder the chance to finish him off.
	+ **Enhanced Endurance:** Leonardo is resilient to great amount of injury. In Metalhead (episode), Leo was able to withstand the impact after falling from several stories of a building without any sign of discomfort and injury. He withstood attacks from superhuman opponents like Dogpound, Slash, Super Shredder, etc.
	+ **Retractable limbs into Shell:** Though rarely (if ever) depicted, he has retractable limbs and the normal ability of a turtle to retract his head and limbs into the safety of his shell.
* **Leadership:** Leonardo's bravery, determination, and willpower make him a great leader. In the beginning, his only flaws as a leader were due to his lack of experience (mostly due to his teenager status). His immaturity also caused him to occasionally make impulsive decisions that might make the situation worse, as well as his brothers sometimes disobeying his orders, and a desire to be a hero that results in him making rather poor taunts in battle. His most significant fear is to let the team down and fail as their leader. However, as he and his brothers continued to fight against the Shredder and his forces, Leonardo becomes more focused and disciplined as a leader, even becoming willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of others. He's also able to make difficult choices whenever the situation came down to it. A note to make is that Splinter truly believed that Leo was destined to become the leader of his brothers ever since he was a small boy.
* **Kenjutsu:** Leonardo is a highly skilled martial artist and expert swordsman. Leonardo was trained by Splinter in Japanese sword fighting. It is fair to say that Leonardo had an interest for sword since infancy. In Lone Rat and Cub, Leonardo would often approach Splinter's katana, and mimic his movements with a screwdriver. As his signature weapons are his twin katana, he is highly skilled in the sword fighting style of the Niten Ichi-ryū,(二天一, "two heavens as one"). He makes use of his katana for skilled offense and defense, allowing him to slice through the metal of the Kraangs' robot bodies, as well as the Foot-Bots (stabbing and dismembering them), deflect shuriken and lasers. His sword technique enables him to fight against skilled and powerful members of the Foot Clan including Tiger Claw, Karai (until she discovered the truth about her origin), and even Shredder, able to push him back even slightly during their fights.
* **Ninjutsu:** Through years of extensive and rigorous training, Leonardo is highly skilled in ninjutsu.
* **Tantōjutsu:** Aside from his swordsmanship Leonardo is also skilled with a tantō. Whenever he finds himself without his either of his katana, Leo can take the tantō from the handle of one of them and use it for self-defense.
* **Kyūjutsu:** Leonardo also possesses aptitude in archery and uses a yumi and arrows to fight long-ranged.
* **Shurikenjutsu:** Leonardo can throw shuriken with remarkable accuracy.
* **Master Martial Artist:** Leonardo is the most skilled fighter of the Ninja Turtles team. With the combination of his martial arts training and enhanced attributes, Leo's prowess skills enables him to defeat an army of Foot-Bot as well as Shredder's best henchmen during the Invasion on his own. Leonardo's most impressive skill was ultimately defeated the Super Shredder when the mutation was stable with him cutting his head off at the top of Shredder's house. In Wanted: Bebop & Rocksteady, Leonardo taught 1987 Ninja Turtles in multiple forms of combat to improve their fighting skills.
* **Stealth:** Being taught by Splinter, Leonardo, as well as his brothers, are able to be one with darkness and hide and move within the shadows without being noticed. Like his brothers, he is stealthy, can hide in the shadows, sneak around without being detected, and use hand to hand combat like a real ninja.
* **Improvising:** In most episodes, he's highly capable of improvising the objects around him to his advantage. Which is essential to his leadership abilities especially when he's on constant pressure.
* **Tactician and Strategist:** As a leader of the ninja turtles, Leonardo is highly expert in strategies. He has a good line of defense, and is the best at planning strategies. In most episodes, he's highly capable of improvising the objects around him to his advantage.
* **Weapons Proficiency:** Leonardo is proficient with various type of weapons. He shown to quickly adapt in using non-lethal weapons like a metal pipe to defeat the Foot Clans in The Pulverizer Returns!.

## Family

* Luna Ordeis/Tang Shen (Adopted Mother)
* Hamato Yoshi/Master Splinter (Adopted Father)
* Adam Ordeis (Adopted Brother)
* Karai (Adopted Sister/Love Interest)
* Raphael (Brother)
* Donatello (Brother)
* Michelangelo (Brother)

## Voice Actor

* Jason Biggs (Season 1 and Half of Season 2)

* Dominic Catrambone (Rest of Season 2)

* Seth Green (Season 3 & 4 & 5)