Characters / The Transformers More Than Meets The Eye Team Rodimus

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Team Rodimus

Lost Light Command

Rodimus

They were known as they Knights of Cybertron. They're real. I'm going to find them. And I want all of you to come with me.

The reckless, charismatic, and adventurous captain of the Lost Light. Despite his skill and high rank he's rather immature and rarely bothers planning ahead, much to the consternation of his crew. He believes that the Knights Of Cybertron will lead Cybertron into the future and made the choice to follow the Matrix Map and find them.

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• A Father to His Men: He'd like to be one, but he lacks the maturity even now and his idea of good advice leaves something to be desired. Also, he's perfectly willing to make certain members do things that could seriously injure or kill them just to make things easier, like repeatedly making Chromedome inject, despite Rewind's objections. It's all but said it's due to him being out of practice for so long, as he was a better leader for his team on Ki-Aleta, but became a lone wolf after they were killed, and remained as such up until the events of "All Hail Megatron".
• The Aloner: For a time before "All Hail Megatron", Rodimus had a reputation for being a lone wolf, always doing solo work and acting like a daredevil. "Spotlight: Hot Rod" explained that he did have a team once, but all but one of them were slaughtered on Ki-Aleta, the last one, Dealer, being taken prisoner by the Decepticons. Hot Rod thought they had all died that day, and blamed himself due to prioritizing obtaining the Magnificence, musing to himself how at least on his own, he was only responsible for his own life.
• The Atoner: Decides to become one after "Remain In Light", when he reveals to Magnus/Minimus that he let Prowl and Drift talk him into letting Overlord onboard.
• Always Someone Better: He's ragingly jealous of Thunderclash, who is all the things Rodimus wishes he was.
• Berserk Button:
  • Getaway. Even Minimus saying "We can't let him get away" is enough for Rodimus to abandon Megatron
  • Megatron, after his apparent betrayal.
• Book Dumb: Rodimus is not an idiot, but his grasp of science is non-existent, to the point that Perceptor has to take several tries to dumb down his explanations for Rodimus to understand it, and even then Rodimus still labels most advanced science "magic".
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Of a sort. He has shown great skill as a warrior and leader, but generally does not take his responsibilities seriously and is content to just delegate to Drift or Ultra Magnus - and later Megatron.
• Catchphrase: Till all are one! Lampshaded to hell and back by the other crew members, and, at one point, weaponized.
• Character Development: He starts out in the comic way in over his head however events like Overlord and Getaway's mutiny force him to grow up immensely and in the end he still has some childishness to him but he acts like the leader he wanted to aka: He is not Hot Rod, He "is" Rodimus Prime.
• The Charmer: Oozes charisma that lets him get away with making bad decisions and treating people poorly. Lampshaded by Megatron:
  Megatron: The way you talk to them… I don't know how you get away with it.
• The Chosen One: The Matrix certainly liked him far more than it ever liked Optimus, but beyond that the only one who believes he's chosen is Rodimus himself and Drift, based on a vision of the future he had during his near-death experience in Chaos.
  • The Chosen Zero: No matter what might lie ahead for him, he's still a hilariously impulsive and egotistical jackass.
• Commander Contrarian: The best way to get Rodimus to not do something is to tell him to, something Rung notes as early as issue 6.
• Crucified Hero Shot: The panel of him being rigged to the killswitch, in order to use him and his half of the Matrix to save the ones affected by it.
• Dark Is Not Evil: After the events on Necroworld, Rodimus converts to Spectralism and has himself repainted in shades of black, purple, and dark blue. He's still the same Rodimus, however, and the colours merely denote grief for a fallen comrade in this case Skids. Played with though, as Drift also feels the need to point out that the colours can also mean "a promise to kill", and that Rodimus is planning to kill Getaway upon returning to the Lost Light. Rodimus seems to imply the new paintjob represents both, but is distracted before he can actually confirm it. Issue #6 of Lost Light heavily implies he intends to follow through on it. The paint-scheme is burned off after Rodimus rescues Getaway from burning in the furnace of the Lost Light, showing that he's discarded the vendetta.
• Downer Ending: For the quantum duplicate that returns to New Cybertron, he gets one of the saddest endings of any of the crew; unable to adjust to post-quest life, he becomes a washed-up drunk who eventually joins Thunderclash’s newest crew in a desperate attempt to recapture the magic of the Lost Light. The only bright spot is that he reconciles with Drift. Subverted for the duplicate that jumps to another universe, who retains his co-captain seat alongside Megatron and can live his life of adventure alongside his loved ones "approximately forever".
• Face Ship: The Rodpod is essentially this. He thinks it's awesome, everyone else... not so much.
• Fatal Flaw: His ego. Rodimus's egotistical nature tends to rub his allies the wrong way, nearly gets him manipulated by Atomizer, and causes more than one problem for the crew. For example, his Rodpod outright provokes Getaway's scheme to get rid of him.
  • Rodimus himself raises another interesting possibility: The idea that his Fatal Flaw is his lack of self-control, and need for others to reel him back in when he goes too far.
• Fire-Forged Friends: By the end of the series, he and Megatron have evolved into this from their earlier Vitriolic Best Buds relationship. Rodimus is prepared to fight continuing Megatron's trial tooth and nail and is only stopped by Megatron telling Rodimus he wants to continue, and even then he lies on the stand about Megatron being able to open his Matrix when Rodimus couldn't (in reality the opposite was true) just to give him a better shot (it ultimately doesn't work). The two have a rather heartfelt final conversation before Megatron's sentencing where Megatron reveals he's kept his Rodimus Star (for "abandoning his evil ways") for close to a millennia after being stuck in the Functionist universe, which he then passes back to Rodimus before going to meet his fate. The two quantum duplicates who end up in the alternate universe, however, get to continue their friendship as the co-captain their Lost Light for new adventures.
• Flanderization: The early Furman stories had him prone to incredibly reckless Crazy Enough to Work behaviour, while Shane McCarthy's All Hail Megatron portrayed him as naive and almost childlike in comparison to the battle-hardened Kup and the Wreckers. MTMTE would take these traits to the extreme, to the point it's a minor miracle Optimus let him be in charge of anything, let alone a ship full of Autobots entrusted with a sacred quest. Lost Light would work to find a balance between the two, showing that while he is impulsive and immature, he does have the capacity to be a genuine and inspiring leader when he needs to, he just works better with a much smaller team rather than the over 200 crew of the entire ship, and requires others like Megatron, Ultra Magnus, and Drift to keep him in check.
• Glory Hound: And he does not react well to it being pointed out. Prowl uses that to make him accept to take Overlord on board, by deliberately making is seem that if Rodimus refuses, its him acknowledging he can't handle it. Rodimus later admits he was fully aware of what Prowl did, but fell for it nonetheless.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He really dislikes Thunderclash, on account of the 'bot being noble, heroic, decent, inspirational, kind... or to put it another way, because Thunderclash is everything Rodimus isn't. It gets to the point that when informed Thunderclash is dying Rodimus breaks out in a giddy grin, and is a few seconds away from dancing. Hell, a shared dislike of him is about the only thing he and Megatron bond over during their co-captaincy.
• Hidden Depths: He admits to Optimus during Dark Cybertron that he's scared of actually trying to be decent and noble.
• Hikikomori: Had become one after Megatron became co-captain the Lost Light.
• Hot-Blooded: Oh yeah. "Leap before you look" behavior is as synonymous with Rodimus as his ego.
• Insane Troll Logic: When the crew finds a coffin drifting in space with what appears Rodimus' corpse from the future, he notices that his dead self has two arms. He reasons that if he cuts off his arm, he will avert the future where he's dead. When Megatron points out the idea that everyone else might simply reattach the arm before putting him in the coffin for the sake of a funeral, Rodimus' only response is to ask everyone not to do that. It takes Nightbeat pointing out that the results of the Crisis Vote that he had engraved on his hand aren't on the corpse for him to pause for a second, even if only to point out he had Ratchet remove them from his hand too.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Rodimus wants to be a great leader and a hero, which often leads him to take risks and make poor decisions for the sake of his ego. Even his name is this: It's one he made himself, to style himself more as like a Prime. His real name is Hot Rod.
• Indy Ploy: All the damn time.
• Insistent Terminology: As he told Fortress Maximus and Getaway, he's "Rodimus" now, not "Hot Rod".
• Irrational Hatred: He really dislikes hats.
• It's All About Me: Downplayed. He cares about the welfare of his crew, but Rodimus's ego combined with feelings of inadequacy over wanting to be a leader on par with Optimus Prime makes him a bad leader when it comes to things that don't glorify him and a terrible leader when it comes to things that do.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he makes some bad calls during his tenure as captain, his reaction to Red Alert's attempted suicide as well as him trying to prevent Trailcutter's death establishes that he really is trying to be A Father to His Men.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's not off base in accusing Megatron of running from his trial as Megatron had confessed to Ravage that he was keeping escape options open and trying to prolong the quest before he decided to stop running. As of Lost Light #6, Rodimus has every reason to believe that he was right about Megatron. But then when Megatron returns in "Crucible" and proves to have a been a successful freedom fighter against the Functionists in their reality, Rodimus seems quick to forgive him - far more so, in fact, than Ultra Magnus.
• Karmic Jackpot: Asking Cyclonus to join them to Luna-1, and then agreeing to Cyclonus' request to bring Tailgate along, is what enables the team to rescue the Circle of Light, fend off Star Saber and stop Tyrest and his killswitch. Much, much, much later Cyclonus saves the day by severing Getaway's arm from behind just as he's about to use two unstable Nucleon rods to destroy the ship and everyone on it as part of a Taking You With Me Plot against Rodimus. Rodimus owes quite a bit to Cyclonus after this.
• The Kirk: Deconstructed, with Rodimus's Kirk-esque leadership causing many problems for himself and the crew, eventually leading to a mutiny led by Getaway.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Him and Megatron argue so much that couples counseling with Rung might actually be a good fit for them.
• Magnetic Hero: His early character description describes him this way, with a bravado that both repels and attracts people. At the start of the series, he's able to amass a following of over 200 Autobots for what's essentially a fool's errand.
• Manchild: Borders on this until the back-to-back incidents concerning Overlord and Tyrest convince him to grow up. But then Megatron becomes captain, and he snaps right back. In fact, he might actually have gotten worse, given Megs mentions he pretends to play dead when anyone asks him a difficult question.
• Man on Fire: He can temporarily set himself on fire, though he doesn't use it much for a variety of reasons.
• Meaningful Rename: Used to be Hot Rod. He renamed himself to sound more like a Prime.
• The Mole: Confesses to Minimus that he agreed to have Overlord be brought on-board as part of Prowl's plan to create Autobot Phase Sixers.
  • Mole in Charge: To say that no-one expected the guy in charge of the Lost Light who butted heads with Prowl the most to be the one responsible for Overlord being on the ship would be an understatement.
• My Greatest Failure: The death of his team on Ki-Aleta weighed heavy on him for a long time, blaming himself for prioritizing obtaining the Magnificence from the Omega Guardians over protecting them, prompting him to be a solo agent for a long time. The moment he learned that one member of his team, Dealer, was still alive, he rushed to rescue him from a Decepticon prison camp... only to find out that Dealer was really Doubledealer, a traitor who sabotaged the mission and feigned being captured to prey on Hot Rod's emotions and obtain the Magnificence, Hot Rod being forced to shoot him dead after learning such from the Magnificence.
• Not Quite Dead: Interesting variation. Aside from flashbacks to before and during Megatron's trial, Rodimus didn't show up in MTMTE #28 or 29. And the revelation of what was in the coffin (a dead Rodimus with half of his head missing) made it seem that Rodimus was, in fact, dead. Turns out in issue #30 that Rodimus is still alive, albeit now he's a Hikikomori (see above) and Dead!Rodimus is actually Rodimus' quantum duplicate.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The reckless and childish antics conceal a surprisingly sharp mind. Part of it seems to be that if he pretends to be a juvenile jackass, Megatron and Ultra Magnus will do the hard parts of his job for him. Megatron sees right through it. Magnus… not so much.
  Megatron: When did you first realize that he uses bad grammar to distract you whenever you raise an objection to something he wants to do?
  Ultra Magnus: He does WHAT?!
• The Only Way They Will Learn: Ultra Magnus wanted to scare him straight by having Rodimus track him to Tyrest. It kind of worked, but for the wrong reasons.
• Out of Focus: In Season Two, he doesn't have much development as the season primarily focuses on Megatron's Heel–Face Turn.
• The Peter Principle: For the longest time, Rodimus worked best as a solo-agent, and he was a pretty damn good one at that, able to singlehandedly infiltrate a Decepticon prison camp and rescue a P.O.W. without incident, and regularly demonstrating how skilled he was. As Captain of the Lost Light however... not so much. As Magnus outlines in the interlude "Signal to Noise", the very traits that make Rodimus such an effective solo-agent, his quick thinking and willingness to take risks, make him a poor fit for a captain in a post war world, causing to make snap judgements while ignoring the input of others, something he admits too when saying he had Magnus and Drift as his counsel so they'd cancel each other out and he could just do as he originally planned, and take plenty of unneeded risks. Magnus/Minimus elaborates even further when Rodimus asks him why he lured them to Luna 1 to meet Tyrest, outlining the constant mistakes Rodimus makes as a captain and explaining how he'd hoped meeting Tyrest would serve as a wake up call, the former of which Rodimus can't even argue against when admitting to Minimus how he was the reason Overlord was on board the ship. It took Megatron being made his Co-Captain and commanding a smaller crew for Rodimus to become close to competent again, since they'd be willing to make the same risks he made, and would be willing to call him out if need be.
  Minimus: I've had misgivings from the outset — when we were leaving Cybertron, and you refused to speak to Bumblebee. Then there was the sparkeater, and you risking Rung's life, and then— and then when Fortress Maximus took hostages and you made Swerve shoot, even though Max had been pacified. You arrested Cyclonus on the flimsiest of pretexts, you antagonized the Galactic Council, and as for your staggeringly immature reaction when Thunder-
  Rodimus: OKAY!
• Playing with Fire: He can generate fire in his immediate general area with flames hot enough to melt/incinerate other transformers instantly. He uses it as a last resort because it is extremely draining under normal circumstances.
• Portal Cut: How he died on the other Lost Light while trying to kill the Sparkeater, losing part of his own head in the process.
• Power Trio: With Ultra Magnus and Drift. Subverted, however, in that while Rodimus considers them one, he'd just ignore both of them and do whatever he wanted. In the second season it consists of him, Magnus and Megatron - and is now played straighter in that he and Megatron are frequently at loggerheads with Magnus playing peacekeeper.
  • Freudian Trio: While in charge, he's more of an inflated Id.
• Precision F-Strike: To Getaway, after Scorponok is teleported away to assist the Grand Architect by Tyrest, leaving the two of them alone.
  Rodimus: You know-cough cough-Drift's always going on about silvers. Not silvers. Slivers! Celestial mechs made of dappled light or trapped light or patterns of light or—I don't know. Whatever. Point is, they single out specific bots—the special ones-and act as their Protectors: they save their lives and make their dreams come true. I was a skeptic. Not anymore. You know why? Because someone just made my dream come true: you and me, one on one, for as long as it takes. So buckle up, you son of a bitch.
• Rage Against the Heavens: On apparently ending up in Cyberutopia, Rodimus goes into a Heroic BSoD until Whirl angers him into action. Cue Rodimus yelling at the heavens, and Primus in particular, about how pissed off he is, demanding Primus show his face in person. A nearby Ultra Magnus admits this is entirely how he'd expected any theological conversation with Rodimus to go.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gets one from Ultra Magnus on how bad his leadership is, in Issue 21. Getaway gives him another in issue 50 (which crosses over with What the Hell, Hero?) which can basically be summarized as "You're an idiot."
• Redemption Equals Death: Discussed by Rodimus. He finds the idea to be cheap, saying instead that if one really want to make amends, one should live and try to actually make up for one's mistakes.
• Red Is Heroic: That's the intent, anyway. In practice, Rody's got a long way to go yet.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: He gets a new, purple paint job at the start of Lost Light which affirms his vendetta against Getaway. When he finally confronts Getaway and abandons the obsession, he saves him from burning alive and the flames reveal Rodimus's original colors.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Mention is made of him cussing, such as with Tyrest ("And that's when I started swearing."), or when Drift doesn't answer his calls, or when Ultra Magnus gave him some really bad news, though since the series averts the usual Transformers euphemisms, it's all kept off-screen.
• Ship Tease: With Drift. Such as Drift giving Rodimus sword lessons, complete with a Hands-On Approach shot, accepting full responsibility for the Overlord affair to shield Rodimus or the telporter scene in LL #1. Lug, through Anode's hallucination even calls them Conjunx Endurae. Ultimately averted since Drift ends up with Ratchet at the end of the series.
• Snap Back: "Remain In The Light" ends with Rodimus vowing to be more mature and responsible after the disasters that happened. He does try to follow through on this during Dark Cybertron, but once Megatron becomes (co)captain, Rodimus becomes if anything even more childish and irresponsible.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Early-IDW work had Rodimus as impulsive, yes, but nowhere near as bad as he's depicted here (though he started getting more impulsive and childish around the time of All Hail Megatron).
• Tragic Keepsake: Megatron's broken and battered Rodimus Star (for "abandoning his evil ways") becomes one after Megatron passes it to him during their final conversation, revealing he's kept it with him for close to a thousand years after his stint in the Functionist Universe as the only link to "his best life". Rodimus keeps it for years before he finally leaves it on Ratchet's memorial in lieu of a vial of Innermost Energon.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Rodimus' "final goodbye" video starts off with him recounting how he believed that Getaway set him and the others up to be killed by the DJD. When the video reaches the Lost Light, it's played in front of a handful of crew members before Getaway can stop it. This leads to Getaway enlisting Froid and Sunder to use Sunder's remote mnemosurgery abilities to alter the memories of his crew so that they don't turn on him, in exchange for killing off twenty five of them as a payment for the twisted murderer's services.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Constantly argues and snarks with Megatron, but still gave him a Rodimus Star. One can't help but feel that the two have more in common than they like to admit. Rodimus getting chummy with Megatron is even used by Getaway as another reason why the crew has decided he's unfit to lead them, amongst others. As of Lost Light #6, Rodimus now hates Megatron more than ever. However upon Megatron's return in #22, while Magnus is very uncomfortable and needs a lot of convincing, Rodimus preeeeetty quickly falls back into their old dynamic. He even mentions to Grimlock that Megs isn't that bad once you get to know him.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A near-tradition in MTMTE/Lost Light, as his immaturity, recklessness and tendency to make bad calls means he frequently gets this, from a variety of characters to boot.
  • He gets this and "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Optimus after he confesses his involvement on the Overlord affair.
  • Gets another one when Ratchet calls him out accessing the voting records. Then Ratchet reveals the voting records are actually fake because his name is not on the list.
  • Gets one more from Ratchet regarding how the crew is serving Brainstorm justice as compared to Rodimus' treatment of Drift.
  • Receives yet another when Getaway reveals that he and the rest of the crew are staging a mutiny against Rodimus, Megatron, and their inner circle (basically all the central characters). In part, it's because they cannot fathom how High Command could possibly let Megatron off the hook so easily for his numerous crimes, but it's also because Rodimus is a selfish, glory-seeking, inept captain.
  • Ratchet keeps needling Rodimus about strong-arming Chromedome into performing mnemosurgery on the Pet, and when Rewind arrives to put a stop to it, he tries his best to play it off. Rewind responds with a well-earned slug to the face.

Ultra Magnus (Minimus Ambus)

Click ^here to see Minimus Ambus.

Let me be be less abstruse. Screw up and I will demolish you.

The Duly Appointed Enforcer Of The Tyrest Accord and Rodimus' second-in-command. He takes everything far too seriously and is increasingly stressed by the chaotic nature of Post-War life. He's trying his best to keep the crew in line and failing spectacularly. Towards the end of Season One, he's revealed as a smaller robot named Minimus Ambus, who keeps the legacy of the lond-dead lawman alive by way of a suit of Powered Armor.

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• An Arm and a Leg: When the DJD and Deathsaurus' men attack "Team Rodimus" on the Necrobot's planet, in their initial salvo an arm gets blown off the Magnus Armor. Worse, it's the arm containing the recall teleporter, which means no escape that way. Though Minimus in his base form was unaffected.
• Becoming the Mask: Being Ultra Magnus wasn't just a job for Minimus Ambus. It was his entire life. Ratchet even confides in him that he is the "true" Ultra Magnus to him.
• Bittersweet Ending: The quantum duplicate that remains in the main universe decides Ultra Magnus has run his course and destroys the Magnus Armor, living the remainder of his life as Minimus Ambus. He settles into helping New Cybertron’s resettlement efforts, never getting to finish that rulebook he was working on. The duplicate in the other universe subverts this by living a life of adventure among his friends.
• The Bore: For some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to put Magnus in charge of explaining things to the mechs the Necrobot had saved. Cue a slideshow consisting of eight-hundred and fifty-one slides (and many, many bored 'bots).
  Anode: That was so boring it made my life cry.
• Brought Down to Normal: Briefly loses the ability to pilot the Magnus Armour in Lost Light. It turns out that if he's not in a rigid, black-and-white mindset, the armour stops working.
• By-the-Book Cop: Why he didn't go to Garrus-9 with the Wreckers, because his job can't condone the things they usually do.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: While he can manage some quite funny snark, he's not much of a comedian. And even the few attempts he does make are legitimate Character Development from the bot who had trouble pronouncing the word "fun".
  Whirl: If I'd known death was going to be like this, I wouldn't have courted it so much. Angry denials, stunned silences. Gasps of disbelief. It's like that time Magnus tried to tell a joke.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: In his defense, 1) he usually doesn't drink, 2) he's actually tiny and 3) it was weapons-grade nucleon. During the Christmas special, Whirl and Nautica explain away the protoform they found getting inside the Magnus armour and trying to hug Megatron by pretending it's the real Magnus and he's had one weak drink.
• The Comically Serious: Until it turns out he's having a nervous breakdown. Then it becomes tragic.
• Commander Contrarian: Rodimus describes him as this.
• Compliment Backfire: In season 2, he notes people have lost respect for him now that they know he's Minimus Ambus, he even finds a caricature of himself placed outside his door to mock him. Ratchet finds out that it was actually a figurine sculpted by Ten and given to him as a gift because Ten looks up to him. Ratchet tells him, and he, as Minimus goes out for drinks with Ten.
• Consummate Professional:
  • In his duty as an enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, he's utterly stoic and humourless, refusing to break or bend any laws in his pursuit of criminals (usually).
  • He is the only member of the Lost Light's command crew who acts halfway decent towards Megatron, rather than engaging in petty sniping and bickering, and even reassures him when he has a nervous breakdown. He also served as Megatron's attorney during his trial; court appointed, but he performed his duty without complaint, and is probably just about the only Autobot who would even attempt to do so.
• Dead Person Impersonation: The original Ultra Magnus has been dead for millions of years, killed under unknown circumstances.
• Depower: Tyrest strips Minimus Ambus of his Powered Armor form and his name. It doesn't stick.
• Determinator: This is one of Ultra Magnus' most defining qualities.
• Exact Words: Magnus hates ambiguity in speech, and as a result picks his words very carefully.
• Felony Misdemeanor: He tends to be pretty anal about minor infractions.
  Tyrest: Badge Inspections! Doorframe Audits! Nanocons! Hugging! Hedonia!
• Flanderization: Justified in-universe: In earlier appearances (of this Magnus), he wasn't nearly so uptight a detail freak. In this series, he's become one as a result of not knowing his place after the Cybertronian Civil War ended combined with the stress of trying to monitor the crew of the Lost Light.
• Foil: To Rodimus.
• Gosh Dangit To Heck: Should Ultra Magnus be moved enough to swear, it winds up being incredibly outdated swears.
• Grammar Nazi: Misuse of apostrophes is considered mutiny in his book. He distrusts metaphor and simile, and considers using them a moral lapse. He even writes missives in a special font, one that features a lot of right angles.
• Hidden Depths: Our Words Will Always Rhyme reveals that he's actually an amateur poet.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Believes several months of 'cripplingly intense study' might actually be fun.
• The Lancer: Second in command of the ship.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Minimus's big reveal during the "Remain in the Light" arc has become more and more well known. Even Ultra Magnus's 2015 toy comes with a Minimus that fits in his chest.
• Legacy Character: There's been more than one Ultra Magnus, with the current incarnation being Minimus.
  • Legacy Immortality: Magnus was known for miracle recoveries and surviving seemingly lethal injuries.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Regarding Tyrest's descent into madness and his plans for the Universal Killswitch before the start of Remain In Light.
• Manipulative Bastard: In a positive way, he manages to talk Rodimus down from attempting to try and hunt down Megatron on Functionist Cybertron because Rodimus believed Megatron has played them to try and stay there to avoid his trial (which Ambus had earlier told Megatron he didn't think was true). He agrees with Rodimus, and says they cannot let him "get away", which snaps Rodimus back to the fact that he has other concerns beyond Megatron; namely getting his ship back from the mutinous Getaway. This realization causes Rodimus to angrily tell them to activate the transporter and take them back to Necroworld. Somewhat karmic, in retrospect, given all the ways Rodimus has managed in the past to manipulate Magnus into getting him to go along with plans Magnus believes are bad ideas.
• Meaningful Name: Minimus Ambus, the real, "irreducible" Minimus Ambus, is actually about the same size as Rewind when not inside his suits of Powered Armor. He barely comes up to Rodimus' waist.
• Memetic Badass: In-universe, he's one of the Autobots' greatest heroes, an epitome of law and order who is feared and respected by his allies and enemies in equal measure. It's the reason that Tyrest chose to make him a Legacy Character after the original Ultra Magnus died, so that he could function as "the eternal lawman".
• Meta Mecha: The Magnus armor works as a cross between this and Powered Armor. The 2015 Generations toy, however, plays this straight with Minimus sitting in the chest and piloting Magnus.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: After the Magnus Armor is badly damaged during Dying of the Light, Brainstorm builds a new suit for Minimus to wear; it's an even bigger, more heavily armed version of the Magnus Armor called the Maximus Ambus Armor.
• Morality Chain: Megatron outright admits him and Rodimus are his conscience.
• My Greatest Failure: He feels not going to Garrus-9 is this.
• No Sense of Humor: Most jokes just go sailing over Magnus' head due to his Literal Mindedness.
• Not Quite Dead: Survives getting his head crushed at one point. But then, it's not his actual head...
  • A recurring theme with Magnus was managing to survive injuries that for anyone else would've been fatal. Though that's because Tyrest simply replaced the fallen Magnus, and no-one was the wiser.
• Number Two: To Rodimus and Megatron.
• Obsessively Organized: Magnus has an obsession with orderliness and organization. In several scenes he's seen obsessing over trivial things like the rivet count on a ship. While before he was able to keep his compulsions in check, his nervous breakdown and heightened anxiety have made his disorder much worse post war and he struggles at times. Though after the confrontation with Tyrest he's done a better job of managing his anxiety as well as his OCD.
• Obsessed Are the Listmakers: Once tried to engage in casual conversation with Swerve (about statistics), only to get distracted by an out-of-place rivet, and tried to make a note of it. Only his promise to relax stopped him.
• Odd Friendship:
  • He has acknowledged twice his friendship with Verity Carlo. Not to mention using her as his holomatter avatar.
  • He and Megatron have developed something resembling this after Megs joins the crew. By the time of the Holiday Special, Megatron even holds Minimus up so he can put the finishing touches on the Contrivance Engine (and Rodimus complains about their Finishing Each Other's Sentences like it's a regular thing).
• Only Known By Their Nick Name: Even after The Reveal about his Secret-Identity Identity, most of the Lost Light crew just tend to refer to him as "Magnus" rather than his true name of "Minimus Ambus". Given the nature of the Ultra Magnus identity, this could even be a very strange case of Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep".
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Despite the fact that he's the same size as Swerve, Tailgate, and Rewind when completely unarmored, Minimus Ambus still has the superspark of a Point One Percenter, and thus has no problem picking up a BFG far bigger than himself, which not only allows him to disable Tyrest, but also to fight the horde of Legislators that get summoned afterwards. Minimus' superspark is also what allows him to wear two suits of Powered Armour on top of each other without collapsing in on himself, because he's a special type of Point One Percenter called a "loadbearer" that allows him to withstand the strain the suits put on his frame.
• Porn Stache: As Minimus Ambus, just like his brother Dominus. Apparently, it is a family trait. The Holiday Special shows the one on his outer shell is a fake (it gets knocked off when Nautica bludgeons him with her wrench).
• Powered Armor: What "Ultra Magnus" technically is, with Ambus being inside of it. Although it turns out that the inner robot is itself a smaller suit of Powered Armour with the actual, tiny Minimus Ambus inside that. It's how he survives his head being crushed by Tyrest's Legislator.
  • Matryoshka Object: TL;DR, Ultra Magnus is a tiny robot inside a suit of power armor inside a bigger suit of power armor.
• Power Trio: With Rodimus and Drift.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Downplayed. It may not be immediately obvious due to his Super OCD, but when Red Alert is found headless in the oil reservoir, he's quick to call Rodimus and Drift on being idiots about Cyclonus' questioning.
  • He's also one of few who gets on Swerve's case about his treatment of Ten. Ten notices and appreciates it greatly.
• Retired Badass: After the events on Luna-1 he decides to step down as Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, but does retain ownership of the Magnus Armor. Fortress Maximus becomes his successor.
• Secret-Identity Identity: His real identity is Minimus Ambus, Dominus' brother.
• Skewed Priorities: Due to his nervous breakdown. It gets him fired.
• The Spock: The member of the Lost Light's leadership who focuses more on logic and less on emotions.
• Stat-O-Vision: Not literally, but when looking at someone he's familiar with, he tends to envison their name and basic information, as well as likelihood of future criminal activity.
• Taught by Experience: After learning that Rodimus uses bad grammar to distract him, Minimus says "We can't let him get away" which is enough for Rodimus to not chase after Megatron and order their return to Necroworld.
• Thanatos Gambit: Luring Rodimus to Luna-1 turns out to have been an attempt by Minimus at this; he'd been having serious doubts about Rodimus' ability to command ever since the start of the series, so when he was terminally injured by Overlord, he didn't simply teleport back to Tyrest, but instead let Tyrest take remote control of the armor and pilot it back to his location. This was because Minimus wanted Rodimus to follow his trail so Tyrest could read him the riot act for the way he'd been behaving and shock or maybe shame Rodimus into being a better commander; unfortunately, Minimus had no idea that Tyrest had gone insane or what he was planning. And he did all this with the expectation that he was going to die; he was genuinely surprised when Pharma was able to repair him.
  • The Only Way They Will Learn: He thought this was going to be the only way to get Rodimus to understand what he needed to change about himself. He did learn the lesson, but the cost was high.
• That Man Is Dead: In the epilogue, he drops the Ultra Magnus identity entirely, deciding its run its course.
• The Teetotaler: Only three people didn't succumb to the doped engex at Swerve's: him, Rung, and Brainstorm, and Brainstorm is why it's doped to begin with.
• Third-Person Person: Rodimus points out that he does this in the Annual and it makes sense once you know that Ultra Magnus is an identity, not a person.
• To Be Lawful or Good: He opposes Tyrest as soon as he learns of Chief Justice's plan to exterminate a significant portion of the Cybertronian race.
• Top-Heavy Guy: The Maximus Ambus Armor is massive but to keep the weight distribution his legs are notably stockier and less proportionate to the rest of the torso than the Magnus Armor.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord and Director of Security, along with several other titles we haven't heard of. He eventually gives up his title of Enforcer to Fortress Maximus.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gives one to Rodimus one on Luna-1, and later gives an impressive one to Prowl.

Megatron

I lost the war the moment I gave the order to fight.

Yes, THAT Megatron.

The founder and former leader of the Decepticons who's suffered a Heel Realization and became "co-captain" after convincing those at his trial that only the Knights Of Cybertron could fairly judge him. Though rigid and strict, he hopes to redeem himself through the crew's quest and to rekindle his writer persona. Is hated by almost the entire crew.

---

• 0% Approval Rating: Despite being a pretty adept captain, pretty much the entire crew hates his guts because he's Megatron. In a twist however Skids and Getaway admit to one another that it's actually hard for them to hate Megatron - because his crimes are on such a large scale, it's almost impersonal (One death is a tragedy, a billion is a statistics) and hard to process an emotional response. On top of that Megatron is competent and rational on a personal level.
• Aborted Arc: It's been shown that the "helmet" part of Megatron's head really is a helmet that hides a furled crest covered in Cybertronian symbols. The story treated it like it was a big reveal but its significance was never explained and it has been more or less forgotten.
• Actual Pacifist: Claims he's become this at the end of issue #49, having completely renounced the use of violence. This is foreshadowed earlier in the issue when dealing with Sunder; Tailgate yells at Megatron to pick up Thunderclash's discarded gun and kill Sunder, but Megatron tries to unsuccessfully talk him down instead rather than shoot him. It takes a lot, culminating with Ravage getting torn in half by Tarn, before he take up arms again.
• Adaptational Heroism: While Megatron pulling a Heel–Face Turn isn't an alien concept on its own, no aspect of the mythos has ever run with it to this extent. He's also portrayed as being as far less of a clear-cut villain than his previous portrayals in the IDW continuity itself.
• A Father to His Men: Like Rodimus, he wants to be this, even to the point of holding lectures to try and educate and talk with the crew. These attempts are hampered by the fact that pretty much everyone except Ravage hates and distrusts him.
• Afraid of Needles: He's strongly against the idea of Chromedome performing Mnemosurgery on him during his trial. He also looks away in disgust when Chromedome performs Mnemosurgery on the dead "Rodimus". ''Births, Deaths & Interventions", reveals that Trepan attempted to conduct Mnemosurgery on him during his mining days.
  Megatron: Ugh.
  Ultra Magnus: Don't like needles?
  Megatron: Something like that.
• All There in the Manual: Megatron is never shown transforming in his post Dark Cybertron body. Concept art shows that his alt-mode is a tank, although since it utilized his fusion cannon, which he destroyed, it would have had no offensive capability. An variant cover for Issue 3 of Lost Light showed him transforming into a different looking tank with a different cannon, but he never transformed into it in the actual comic.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • How Megatron ended up being left in the Functionist Universe; the original teleporter Team Rodimus planned to use to get back to Necroworld and out of the Functionist Universe was broken, so Nine-of-Twelve led them to a second teleporter nearby. Megatron had separated from the group earlier to say goodbye to Terminus, who had decided to stay and help the Anti-Vocationists fight (which Rodimus was immediately suspicious of, since he suspected Megatron of trying to get out of his trial) so Roller was told to radio Terminus and let Megatron know about the change of destination. We only hear Terminus' side of the discussion before he tells Megatron to follow him to the new teleporter… which is a different one from the one Team Rodimus is using. This leads Rodimus to believe that Megatron has played them to stay and avoid his fate (since they have a rapidly-closing window of opportunity to leave) and have to go without him, taking Luna-2 with them. Did Roller give Terminus the wrong coordinates on purpose, or did Terminus, who had already expressed his desire to see Megatron stay and help the AVL, take Megatron to the wrong teleporter on purpose so he could lie and say the others had left without him to "give him a second chance"? Roberts eventually confirmed on twitter that Terminus lied to him.
  • It's never explicitly stated in the final issue whether the outcome of Megatron's second trial was eternal imprisonment or execution (though the latter is implied).
• A Million Is a Statistic: Played with and explored. By his time as captain of the Lost Light, Megatron had something of a Heel Realization and concluded he made a mistake in his actions. While he was genuinely interested in trying to make amends, the fact that he was personally responsible for the death of billions of individuals is something that isn't easily forgotten. Other characters reflect that his crimes are far too large to even conceptualize. However, a large part of his character development is coming to terms that with the fact that there can be no escape from what he's done, and that ultimately he has to pay for the staggering loss of life he has unleashed. His final words are even admitting that no matter what punishment he faces, it will never be enough.
• And I Must Scream: Frozen in mid-transformation by Wheeljack’s failsafe for the second part of RID Season One.
• Arm Cannon: Averted. While he's still armed, his iconic cannon is absent from his new form as Optimus had him melt it down. This is a bit of an in-joke hearkening back to his novel "Towards Peace", where he states that it is his burden, and when the rejection of it is significant to no one else but himself, he will remove it from his arm. Unlike in his novel, this was removed in conjunction with him renouncing his ideals rather than fulfilling them and not needing it to fight. He gets a new one during the "Dying of the Light" arc, but refuses to use it out of fear of reverting to his old ways until Ratchet convinces him otherwise. It gets destroyed before the end of the issue. Appears to have a new one when he returns from the Functionist Universe, but this one turns out to be a form of medical kit. His also functions as a Call-Back to his mentioning he wanted to become a medic (WAY back when he was still a miner) but was barred from doing so at the time because it didn't relate to his function.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Anti-matter. Sure he can kill anyone and anything but it's monumentally unstable and unless he has a nigh-impenetrable forcefield, it'll blow up half a planet if left unchecked.
• Back for the Finale: After being trapped in the Functionist Universe for most of season three, he finally gets back to the main universe and joins back up with the crew in time for the Grand Finale.
• Badass in Distress: He's captured and tortured by Shockwave during Dark Cybertron.
• Badass Long Coat: His holomatter avatar materializes with one when he first projects it to "Swearth" (it fits with his avatar's stereotypically villainous look), though when his team reaches the bar he's removed it.
• Bad Boss: During his tenure as Decepticon supreme leader, actively eschewing attachments and treating those under his command as expendable tools sacrificed when necessary "for the cause." Strongly averted in the present, with Megatron showing courtesy and respect to his crew mates, treating them as people.
• Becoming the Mask: A dark, tragic example. In the past Megatron behaved like a bloodthirsty tyrant, actively cultivating a reputation as The Dreaded, believing that fear, pain and death were necessary instruments in his crusade to destroy everything standing in the way of creating a better society, having learned firsthand from Whirl, back when he was the Senate's vicious lackey, that fists mattered more than words. Years later however, during a captive conversation with Optimus, where he was saying very monstrous things to evoke retaliation from him, Megatron was shocked to note he meant every word.
  Megatron: I once told Optimus I killed for the sake of killing. I wanted to make him hurt me, you see, because when he hurts others he hurts himself. And the thing is, when those words were in my head I didn't think I meant them, but, when they left my mouth I realized I did. If the world thinks you're a monster, what does it matter? The world is wrong. But, when you start to think of yourself as a monster...
• Benevolent Boss: Aspires to be this aboard the Lost Light, in sharp contrast to his more abusive past self.
• Berserk Button: Being subjected to memnosurgery, big time due to the aforementioned incident with Trepan in his past. When Optimus suggests using memnosurgery to help speed along Megatron's trial, Megatron flat-out tells Optimus that if they try it, he'll fight back and they'll have to kill him in his cell because his memories are all he has left. Getaway was going to intentionally press this button with a duped Tailgate and some fake memnosurgery needles while Megatron was recharging to get him to murder Tailgate in a blind panic and then either be executed by security or be shipped back to Cybertron.
• Big Bad: Of Robots in Disguise “City on Fire" arc. Obviously, he was also this in the Great War, making his role here a lot more surprising. However the Decepticons considered (and some still do) him to be the Big Good. Fully inverted after he's trapped in the Functionist Universe, where he becomes a hero to Cybertronian underclasses with his cry of "Peace through Empathy" before essentially taking on Optimus' role once the Functionist Council makes active moves to erase all non-Cybertronian lives. He spends hundreds of years traveling time and space, saving organic planets from their attacks. He's saved billions, but wishes he could have saved them all.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the season two finale after coming to terms with his choices and self, he saves the crew from the Decepticons when they were about to be overwhelmed.
• Bittersweet Ending: The duplicate that returns to functionist Cybertron finally has his trial... and gets found guilty, promptly being sentenced to death. The rest of the crew is heartbroken, but Megatron himself is happy with it, seeing it as a fitting end to his life and pointing out that in his opinion he ultimately deserves worse. Strongly subverted for the duplicate in the new universe, co-captaining alongside Rodimus and finally fully accepted by the crew. He even gets the final line of the series.
• Body Horror: Not immediately obvious, but his insides are now riddled with space bridge portals as a result of Shockwave's meddling in Dark Cybertron.
• Broken Pedestal: In the past, to a young Orion Pax. In the present, to everyone who follows the Decepticon cause. Unintentionally becomes one to Rodimus after Megatron is tricked into remaining in the Functionist universe; Rodimus believes that Megatron has played him specifically in order to avoid his eventual judgement, and it destroys any good feelings Rodimus had about his co-captain. Megatron, for his part, was dead-set on returning too, but is led to believe by Terminus (who may or may not have been the one who engineered all of this) that the rest of the Team left without him to "give him a second chance". Following his return in #22 his explanations seem to have restored some faith in him.
• Brought Down to Normal: Megatron is using a low-yield Energon that has a toxin included in order to sap his strength. Except not really. The fool's energon is a placebo meant to make Megatron think he's been weakened, as his damaged internals mean Ratchet can't safely give him such sedatives.
• The Bus Came Back: After Pharma/Adaptus opens a portal to the Functionist Universe, Megatron returns on the Functionist Universe version of the Lost Light.
• But Now I Must Go: Freaks out after Ravage dies in front of him and tries to leave the crew for fear of murdering them all now that he knows the Fool's Energon was a sham and his newfound knowledge of antimatter has made him more dangerous than ever before.
• Byronic Hero: A textbook example. In the Functionist Universe, he takes on a far more Optimus-esque role (seemingly even to Orion Pax) and is seen as a far more Ideal Hero.
• Character Development: Since joining the Lost Light crew, he seems to have become more empathetic towards others. Best summarized in Lost Light #6. His wartime motto was "Peace Through Tyranny". At the end of that issue, he states the revolution in the Functionist Universe will be "Peace Through Empathy".
• Classy Cane: His holomatter avatar first materializes on "Swearth" with a cane, but when Rodimus points it out, Megatron lets go of it, causing it to dematerialize. He doesn't bring it back, probably because it reminds Megatron of how old he is.
• Cool Old Guy: One of the oldest crew members, both physically and mentally, but still a total badass. That said there's also a hint of deconstruction to it; his increasing age and self-doubt means his badassery is slowing slipping away from him.
• The Corrupter: Views himself as this specifically to Tarn, saying he turned Tarn to the Decepticons to "prove a point" and that doing so would "hurt someone", implied to be Optimus Prime. The series' final arc confirms this, with Tarn turning out to be Glitch.. It's an act he now greatly regrets.
• Crazy-Prepared: He understands that he's a tad impulsive and plans ahead far in advance in preparation of his current goals being one day infeasible.
• Create Your Own Villain: He credits Whirl with teaching him the value of violence over peaceful protest.
  • Becomes even more so when it turns out a time-traveling Whirl is the one who preserved the timeline by putting the "point one-percenter" spark Brainstorm was carrying into Megatron's body after Rewind destroyed the original. Since the spark is a Cybertronian's soul, Whirl literally created Megatron.
  • Megatron's primary antagonists throughout season 2, Getaway and Tarn, were created by Great War. Tarn patterned himself off of Megatron and his ideology, and took to it a bit too well. Getaway was literally brought online to fight Decepticons.
• Creepy Souvenir: Wanders out of the Cybertronian wilderness carrying a bunch of Sweeps' heads that he strung together.
• Cult of Personality: His writings, philosophies and personal charisma led the DJD in particular to be this for him, and various other Decepticons are shown to still strongly believe in him post Heel–Face Turn; Ravage admits that the moment Megatron showed the slightest inclination to take up his old role he and Soundwave would kick Galvatron out in a heartbeat to welcome him back.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Simply put, Megatron didn't have an ideal upbringing. Constructed Cold to serve a brutal, callous system overseen by cold-blooded elites who'd sick their facist foot soldier attack dogs on anyone refusing to get with the program, forced into the Energon mines since day one, witnessing daily atrocities such as protestors getting shot dead, almost being beaten to death by Whirl in a police holding cell, a close brush with lobotomy the same day he lost his mentor/beloved father figure and getting laid off by the very bastard government he despised.
• Deadpan Snarker: Usually when dealing with Rodimus.
• Death Seeker: Was apparently resigned to be executed at his trial that he pleaded guilty of all charges right at the beginning of it. Until Starscream's "The Reason You Suck" Speech, intended to be the last nail in his coffin, restored his will to live, just to spite his former lieutenant.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Is one of the Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist and the franchise-wide portrayal of Megatron, owning up to how far he's fallen from his noble intentions and the consequences including still being hated despite trying to set things right.
• Depending on the Writer: Roberts depicts Megatron with Hidden Depths, such as a poetic side, and a tendency to think and plan miles ahead of his enemies. Barber's depiction in Robots in Disguise is more of a Machiavellian schemer, prone to Evil Gloating and grandiose monologues.
• Determinator: During his time in the Functionist universe, the Functionists managed to kill a number of his close friends, including Terminus, the native counterparts of Impactor and Orion Pax, and Nightstalker, believing that such losses would cause him to give up in despair. They were wrong. Megatron kept going.
• Disability Superpower: However dangerous the aforementioned portals might be to his own health, they also make it a really bad idea to take him on.
• The Dreaded: He only needs to smile and Starscream will have a Freak Out.
  • Even the DJD, who devour Phase Sixers for breakfast, are absolutely terrified at the thought of Megatron fighting back, with Tarn himself admitting that, regardless of his Nuke enhancements, Megatron could still murder him within seconds. Which does end up happening.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: It's doubtful we've seen the last of Megatron but he gets a chance to start over his revolution against the Functionists in the Functionist Universe as one of peace and empathy before being contacted by Alternate!Orion Pax. Played with in the finale as, after returning and being quantum duplicated, one is tried and executed while the other joins the crew in exploring a new universe.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He finds Mnemosurgery repulsive, as well as the apartheid of the Constructed Cold. It's revealed that Megatron was nearly mind raped by Trepan via Mnemosurgery, as well as being Constructed Cold himself (though has a Point-One Percenter spark).
  • He considers the DJD to be monsters, based on the sadism they show on the duplicate Lost Light.
  • This series' tie-in to the Revolution event revealed he was disgusted by the Dire Wraiths and hence steered clear of a Wraith-controlled area dubbed the Dark Nebula- not only that, a whole fleet of Worldsweepers went missing in there (as in, those giant ships shaped like the Decepticon emblem), so even more reason to stay the hell away from them.
  • He's always treated Ravage, an animal based Transformer, the lowest caste, as a person, never patronizing him for being different, which was common during the Senate's reign.
  • And waaay back during Simon Furman's run, he dismissed Bludgeon's Pretender method as "repulsive" and "unnatural".
• Face Death with Dignity: By the end Megatron is ready for his (possible) execution, completely at peace with it.
• Failed a Spot Check: He spent a good chunk of the War trying to find a Titan and gain access to their Space Bridge technology and even created dedicated groups to hunt them for him. Trypticon was one the entire time and had a working Space Bridge.
• Fallen Hero: Would you believe this (former) hell raising Galactic Conqueror had begun life as an Actual Pacifist who wrote poetry about society's ills?
• Fantastic Racism: One of his defining traits was the belief that Cybertronians were superior to everyone else and had to rid the galaxy of anything organic. In Issue 50, he's forced to hear the dying scream of every organic who's death he's caused and drops this completely. This doesn't apply to humans, though. When his holomatter avatar injures itself, he remarks on how humans are "fragile", then corrects Nightbeat when he starts laying into Megatron, saying he didn't mean weak.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: For obvious reasons, very few members of the crew genuinely like him, and most actively distrust and hate him, barring Ultra Magnus (who treats him with the appropriate respect due the captain of the ship) and Rung (who is genuinely interested to learn more about how he thinks/thought). This may be slowly changing the longer he's with the crew though; Skids and Getaway admit that even though Megatron's indirectly caused loads of death and suffering, they're having trouble actually personally hating Megatron himself. Nautica also observes that the surprisingly large number of the Lost Light's crew who were brought online directly because of Megatron's actions basically owe their very existence to him. Finally averted at the end of the series when the crew votes unanimously to try and create quantum duplicates of themselves and send them to another universe to keep exploring and going on quests, Megatron included.
• Good Costume Switch: His body was reformatted after his change-of-heart and by the series finale of Lost Light he's evolved into a fully heroic figure in the Functionist Universe.
• Good Feels Good: What Megatron rediscovers aboard the Lost Light as he works with the crew to help them and various other people, once more becoming the compassionate man he'd been at the start of his life.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: For a five-issue span of Dark Cybertron after Galvatron tears him in half.
• Handicapped Badass: His old form was severely damaged fighting D-Void's Deceptigod, and he spearheads the experiments in the wilderness as such before his upgrade. He also spends the better part of Dark Cybertron without his legs, but still beats Waspinator and even Galvatron without them. After the crossover, his insides are a mess of interdimensional portals after his space bridge broke down, to the point that it's impossible to safely extricate his spark or do anything else of much medical significance without killing him. He can still kick your ass despite (or maybe even with) them, as Whirl found out. He also mentions that he's really beginning to feel his age, even without the special fuel he's made to drink, and that his new body doesn't feel right.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: While some of the crew are willing to put up with it, most make very clear that his talk of changing his ways doesn't excuse everything he did. They're so displeased that Getaway, Atomizer, and a number of other crew members mutiny simply because Megatron being let off easy is so infuriating. He comes within a hair's breath of taking off on his own after Ravage dies, with the implication he'd have gone back to being a Decepticon. Then Terminus shows up.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the climax of Dark Cybertron, he joins the Autobots, a move so unexpected that it blows Shockwave's logic circuits and causes the latter to revert to his pre-Shadowplay personality.
• Heel Realization: During the events of Dark Cybertron Megatron accepts how far he's strayed from his original mission and decides to change.
• Heinz Hybrid: The reveal is that he has a forged point-one percenter spark, in a constructed cold body.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: He's still got that helmet of his, but at best it's anti-heroic.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted in "Dying of the Light"; he offers himself up to Tarn in exchange for the safety of the rest of the crew, but Tarn isn't interested in deals.
• He's Back!: In the second season finale, Ratchet reveals that his strength was never sapped and that Fool's Energon was a placebo, meaning his choices since defecting were sincere and he truly has changed. After learning of how he was holding himself back, he personally storms onto the battlefield outside and saves the crew.
• History Repeats: Unlike his Aligned self, he didn't take his name from the Fallen's true name (Megatronus), he just has a coincidentally similar one. That fact though is incredibly unnerving to both Optimus Prime and Alpha Trion who wonder is Cybertronian history is doomed to repeat over and over. Turns out in Optimus Prime they're entirely correct - because a time-displaced Shockwave manipulated it from the very beginning to be so - and he was the one who gave Megatronus his name because he knew the history.
• Hostile Show Takeover: He takes command of the crew's mission. Needless to say, they aren't happy about it.
• Hypocrite:
  • He criticizes Rodimus for sulking around and contemplating his life rather than leading, but after the events of Elegant Chaos he does the exact same thing. Averted in the final battle against the DJD: turns out his inactivity was him actually learning the necessary focus to use the antimatter powers that eventually destroy his former Justice Division.
  • When the crew are sent back in time, he's perfectly willing to trust them when it appears that Brainstorm went back in time to assassinate Optimus Prime. But when it turns out the target was him, he freaks out and suddenly they aren't up to the task.
• I Choose to Stay: (Though it wasn't exactly his choice) He is left behind in the Functionalist universe (because either Terminus or Roller were lying) so he decides to make the best of it and guide the downtrodden of that world to nonviolent societal change.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Megatron's Heel–Face Turn is by now one of MTMTE's most well-known twists, but he doesn't join the Lost Light until after the events of Dark Cybertron.
• Invincible Villain: Pre Heel–Face Turn: he simply will not die, no matter what, and he'll likely still smash you flat afterwards. "Chaos Theory" has a recap page of Optimus variously slicing him near-clean in half, reducing him to cinders via sentient explosive and trapping him in gun mode for two years - and he comes back from all of it. MTMTE showed he routinely beat Overlord senseless in one-on-one combat, despite Overlord being one of the Warriors Elite, an enhanced breed of Decepticon super-warriors, at the time. Tarn, who's on par with the planet-crushing Phase-Sixers, lampshades when the two meet up after Megatron joins the Autobots that despite all his enhancements Megatron unchecked would still kill him without much effort.
• Irony: The reason he was allowed on the Lost Light was because he successfully petitioned that he was so universally hated that only the Knights of Cybertron could judge him impartially. However, a few months after the ship resumed its journey Cybertron began reconnecting with its colony worlds, presenting five entire societies of Cybertronians unaffected by the war who could have stand in impartial judgement of Megatron.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The reason he's become so resistant to the idea of fighting for any reason is that he fears he won't be able to stop himself once he starts, thus causing him to slide back into being evil. Subverted ultimately, as Ratchet reveals to Megatron that the fool's energon was a placebo, meaning Megatron has been holding back and stopping himself on instinct.
• Joker Immunity: Being an iconic Unpopular Popular Character in a Merchandise-Driven series, IDW isn't going to let him die, at least until the series ends.
• Karma Houdini: Most of the crew see him as one, and do their damn best to make certain he knows it - some more... vocally than others. He secretly kept one of the time briefcases for himself in case he ever needed an emergency escape route, but ditched it when he decided to stop running from his past.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: If Ravage counts, then yes.
• The Kirk: Stands between Rodimus's enormous ego and recklessness and Ultra Magnus's obsessively organized personality.
• Large and in Charge: By Cybertronian standards, he's pretty beefed-up. The "in-charge" part is a matter of debate between him, Rodimus and the rest of the Lost Light crew.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It was blanked out on all the pages due to the story behind it still being underway, but there's no real way you're going to get around him joining the Autobots and becoming captain of the Lost Light.
• Leader Forms the Head: After he gets his new body, he is able to combine and form the head of Devastator. He never really gets the chance to use it, though.
• Leave Him to Me!: He orders his troops to leave Whirl alone for the entire course of the war, so that he might have the pleasure of giving the copter-bot an ironic death at his hands. Though Word of God also said that such an order could be disobeyed if one found themselves in a fight against Whirl with no choice but to kill him, this loophole is what Kaon uses to kill the Alternate Whirl.
• Like an Old Married Couple: His relationship with Rodimus is akin to watching a sane, thoughtful guy (Megatron) let out many an exasperated sigh at his cocky Manchild husband's (Rodimus) insane antics. Then, there's all the squabbling. If the Lost Light were an apartment complex their neighbors would issue noise complaints to the police daily.
• Living MacGuffin: Becomes this for Shockwave, since his body houses space bridge technology.
• Lovable Coward: Stet reveals he used to be this before his fateful meeting with Whirl. His reaction to Impactor starting a bar fight was to cower under a nearby table like a frightened child.
• Made of Iron: Is he ever. Megatron has, over the course of the war, been subject to all manner of injury. He's been shot, stabbed, smashed, crushed, reduced down to his bare wiring, even blown to pieces, filled with spacebridge portals that render any kind of treatment impossible, and yet he always recovers eventually. Even by the time he joins the Lost Light crew, and is supposedly weaker than he used to be, he's still amazingly tough. His fight with Tarn ends with him having a massive hole in his chest (going almost from neck to hip), and he's still able to crawl away to the Necrobot's house, being back on his feet, none the worse for wear, in only a few hours. Lampshaded in Dark Cybertron when Megatron has this to say about his missing legs and waist:
  Megatron: This scratch? I've had worse.
• Magic Feather: His Fool's Energon, and the feeling of restraint it gives him, is all in his head. His energon is actually normal unfiltered energon. It tastes bad but it makes no difference.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: By necessity, as his old body was trashed fighting D-void during the events of Chaos. This form also undergoes some noticeable changes in More Than Meets the Eye.
• Mind Rape: Nearly falls victim to this during his days as a miner to Trepan's attempts at Mnemosurgery. In a conversation with Orion Pax, he mentions that he fears something was done to him, and he has no way of knowing.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He's not proud of what the Decepticons did any more. The fact that Starscream has wound up in charge of Cybertron really doesn't help.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Though he's understandably saddened by being stranded in another universe, he's decided to make the best of it by starting a peaceful rebellion of words and ideas to overthrow the Functionist Council. He might even create a Tarn dedicated to peace instead of violence.
• Necessarily Evil: He initially saw himself as this. In the present Megatron comes to accept he ceased being this a ways back and it absolutely devastates him.
• Never Be Hurt Again: The reason Megatron assumed a clinical, detached leadership style when commanding the Decepticon army is because losing Terminus, who'd been like a father to him, taught Megs "not to get attached." Part of his Character Development aboard the Lost Light is lowering long held up emotional barriers and opening up to others. Perhaps best showcased with Ravage, who he treats not as a disposable minion but more like a dear old friend he confides in.
• Noble Bigot: Developing into this. Recent events and a harsh chewing out from Skids causes him to realize his bigotry towards organic races was wrong. Loses the bigot status at the end of More Than Meets The Eye and becomes a hero to organics in the Functionist Universe, saving billions.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Has a fondness for doing this every time he's repaired, always aimed at Starscream.
• Not So Above It All: He acts aloof and grumpy, as if he's more matured than the rest of the crew, but nonetheless does things like performing slam poetry in Mirage's bar, accepting Rodimus Stars, or scheming with Rodimus to get out of going to Thunderclash's party. In the opening arc of Lost Light, he joins the team back to Cybertron just so he can see Starscream's face when he reveals he's still alive.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Rodimus is understandably confused when Megatron decides to defend organics rather than kill them.
  • When Megatron outright gives his word, a skeptical Rodimus agrees to give him time to say goodbye to Terminus. He also drops all banter and calls Rodimus "captain".
• Odd Friendship: Briefly develops a respectful repartee with Trailcutter and is visibly upset when Trailcutter is killed by Kaon.
  • Him and Ultra Magnus end up developing an understated yet strong friendship as well. They even finish each other's sentences! Although it's a little awkward between them in Lost Light after Megatron returns from his 10 million year extended stay in the Functionist timeline, the crew lead to believe he ditched them. After this misunderstanding is cleared up Megs and Magnus resume acting like close chums again.
• Old Friend: Him and Ravage. Their private heart to heart gives the sense they've had many, intimate conversations in the past about life, the war, Decepticonism, etc. Considering Megatron's long held policy of "don't get attached" it's interesting he wound up, albeit inadvertently, becoming close friends with Ravage anyway.
• One-Man Army: When He's Back!, he begins to tear through Deathsaurus' army by himself and their leader is very well aware that they will not stand a chance against him.
• Out of Focus: While the De-Facto Big Bad of ALL the Decepticons, he was not seen for almost a year in Robots In Disguise, and while he returns with a bang, he's captured and imprisoned at the end of the arc.
• Papa Wolf: Witnessing Tarn split Ravage in half rouses Megatron from his indecisive funk, convincing him to strap on a Fusion Cannon, stomp out onto the battlefield, incinerate whole scores of Deathsaurus horde and scoop up poor Ravage's wounded frame, saving Team Rodimus in the process.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: At first he won't risk his life to save non-Cybertronians, but a chewing-out from Skids causes him to realize that he's not making a big-enough effort to change and he reconsiders. Averted in regards to the discussion on the Forged and Constructed Cold, as he hates categorization.
  • He abandons his anti-organic bigotry completely after the psychic attack in "Dying of the Light" causes him to see every organic he's caused the death of screaming in horror and fear. This causes him to realize how much pain he caused to non-Cybertronians as well just how similar organics are to Cybertronians.
• Pragmatic Hero: Even as a good guy, he thinks mainly of the quickest, most practical way to get things done. In his own words:

  Here's a survival tip: When everyone's lining up to make sacrifices... always get to the back of the queue.

• Put on a Bus: At the end of the first story arc of Lost Light, Megatron is left in the Functionist Universe because Terminus gave the wrong coordinates for the back-up teleporter. He decides to make the most of this situation by re-organizing the Anti-Vocationist League to fight against the Functionists through words, and diplomacy, and empathy.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: As the former leader of the Decepticons, he could trade blows and win with some of his Phase Sixers.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He's much more reasonable than expected, working with Trailcutter to fix his problems rather than punishing him and letting Tailgate and Cyclonus off the hook when it becomes clear that Getaway set them up.
• Rebuilt Pedestal: In the present, to Orion Pax. As of All Hail Optimus, Soundwave seems to understand Megatron's desires to move away from violence.
• Redemption Demotion: Obviously, he's no longer commanding armies, and his space bridge broke down during Dark Cybertron. Subverted on pretty much every mental level, however: Megatron's formidable leadership skills are still very much present, and when he becomes captain of the previously lax Lost Light, things turn around. Subverted when he masters anti-matter.
• Redemption Equals Life: Abandons his cause at the end of The Transformers: Dark Cybertron, and makes it out of the crossover alive.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Amazingly, Megatron is completely sincere in his desire to make amends for his past deeds, and regrets what he did to the planet and to his people, going so far as to completely reject violence altogether. Sadly, many feel that his crimes are too severe for him to ever be forgiven on any level. By the end of Lost Light however Rodimus and most of their surviving crew seem to have, wholeheartedly accepting Megs as one of the family. It helps that he's repeatedly saved their lives. Plus, the Last Light crew's account of him saving billions in the Functionist timeline likely improved their perceptions of him big time.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity: Bumblebee manages to do this for the Cybertronian race for him in Dark Cybertron, though Bumblebee doesn't live to see it.
• Restraining Bolt: Forced to consume low-grade, mildly toxic Energon to sap his considerable strength. In private, Megatron confides to Ravage it isn't really necessary with his advanced age.
• Self-Restraint: Megatron could levied his role in Shockwave's defeat in order to obtain a pardon of some kind. He could have not become an Autobot and become a neutral citizen like many other former Decepticons were allowed to do. He also could have just ran away and avoid any kind of punishment whatsoever. However, he chose to allow the Autobots to arrest and try him to publicly denounce his old ways and make amends for his past crimes.
• Straight Man: Like Ultra Magnus, his serious nature contrasts wildly with the eccentricities of the crew, leading to several situations that leave him face-palming or getting aggravated at everyone's antics. Even when Thunderclash is brought up and his Parody Sue nature makes everyone practically worship the ground he walks on, Megatron's reaction is basically: "He's an important Autobot, I tried to kill him a few times."
• Taking You with Me: One way or another, he didn't intend to walk away from his battle with the DJD. Even after he had killed Tarn and his remaining loyalists, Megatron was fully prepared to let the antimatter he had released kill him too if not for Rodimus' intervention. Of note, it's rather ambiguous as to whether he accepted Rodimus' attempt to save him or if the Autobot rescued him against his will.
• Taught by Experience: Lost Light #6 shows that he's learned from his previous attempt at social upheaval and is ensuring that the Functionist Universe has a peaceful transition to freedom as opposed to starting another war.
• That Man Is Dead: How he views the old firebrand he used to be. Though Ravage raises the question of whether he really is. In issue #55, he's practically back to being a Decepticon warlord, even wearing Tarn's Decepticon mask, before Terminus shows up. In Lost Light #6, he was every reason to believe the Autobots stranded him but he's still wearing his Autobot badge as opposed to reviving the Decepticons.
• Thinking Up Portals: His insides are literally made of them.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Thanks to his experiences during Dark Cybertron and on the Lost Light, Megatron goes from someone who would mercilessly slaughter uncountable numbers and view all non-Cybertronians as less than inferior to a reformed social revolutionary who wishes to fight with words not fists, offers understanding and acceptance to his peers and would sacrifice himself to save lives whether they be Cybertronian or organic.
• Token Evil Teammate: Naturally, being the former leader of the very faction the Lost Light crew are/used to be up against.
• Tragic Keepsake: Roberts confirms he is wearing Bumblebee's old Autobot Badge.
  • In the epilogue, his Rodimus Star becomes this to Rodimus after Megatron is sentenced to death.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Some solicits for comics after Dark Cybertron gave away him joining the crew.
• Transplant: Leaves the cast of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise after the Dark Cybertron crossover for this series.
• Tron Lines: His current body has lines of glowing energy (most noticeable on his shoulders), now an Autobot red rather than the Decepticon purple you'd normally expect.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Somewhat the impression he left on Orion Pax as a young miner writing speeches about society's injustices before the two would become mortal enemies.
• Villainous Legacy: His invasion of Earth is still a pretty sore point with the humans. His being an Autobot is enough for them to join Galvatron's Decepticon cell and most of G.I. Joe still has it out for him.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Rodimus bicker constantly and act like they hate each other, but it's rather telling that Megatron actually holds onto the Rodimus Star that Rodimus made for him.
• Visionary Villain: What he became during his revolution.
• Warrior Poet: He used to write poetry. Lots of poetry. Just ask Impactor.
  • As of issue #40, it seems he's trying his hand at poetry again. Nobody appreciates it.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Impactor, who was his fellow miner before the War. This winds up saving Impactor's life on at least one occasion, when he manages to scribble a sardonic "Not more of your poetry," on a piece of rubble just as Megatron was about to kill him. The realization that he was about to kill his old friend stunned Megatron enough for Impactor to escape. Apparently revives the friendship in the Functionist Universe, only for Impactor to die to the Functionists.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: What do you expect from the founder of the Decepticons?
• What You Are in the Dark: Was willing to give himself up to Tarn in "Dying of the Light" if he spared the rest of the crew stranded on the Necroworld, even refusing to fight back while Tarn was tearing him apart. None of the crew knew he was doing this, or knew the lengths he was willing to go to save them.
• When He Smiles: Genuine smiles from Megatron are few and far between. But when he does... just look at him◊.
• Where It All Began: Megatron's story started with him as a miner toiling away in the Energon mines beneath Nova Point on Cybertron, a slave to Functionism that would set him on the road to founding the Decepticons. His story starts again beneath the Nova Point of Functionist Cybertron, left behind either through the actions of Terminus or Roller, as he re-organizes the Anti-Vocationist League which has recently lost its symbol of resistance in Rung, to fight the Functionists and their philosophy through words, diplomacy, and understanding, to achieve "peace through empathy", and with him receiving a call from the previously unheard-from Functionist version of Orion Pax.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: It is heavily implied that Megatron is terrified of being helpless, or being harmed while in a vulnerable state. The normally composed former Decepticon leader goes into a panic when Optimus offers to comb through his mind during his trial (claiming his very being was all he had left at that point, and would rather have been killed than let anyone into his head), flies into a rage when he realizes that Brainstorm is out to kill him in the past when he's helpless, and attacks Tailgate after the latter sneaks into his room with a pair of Mnemosurgery needle hands. This fear of being helpless likely comes from his near Mind Rape at the hands of Trepan during his mining days.
• Willfully Weak: In Lost Light. In the Functionist Universe, he rips his bonds apart like they're paper when prompted.
• Worth Living For: Starscream's speech at his trial lit up a fire inside him to live out of spite for his former lieutenant.
  Megatron: I'd sooner live than allow him to write my epitaph.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Fool's Energon isn't real, it just tastes really bad. Megatron hasn't actually been weaker this entire season, he's just been restraining himself because he was told it would sap his strength and he believed that it did.

Scientists, Engineers, and Staff

Rung

Click ^here to see him glassless.

It's okay. It's alright. We're done. No more for today.

The ship psychiatrist who's incredibly nice and well-meaning to just about everyone. Despite his affable personality he often goes unnoticed and secretly desires to be remembered. Also, he’s Primus. Yes, the Primus.

---

• Accidental Misnaming: Rung is never correctly addressed by name when he is conscious or present. The other characters will either forget his name, mispronounce his name, or simply identify him based on his profession. However, characters do not seem to have this problem at all in prose stories or when he is not present.
  • Skids utilises this to bring him out of his coma.
  Rung: It's Rung. Forever.
  • Even funnier when he misnames 'Quark' in Issue 37.
  • It turns out this is because when Adaptus fired his memnosurgery-beam at Cybertron before escaping on Luna-1 at the end of the God War, Rung/Primus tanked most of it, taking the brunt of the beam. Unfortunately, this didn't prevent the Cybertronian race from forgetting their history (including the rest of the Guiding Hand forgetting their identities), but it also meant that Primus in his new identity of Rung would be become basically a "blank space", unable to be remembered properly unless he was actually physically there. Nobody being able to remember his name is a symptom of that.
• Action Survivor: He was able to walk away from the war with barely a scratch on him. Ironically, he becomes much more injury-prone after the Great War as a member of the Lost Light. The reason for this being that, as Primus, he can instantly heal from any injury. Forgetting who he really was just slowed the process down to the level of a normal Cybertronian.
• Amusing Injuries: Let's see, arm sliced off by Cyclonus, head blown off (non-fatally) by Swerve, used by Rodimus as bait for the Sparkeater...
• Angel Unaware: More like, deity unaware...
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Functionist!Rung uses the mass-displacement technology the Functionists used on him to grow to become bigger than a Titan to fight off the Luna-2 Harvester, though the strain of it causes him unbearable agony, and eventually kills him.
• Badass Bookworm: While seemingly nothing but a lowly psychiatrist, he swims out of the Lost Light and takes on the Ammonites with nothing but a staff during the Dark Cybertron crossover. As it turns out, the key word is "seemingly".
• The Bait: The Sparkeater sought him due to the brightness of his spark. When Rodimus figures this out he grabs him and uses him to lure the monster into the range of the ship's engines. Turns out there's a good reason why his spark was burning so brightly...
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Other than his glasses, this is his most defining physical trait. When Whirl subjects him to a Neck Lift, Swerve jokes that Whirl's attack is because he's jealous of Rung's eyebrows and ability to self-express with them.
• Bittersweet Ending: He saves the crew and the universe, but at the cost of his life and the crew’s memories of him. His sacrifice is remembered in a sense; he reignites the hot spot on Luna-1, with the new Transformers born there all possessing his distinctive eyebrows and glasses...
• Body Horror:
  • Issue 1 of Lost Light has him start suffering from painful convulsions, along with an ominous green glowing. It's him producing photonic crystals.
  • Issue 3 and 4 of Lost Light reveal that his alt mode is apparently a huge drill many times larger than his normal body. It isn't. He's just been forcibly mass-shifted by the Functionist Council. Maintaining a form that size causes him unspeakable pain, and he is seen falling to his knees and gasping hard after being ejected from his alt-mode. Visible cracks and wear are also present on his face and body in his normal mode.
• Boom, Headshot!: Swerve accidentally shoots him in the face during the Fortress Maximus incident. He survives with no permanent damage, though, which makes sense - it takes a lot to kill a god.
• Brutal Honesty: The reason why Rodimus asks Rung to go with him to Luna-1, because Rodimus admits he needs someone to tell him things he doesn't want to hear, especially after Magnus goes missing.
• Butt-Monkey: His first scene in the comic involves him losing an arm. During an incident with Time Travel he's also indirectly responsible for the start of the Autobot/Decepticon war all because he accidentally spilled someone's drink while trying to get a curly straw for Tailgate.
• The Cameo: He shows up in the pages of The Transformers: Unicron leading the group welcoming Soundwave into the Afterspark following his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Canon Character All Along: He’s actually Primus, reincarnated in a mortal form.
• Cassandra Truth: Rodimus dismisses his concerns regarding the "voice coming from the basement". Turns out Rodimus knew what was in the basement.
• Chekhov's Gun: In 'Shadowplay', he's seen playing with a rather anachronistic model of the 'Lost Light', turns out it is because it was Future!Rung who traveled to the past.
• Chekhov's Gunman: At first he appears to be a mere Psychiatrist used as a butt monkey, but several events have alluded that Rung is far more than meets the eye:
  • He's positively ancient, being a contemporary of Kup.
  • His serial number is exactly 100 Million. Except it's not. Everyone, including Rung himself, has been reading it upside-down for seven million years. As the first Cybertronian, his serial number is and always has been 1.
  • He's met most of the famous Autobots (in fact, had most of them as clients).
  • He's never changed his body since the beginning of the war. In fact, he's gone through it relatively undamaged (as commented by Ratchet) prior to getting his head shot off by Swerve.
  • He was there at Megatron's descent into villainy, in fact him being assaulted was the event that started the chain of events that would lead to Megatron abandoning a pacifist approach and starting the Decepticon movement. In a way, Rung getting attacked in that oil house is what sparked the Great War. It turns out this was Future!Rung.
  • In fact Rewind describes him as a "historical constant", somehow always present during significant events while remaining outside them. Because he was time-traveling with Rodimus' team to said significants chasing Brainstorm.
  • He has the brightest (or possibly second brightest) spark on the ship, which draws the sparkeater to him.
  • His Alt Mode is entirely unique and has no obvious function (the Functionist council classified it as an "ornament"). Even Nightbeat has tried figuring out what it is, with no luck. In the alternate Functionist-dominated timeline created as a result of Brainstorm's timejumping, the Functionists and Rung both figure out what he does and apparently it is so horrifying, they sentence him to death for it.
  • Then there's what he does:He's able to internally produce photonic crystals (the crystals that store Spark energy and a huge one being the core of the Matrix). The Functionists plan to use Alternate!Rung's crystals to mass produce a Cybertronian army with energy from Vector Sigma to conquer the galaxy.
  • All the hints finally come together in the Grand Finale; he’s Primus.
• Cool Old Guy: He was a big name during Nova Prime's time, big enough that even a two-week old Tailgate knew about him, and big enough he was almost part of the Ark's crew (by sheer coincidence, the Senate called him away just before launch). So he's at least six million years old, if not more. He's old enough that information creep has caused him to forget his purpose, namely the fact that he’s a literal god.
• The Constant: Rewind refers to him as a "historical constant"; he's been present at numerous major events throughout history, but almost never plays a direct part in them, almost as if he's just an outside observers. Elegant Chaos reveals that at least a few of these instances were caused by time travel. Most of the others are probably a result of him being Primus.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Not a moron by any definition, but he isn't much of a fighter. He's surprisingly good with a staff. That’s not even getting into the fact that, he’s Primus, the warrior god who created all Transformers.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Issue 48 reveals that he isn't actually a licensed psychiatrist like he claims. He was stripped of his license to practice after he became too close to one of his patients. The ship he was serving on crashed with Rung as the sole survivor, which he used to cover up his disbarment, much to his own shame. This is small potatoes to his real origins as Primus.
• Distressed Dude: Due to being a Non-Action Guy, if the fighting gets close Rung quickly becomes this.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: It's briefly mentioned that Quantum Duplicate!Rung was killed in the initial quantum jump. This is likely because being Primus in disguise would've made for some weird questions if two of him were running around, however briefly. The commonly accepted answer is that the duplicate was a copy of Rung's provably physical body, albeit lacking his unique spark as Primus and therefore appearing to have died.
• Early-Bird Cameo: His first appearance in the IDW universe, even if text-only, was in the The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers cast bios.
• Easily Forgiven: He has this attitude towards everyone. With the reveal that he's Primus Unaware, this starts making a lot of sense.
  Rung: I've been around for awhile now... I've learned to forgive anything.
• Equippable Ally: Played for laughs, as Rung transforms into... a giant stick, which Swerves uses as a weapon to defeat Paddox in issue 22.
• Explosive Overclocking: He uses the mass-displacement technology the Functionist Council used on him to grow to to absolutely Unicronian levels of size to take on the Luna-2 Harvester, though it's unspeakably painful to do, and he dies after only a few minutes of fighting.
• The Fog of Ages: Rung is somewhere around six to seven million years old and due to information creep has forgotten his true purpose. Then he remembers when exposed to trauma... He himself lampshades this in issue 5 of Lost Light. He's been around so long, he's forgotten his purpose. His purpose is being god, as he’s the mortal avatar of Primus. This includes the ability to produce photonic crystals, the same kind of crystal that the Matrix is and that can store the energies of Sparks.
• Geek Physiques: He's built scrawny, even for a scientist.
• Foil: To Drift, in a meta way. Drift was presented to the fandom as some really cool character (ninja, sleek car, respected Autobots shilling for him). Rung is simply psychiatrist, is considered the weakest crewmember, others don't take him seriously and even keeps getting called by the wrong name, and transforms into an office ornament, of all things.
  • It may work in another way too. Whereas Drift was hyped upon his introduction, he has since been played down and integrated with the cast. Rung was introduced quietly and casually, and was gradually hinted to be very important later, and with the big reveal that he’s literally Primus incarnate, the long build-up was very justified.
• God Is Good: He’s Primus and he’s a Nice Guy who just wants to help people.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Once reminded of his identity as Primus, he instantly regenerates his severed arm. It's also stated that his ability to heal is why he's survived many seemingly-fatal situations
• Heroic Sacrifice: He uses his alternate mode to create twelve new matrixes but the strain kills him and causes his body to revert into sentio metallico dust.
• Hypocrite: A tragic example; when Rung calls out Froid on having become too close to Sunder, Froid snaps back that Rung is hardly in a position to throw such an accusation around, given that he himself got involved with a patient and concealed that fact.
• Insult Back Fire: Alternate!Rung is commonly hailed as 'The Useless One', with the Functionist Council calling him that as an insult. Once it's been revealed what Rung's function is revealed, and the Functionist Council as well, Rung returns the insult as the Functionist Council, as they're truly the useless ones.
• Irony: The functionists hate Rung because of his “useless” alt mode while worshipping him at the same time, since he’s really Primus.
• Kitsch Collection: Of model spaceships.
• Meaningful Name: Rung's name is both a play on his alt form (which is, at first glance, functionally useless, much like how a ladder rung is useless without the rest of the ladder) and a reference to Carl Jung. This is further confirmed by the name of the other Cybertronian psychologist, Froid, whose name is the last name of Sigmund Freud as it is pronounced.
• Meta Guy: His psychological analysis provided more background info for several characters in LSOTW, mostly the "Wrookies."
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: If Functionist-timeline Rung's words are anything to go by, Rung may be the indirect bringer of the apocalypse. Subverted. He tried to invoke this so that the AVL would have a martyr and destroy the Functionist Council.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: In the alternate timeline, Rung encourages his own execution at the hands of the Functionist One-of-Twelve, saying his death will herald the beginning of the end.
  • Seems to actually be worried about this in the main timeline; when he thinks he is about to die, he requests that if he should die in his alt mode, he be disassembled. "Put me beyond use".
• My God, What Have I Done?: Implied to be how he feels about covering up the fact that he was stripped of his license to practice psychiatry. After Froid dredges his feelings of guilt back up, Rung decides to quit psychiatry all together.
• Nice Guy: The best example among the Lost Light crew.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Births, Deaths & Interventions he saves Megatron from a lobotomy at the hands of Trepan. Though Trepan was a sadistic mnemosurgen, it was one the major events that led Megatron to found the Decepticons, and everything that followed.
  • Not to mention being accidentally responsible for Megatron's initial arrest, which made the Senate aware of his writings in the first place.
• Non-Action Guy: Lampshaded by himself when his internal monologue reveals he was happy when he was forced to sit out during the Battle of Temptoria. Ironically, he’s actually Primus, who’s been explicitly identified as a warrior god. It’s implied he’s forgotten much of his warrior traits thanks to The Fog of Ages like the rest of the Guiding Hand forgot many of their traits.
• Non-Standard Character Design: No other Cybertronian has his kind of build. He is also the only mech so far with eyebrows, enough to earn him a nickname for it. (They move independently too!)
• Parody Sue: Rung is Loved by All to the point Megatron liked him even before his Heel–Face Turn, is an accomplished psychiatrist despite not even being licensed, has been present for most of the significant moments in Cybertronian history, and is Primus himself, albeit an amnesiac. This is counterbalanced though by him largely being rather pitiful most of the time, being the biggest Butt-Monkey on the team and suffering countless injuries, being easily overlooked to the point everyone forgets his name, ending up a Distressed Dude thanks to his lack of combat prowess, having a largely useless alt-mode whose one true use ends up killing him, being the cause behind the Great War^*It was his being assaulted that started the bar fight that landed Megatron in jail, and via Stable Time Loop his getting a curly straw for Tailgate that started the fight in the first place when he knocked over his assaulter's drink and Megatron's turn to tyranny, and by series end is forgotten by everyone after his Heroic Sacrifice as a side effect of Information Creep.
• Physical God: Turns out he's an amnesic Primus.
• Only Friend: The sole member of the crew trusted by Red Alert.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Which actually are glasses, as it eventually turns out.
• Recurring Extra: Before the events of the series. He's been described in-universe as a "historical constant."
• Red Baron: His alternate self in the Functionist-controlled Cybertron is known by his devotees as "The Useless One" because of his altmode that defies the Grand Cybertronian Taxonomy. Then however we find out what he's for...
• Senseless Sacrifice: A non-fatal version. Primus' attempt to take the brunt of Adaptus' memnosurgery-beam failed to stop both the erasure of Cybertron's prehistory and also failed to prevent the rest of the Guiding Hand from losing their identities, but also ensured that nobody would be able to properly remember him in his new identity of Rung unless he was physically present (and even then would often be subjected to Accidental Misnaming because of it).
• The Shrink: Formerly to the Wreckers and now to the crew of The Lost Light.
• Someone to Remember Him By: After his sacrifice reignites the hot spot on Luna-1, all the new Transformers born there possess his features.
• Spotting the Thread: He was able to deduce the true identity of Minimus Ambus.
• The Teetotaler: He isn't affected by the doped engex at Swerve's. Needless to say, Brainstorm didn't consider him as big a threat as Ultra Magnus, and Rung proved this to be appropriate by getting trapped under some of the victims.
• This Is a Drill: The alternate Functionist Council claim his alt-mode is a giant drill. It isn't, they just increased his mass and stuck some fake drill parts on him.
• Toyless Toyline Character: For the longest time Rung had no official toy, just a made-up figure featured on a comic cover. Though in the Combiner Wars Toyline, the Bios are written as Psych-Profiles by Rung. Actually, he does have official toys, since Primus has some and Rung is actually Primus. Eventually he did receive a proper figure in the Siege Toyline.
• Treasure Chest Cavity: 90% of his body is made of compartments.
• The Un-Reveal: Just what is his alt-mode for? His body produces photonic crystals, but he does that in robot mode. Notably, the first story arc of Lost Light explores everything else, but never answers this. Nightbeat speculates on an answer, but he dies immediately after he figures it out. We finally find out in LL #22; as Primus, this form can create more Matrices of Leadership.
• Warrior Therapist: He knows how to study people and find physical and mental weak points, which he's more than willing to exploit in case he does get into fights. And as Primus, he’s known as a warrior god.
• You Don't Look Like You: Rung's first appearance, back in The Transformers (IDW), doesn't match his present design (his chest is far more rectangular than it should be, for one), which doesn't gel with the idea that his form's remained unchanged.
• Your Head A-Splode: Barely survives having his head blown off by Swerve. Which makes sense - after, all it's not like God would die from a simple gunshot, would he?

Brainstorm

Don't. Mock. The briefcase.

An egotistical and amoral workaholic scientist who loves developing deadly and outrageous weaponry. He's an old friend/coworker of Chromedome's and is virulently jealous of fellow scientist Perceptor. He's one of the more ...colorful crew members who tends to get inspired a little too easily...

---

• Adaptational Villainy: His Headmasters incarnation was a similarly frenetic idea guy, but with none of the whole "Decepticon plant" thing going on. However, his ultimate goal is noble and, despite being a Decepticon, he's not that bad a guy.
• Anti-Villain: There's an awful lot of 'evil' tropes here, but he's really not all that evil.
• Alien Blood: Unlike the purple Energon everyone else has, Brainstorm's is reddish orange, possibly as a result of being a Dead Universe infectee.
• Aliens of London: He has a British accent, occasionally reflected in his speech patterns (using "maths" instead of "math", for instance.)
• Always Someone Better: How Perceptor is presented in relation to him. It shows.
  Brainstorm: Okay, confession time: I may have overstated my expertise in this area. Unintentionally and uncharacteristically, that may be what I've done. Maybe it's the pressure to perform, maybe it's because you're all staring at me —maybe it's because you're asking me to juggle the fundamental building blocks of life and death— but I'm a teensy bit overwhelmed.
  Rodimus: Hey, I totally understand. Who wouldn't be overwhelmed? Who wouldn't freeze up? I guess the only person I can think of is Perceptor...
  Brainstorm: Oh, well played, Captain. Well played.
• Ambiguously Bi: He fell in love with Quark and is implied to have a thing for Perceptor, but is also very close to Nautica, and is possibly more than just best friends. The penultimate issue prominently highlights the two of them holding hands while fighting together.
• Arc Villain: His quantum duplicate is the one behind the DJD invasion in the "Slaughterhouse" arc, though to his credit he did try to keep the others safe. Once his other self is exposed, he takes a direct role as the main antagonist of the "Elegant Chaos" arc.
• Been There, Shaped History: Teleporting onto Messatine caused the evacuation that forced Megatron to abandon Terminus.
• Beneath Suspicion: Sometimes, the best place to find the enemy is to look for the guy dreaming up creative ways to kill them.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Insane as his inventions are, they usually tend to work. There's also the fact that he's actually a Decepticon agent who invented Grandfather Paradox-free time travel.
• Bittersweet Ending: While he continues to perform science, he ends up crippling himself in a lab accident and spends the rest of his life hooked up to a life support system he made from his briefcase. His duplicate not only ensures the Lost Light crew is copied but finally gets Perceptor to admit they are in the end of it all "simpatico".
• Breakout Character: While mostly a supporting character in Season One, Dark Cybertron gives him more exposure, and he's at the heart of the first two arcs of Season Two.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: To put it mildly. On one occasion, Chromedome walks into his workshop to find him working on something while hanging upside down from the ceiling, and on another occasion wryly notes that "What is a giant naked human doing in your lab?" is a question most people would only need to ask once in a lifetime. In Lost Light he manages to find a way to teleport across universes.
• Combat Pragmatist: In Issue #33, he walks into Swerve's and drops everyone by opening his his briefcase. It's later revealed that he'd been slowly contaminating the drinks over a period of time and opening the briefcase simply activated the toxins.
• Cowardly Lion: Doesn't like fighting, and in a bad situation he'll try to run away or cower, depending on his options. He also claims he's "allergic" to hostile environments. As he could probably figure out to kill most people with little effort, it's initially implied that this is his way of not being forced into using lethal force, but later revealed he's a Technical Pacifist who can't bring himself to kill anyone. After Getaway leaves them to the mercy of the DJD however, Brainstorm quickly proves able to fight with the best of them, both with weapon and Good Old Fisticuffs, even if his first instinct is still to run.
  Brainstorm: Forget fancy weaponry — Let's hear it for the humble fist!
• Crazy Enough to Work: His MO.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • It's implied in issue #16 that he once lost a Conjunx Endura, or somebody else he cared about.
  • #38 reveals that his unrequited crush, Quark, died in a Decepticon prison camp, and he never got over it. Of course, the rest of the series shows that this isn't the only thing dark and troubled about his past...
• Dead All Along: More like undead all along — you get the idea.
• Devil in Plain Sight: While morally ambiguous Autobots are by no means rare, Brainstorm ranks amongst the most gleefully amoral of the bunch. Turns out there's a reason for this.
• Dramatic Unmask: He's actually got a mouth, like his Headmasters incarnation. That much isn't a spoiler. The Decepticon insignia painted on the inside of his faceplate most definitely is. Nautica (and virtually everyone else) didn't think he actually had one (similar to Empurata victims like Whirl).
• Early-Bird Cameo: He first appears in the All Hail Megatron Coda's serving under Ironhide early in the war and in the present day working with Perceptor to rehabilitate Kup.
• The Engineer: He's the self-proclaimed "ship's genius."
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: As one of the more more morally dubious members of the crew, he's a wellspring of Comedic Sociopathy. His second scene in the series has him crack a joke about the horrific death of Ore. When we find out he's a Decepticon spy, he becomes a straight example of the trope.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Honestly, how else was keeping Nova Prime's corpse in his lab going to end?
• Face Framed in Shadow: After knocking out everyone in Swerve's Bar following The Reveal he's a Decepticon mole.
• Fan Boy: Of Perceptor. A highly conflicted fanboy. With the later revelation that he's in love with Quark (who was based off of ''Animated'' Perceptor), he's implied to be somewhat attracted to Perceptor due to his similarities to Quark.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The sparkeater passing him over in favor of another target. However high-functioning they may be, zombies' souls evidently don't taste that great.
  • His preferred method of consuming Energon and Engex involves pouring it directly into a port on his forearm, as opposed to using a mouth or mouth port like everyone else. Though it's possibly justified by his altered physiology, he can't safely unclip his faceplate in view of anyone else to do the same. In addtion, it's revealed that he poisoned the Engex in Swerve's, in case he needed to incapacitate the crew.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He's a weapons engineer with the trappings of a Mad Scientist. Of course he's this.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Alternate Brainstorm informed the DJD where Overlord was, but demanded that no one else got hurt, claiming it would blow his cover. Tarn claims they originally planned to uphold the deal, but Drift's presence triggered a killing frenzy that ended with the Alternate Lost Light crew dead. Since the two Lost Lights were essentially crewed by the same people, Brainstorm knows his Alt would have done this since this is what he would have done.
• Godzilla Threshold: He excels at designing weapons which would only be used if the universe itself were threatened.
• Grandfather Paradox: Found a way to override it, and tries to prevent the Great War from happening.
• Gun Nut: It's even his title in his newer "Meet the Crew" bio. Note that this pertains more towards designing them, not firing them. Despite being a Made To Order soldier, he's, at first, fairly useless in a fight, and admits that throughout the entire war he never actually killed anyone. Though the weapons he's designed certainly have. He proves capable of using them himself if push comes to shove, even wielding a BFG while guarding Nautica so she can open her Matrix.
• Handicapped Badass: Badass might be pushing it, but in the epilogue, he’s critically injured by a lab accident and ends using a permanent life support system. He notes that he doesn’t get out much anymore and his adventuring days are pretty much over and done.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: By virtue of his Mad Scientist leanings and his downplayed Lack of Empathy. He cracks jokes about how it'll be easier to tell the Duobots apart after Ore gets telefragged.
• Hidden Depths: Comes off as a bit of a Jerkass, which he often is, but is surprisingly couth when comforting Chromedome after Rewind's death. The reason for his surprising sympathy becomes tragic when you learn that his crush Quark died in a Decepticon prison camp after the war started and Brainstorm has a really bad case of Unrequited Love Lasts Forever.
• Hikkikomori: At the end of Remain In Light he's holed himself up in his lab to obsess over the Point One Percenter spark he harvested from Luna-1, though he does emerge briefly in the prose story "Sound of Shattered Glass" to talk to Swerve.
• Insufferable Genius: A brilliant scientist, but he insists on behaving like Primus' gift to the Cybertronian race.
• Irony: Despite building his whole career off of making horribly deadly weapons that get people killed, Brainstorm has deliberately never personally killed anyone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: His interactions with Chromedome following Rewind's apparent death seem to establish him as this — even after the reveal that he's a Decepticon spy we find that his goals were much more noble than what was expected. He's also surprisingly nice to Naïve Newcomer Nautica, modifying her wrench with various doodads of dubious usefulness and chatting with her often.
• Lack of Empathy: For the most part.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: He supplies the first words in the first issue taking place after Dark Cybertron.
  Brainstorm: (as Nautica returns from an errand) And— we're back! You were ages.
• Love Makes You Evil: The reason why he decided to unilaterally change the course of history was because Quark died in a prisoner camp during the war. To be fair, his original plan was simply to save Quark, but Rewind's death and Chromedome's subsequent emotional breakdown inspired him to change plans and just prevent the whole thing.
• Mad Scientist: Brainstorm is the sort of guy who'll ask, "Can it be done?" rather than, "Should it be done?" And even if the answer to the second question is a resounding "NO!", he'll probably go through with it anyway just to see what would happen.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right/Set Right What Once Went Wrong: His endgame is to travel back in time and prevent the war from starting at all. Initially he doesn't want to kill anybody at all. While he views this as the latter doing so would turn Cybertron into a Functionist-dominated dystopia.
• Meta Guy: Brainstorm has commented on story pacing, infodumps, and how often their titular race is called on to save the universe from destruction. He even creates a "Meta-bomb", which makes those affected by it believe they're part of a comic. It works.
  • He comes up with a new "Early Early Warning System", which basically taps into meta-fiction and gives warnings like "Uh-Oh" or "Run for your life!"
• The Mole:
  • Drift's accomplice.
  • Brainstorm spied for the Decepticons, but deliberately never gave them useful information, so that he could acquire the materials from both sides to build his Time Machine..
• More Dakka: After various disasters, Swerve asks him to provide his bar with a defense system. He takes this as an opportunity to install guns in the walls, activated by a big lever.
• Narcissist:
  Brainstorm: I'm too smart to die!
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Or more accurately Zombie Mad Scientist Robot.
• Non-Action Guy: He has mentioned throughout the series that he's too smart to die young and that he's allergic to hostile environments. In fact issue 38 reveals that he's never taken a life by his own hand. Moves past this following Getaway's mutiny, where it quickly becomes "fight or die" for most of the situations he finds himself in.
• Noodle Incident: His first foray into the joys of Disposing of a Body, apparently something Whirl asked him for help with.
• Obfuscating Insanity: As Issue #33 shows, Brainstorm's manias aren't all they seem.
• Odd Friendship: With Nautica. She's a bright, innocent Wrench Wench from a long-lost Cybertronian colony that completely missed the War. He's a Jerkass Comedic Sociopath whose inventions are probably responsible for more death and destruction than most Transformers put together. They get along swimmingly, and this relationship is the reason why Nautica takes the discovery of Brainstorm's treachery particularly hard.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "Brainstorm" is just a nickname given to him at the New Institute, though like Chromedome, he seems to have adopted it as his actual name. His real name is Genitus of Operation: Solar Storm.
• Our Zombies Are Different: A flashback reveals that a lab accident with Nova's corpse rendered him undead right before the beginning of the series.
  • Technically-Living Zombie: Inverted. While undead, he still continues to function pretty normally.
• Pass Fail: When the topic of Constructed/Forged Cybertronians comes up, Brainstorm quickly says that he was forged, hastily adding that he supported rights for Constructed Cybertronians. However, when the Universal Killswitch is activated, Brainstorm is shown writhing in pain along with the other Constructed Cold Cybertronians.
  • And later on, he's revealed to be an MTO, meaning he wasn't even alive at the time anyway.
• Pet the Dog: When grief begins forcing Chromedome toward a morally questionable solution, Brainstorm steps in and does his level best to persuade him otherwise. And of all the crew, he's the one who ends up taking Nautica under his wing.
• Pragmatic Hero: He becomes a Decepticon specifically because Decepticons had greater access to resources he needed for his projects (he attributes this to the looting and raiding) and exchanges minor or outdated information for ties to their network. Rodimus eventually makes him stop this.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Whereas Perceptor favours caution and restraint, Brainstorm will always ask whether or not something can be done, rather than if it should be done. Case in point: harvesting the Superspark.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Does this on Luna-1 after the hot spot ignites. He would, though.
• Ship Tease: It been implied he has a thing for Perceptor (from owning various microscopes based on Perceptor's alt mode, being refered as a "conflited Perceptor fanboy" and the fact Quark's design is based on TFA Perceptor).
• The Smart Guy: Mad Scientist variety.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: The incorrigible smartass Wise Guy to joyless and by-the-book Perceptor's Straight Man.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Rung is ultimately able to talk him out of killing Megatron.
• Technical Pacifist: He never took a life by his own hand, in spite of the fact that he was literally built solely to kill. As he says: not by chance. By choice. He proves however that if he has no other choice, he will fight, and will put down anyone who threatens him or his team.
• Tragic Villain: It turns out he only used the Decepticons to further his plan to go back in time and prevent the war from happening at all.
• Troll: Back on Kimia, he was fond of building horrendously over-the-top weapons solely to piss off the Ethics Committee, and he can't resist tweaking Magnus's nose on things like making up words (by saying it leads to "crimanarchy and pandebordination").
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: Quark may not have have even realized his affections, but Brainstorm was willing to create Grandfather Paradox-exempt- Time Travel to save him. Our Worlds Will Always Rhyme reveals that he was constructed cold during the war, so he intended to sacrifice himself along with the timeline to save Quark. The fake Afterspark fools him the second it presents an illusion of Quark who reciprocates his feelings.
• Walking Spoiler: So many significant things are revealed about him that it's like a running gag without the laughs. In ascending order of importance, he's a former employee of the New Institute, Drift's chief accomplice, a high-functioning zombie, a Decepticon plant (except not exactly), and indirectly behind a ton of the series' mysteries and events.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: In the end, his goal was simply to save Quark and everyone else killed by the war, even if it means never being born due to a paradox.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Well, yellow-orange, but he's still one of the most morally ambiguous members of the crew.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Via his Quantum Duplicate.

Nautica

A cheerful if shy engineer with a love of machinery and literature. She desires to learn more about how the universe works and its history. Rarely seen without her trusty wrench.

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• Ambiguously Bi: She's had Ship Tease with at least two male (Skids, Brainstorm) and three female (Chromia, Firestar, Velocity) cybertronians.
• Ambiguously Gay: As Word of God has confirmed her relationship with Skids to be platonic, Nautica's relationship with Velocity comes under this. When becoming amica with several bots, Nautica questions Rewind about whether being on a Cybertronian ship might mean she couldn't later become a conjunx with one of them, confirming romantic feelings for one of them. It's strongly implied that this is in regards to Lotty, called out by nickname in the ceremony, with the Ship Tease between the two and an entire issue focusing on their relationship.
• Audience Surrogate: For season 2.
• Bookworm: She read 4.3 million years worth of history in three weeks. Even given that, per IDW canon, a lot of the War consisted of long pauses to prepare for the next battle, that's impressive.
• Break the Cutie: In Slaughterhouse, Part 2, she's devastated upon finding out that Brainstorm is a Decepticon mole. And then in Dying of the Light when Skids dies.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Actually, she can, they're just completely inaccessible to people who aren't quantum engineers.
  Riptide: Are jokes not funny where you come from?
• Cargo Ship: Invoked in a meta-example by James Roberts in an interview, saying that her relationship with her wrench is the same as Guzzle's with The Judge, his favorite gun.
• Cuteness Proximity: When she first meets Ravage, she thinks he's adorable.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has her moments.
  Nautica: If I had sarcasm-powered legs, I'd do a happy dance.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: One of the only characters to get a happy ending for each duplicate. She settles down on Earth and becomes an acclaimed writer, penning a biography of the Lost Light’s adventures to ensure the crew is always remembered. She's also the one who came up with the idea of quantum duplicating the crew and will now continue adventuring in the new universe.
• Extreme Doormat: Gets pushed around by Firestar fairly easily and is in general a very quiet, non-combative person.
• Facial Horror: In the season 2 finale, she's injured when the Rod Pod is shot down. The metal skin on the left side of her face has been damaged exposing the circuitry. Though her left optic is fine, the metal around it has fallen away leaving an exposed circular lens in the vein of Transformers: Animated Megatron.
• Horrible Judge of Character: In Slaughterhouse, Part 2, she honestly believes Ravage would be willing to sacrifice himself to save some non-Cybertronians.
  • And that he's an adorable widdle kitty cat.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Joins the crew after the events of The Transformers: Dark Cybertron.
• Magic Tool: Brainstorm basically converts her wrench into a Sonic Screwdriver.
• Ms Fix It: Comes with the territory of being an engineer.
• Nice Girl: She's far and away the nicest member of the Lost Light crew. Even Tailgate has had more bouts of Jerkassery than her.
• Non-Action Guy: She's a mechanic, not a soldier. Best demonstrated in issue 42, where she desperately attempts to fight the Personality Tics, only to get decked with a single punch. By the season finale, however, she proves quite capable when given a power boost.
• No-Sell: Proves immune to "Cyberutopia" trying to distract her with a hologram of Skids, thanks to erasing her feelings about him.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She seems to have trouble understanding when people don't want someone near them. This is especially bad with Ravage.
• No Social Skills: Case in point, trying to see if Megatron was ticklish.
• Ship Tease: With now Amica Endura Velocity, as mentioned above, particularly so in issues LL 8 and LL 9.
  Nautica: Tell me your name. I want to worship you like a god.
• Sixth Ranger: Joins up with the crew after Dark Cybertron.
• Socially Awkward Hero: There's petting Ravage and accidentally insulting him in the process, avoiding the rave on the Vis Vitalis, and tickling Megatron to find his ticklish spot.
• The Smart Girl: There's a reason she's known as "The Savant" in-universe and out.
• Super-Intelligence: To the point that she may possibly be an Outlier.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Her bright purple lips and navel.
• Those Two Girls: Had something like this with Chromia when she first appeared in Dark Cybertron. Seems to have established something similar with Brainstorm (and later Nightbeat) on the Lost Light.
• Toyless Toyline Character: Initially, given that she was a wholly new character created for the series when she first appeared in Dark Cybertron. She eventually received a toy of her own as part of a Titans Return box-set that is a redeco of that line's Blurr figure, although the lack of effort in retooling the figure to actually look like Nautica combined with the fact that the Titans Return subline was generally seen as a low point in the Transformers toyline left many fans and collectors displeased.
• Wrench Wench: She has a tendency to brandish her wrench as a weapon. Take even further with her holomatter avatar, which has her dressed as a plumber.

Chromedome

Try "Get out of my head." Or even better "Get out of my memories."

A mopey and depressed mnemosurgeon with a Dark and Troubled Past. He hopes to move on and make a new life for himself with his Conjunx Endura Rewind, whom he heavily relies upon. He resents his own talents as others constantly pressure or exploit him because of them.

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• Affably Evil: A nice guy who loves his friends and his Conjunx Endura. Also spent years using mnemosurgery to brainwash people and does not see an issue using his abilities enemies like Overlord or allies who piss him off, like Prowl. His issues with this are that it will kill him if he keeps doing it and he's lying about it.
• Anti-Hero: He's done... questionable things for the greater good. However, he's also haunted by those questionable things.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses an arm in the slow cell door as he reaches for Rewind. Loses an arm a second time when Rewind cuts it off to stop him killing himself trying to save Dominus Ambus.
• Berserk Button: Any harm coming to Rewind. Prowl's emotional abuse and manipulation gets him fired up almost as much. Overlord (who is nearly twice Chromedome's size) pressing this button gets him knocked flying by Domey.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Overlord taunts him during their fight by telling Chromedome how Overlord tortured Rewind before killing him. Chromedome hits him so hard that Overlord goes flying from one punch.
  • Later on, Prowl made an thoughtless remark about Rewind I's death while smirking. Chromedome hoisted Prowl over his head and then hurled him bodily off a cliff.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: The excuse for his old job at the New Institute. Zeta Prime claimed that kidnapping and brainwashing insurgents and sympathizers was necessary for the greater good, but it was for Zeta's greater good, certainly not the people's.
• Broken Bird: Used to be a major one. Happens again when Rewind dies.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: According to Rewind, who would know, Domey gets hammered pretty quickly.
• Cartwright Curse: Four times. Eventually, though, the last time undergoes a reversal of sorts thanks to Rewind II.
• Catapult Nightmare: One side-effect of reading dead-people's minds is reliving their last moments (which are often fairly gruesome, considering what it takes to kill a Transformer).
• The Cynic: And after everything he's done, why wouldn't he be?
• Dark and Troubled Past: Being Zeta Prime's personal brainwashing device didn't do great things for Chromedome's mental state.
• Dark Secret: He's got one, though we don't know what it is yet. Evidently it's so bad that Chromedome promptly Mind Rapes Prowl for trying to blackmail him with it.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  Chromedome: Short answer: No. Long answer: No, don't be an idiot.
• Death Seeker: He's not as proactive about it as Whirl, not since he met Rewind at an assisted suicide facility, but he still doesn't seem to be especially eager to go on living. Mnemosurgery slowly kills its practitioners, and despite repeatedly promising Rewind he'd give it up, he keeps doing it, and not always because it's vitally important to the survival of the ship. He gets decidedly reckless with Overlord, to the point where he stops telling people he's going in for a session. When he finds Dominus Ambus, it takes Rewind severing his arm to prevent him from killing himself to bring Dominus back from domestication.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": After Rewind dies, he gets quite angry at being called Domey.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After the quest, he and Rewind settle down on New Cybertron, with Chromedome becoming a grief counselor to help others with issues similar to his. Somewhat bittersweet after Rewind's brain damage, but they remain in love. On the duplicate ship, he continues the quest alongside Rewind.
• Eye Scream: His quantum duplicate was killed by Vos this way, using his own finger needles.
• Functional Addict: He could stop performing mnemosurgery, yet continues to do so, even when it isn't strictly necessary. His repeated promises to Rewind that he'll quit never stick, regardless of the fact that he's aware mnemosurgery will likely result in his death. Other than the nightmares, he seems to function decently most of the time.
• Happily Failed Suicide: He probably would have gone through with it if Rewind hadn't distracted him. They ended up getting together.
• Hikikomori: Starts off Season 2 depressed and isolated in his hab suite.
• Interrogating the Dead: He can read dead people's memories, but it's incredibly unpleasant for him. Rewind is worried that one day it'll kill him, and urges him to quit.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Was willing to sacrifice his own life to save Dominus Ambus' for Rewind's sake. Rewind ensures that doesn't happen, killing Dominus, but saving Chromedome.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Blows up a cell with Overlord and Rewind in it in order to spare Rewind a worse death at Overlord's hands. Overlord claims it didn't save him, but he may have been lying to spite him.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: He couldn't deal with losing his past conjunx endurae, so he erased his memories of them.
• Loose Lips: His blabbing that Megatron was still alive gave Overlord the motivation to break free. Also, non-discriminantly speaking your mind seems to be a side effect of having it read, especially if it's a memory both parties share.
• Mind Meld: His specialty.
• Mind Rape: His response to Prowl trying to blackmail him was to forcibly invade Prowl's mind and delete the information that let him make the threat.
• The Mole: Brought into Drift and Brainstorm's Overlord operation at the last minute.
• Never My Fault: Blames his terrible actions on other people, especially Prowl, and continues to inject in the series because he "had to".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His actions in Remembrance Day result him breaking things in both comics series at the same time. He allows Overlord to find an opening during mnemosurgery, which allows for his escape. And his hasty mnemosurgery on Prowl allows for things to go really bad on Cybertron during the events of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise.
• Official Couple: With Rewind.
• Only Friend: Brainstorm's.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is "Tumbler," but his head-themed nickname, a carryover from his work at the New Institute, is so pervasive even Rewind, his Conjunx Endura, calls him by it.
• Replacement Goldfish: Has worried that he's this to Rewind since they got together. When he tries to save Dominus Ambus at the cost of his own life, Rewind proves it's not the case by saving his life over Dominus'.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Drift explained to him that Overlord's cell slowed down its content. That way, if Overlord managed to break his restraints, the people outside would have plenty of time to sound the alarm and escape. Therefore the rule was that anytime somebody visited Overlord, somebody else had to remain outside. Chromedome was so sure he could handle Overlord, he went to see him alone.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Leads Rewind to suspect that something is up.
• Too Clever by Half: He's a damn good mnemosurgeon, but Overlord probably wouldn't have escaped if he hadn't let it get to his head.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His offhanded confirmation to Overlord Megatron was still alive led directly to the Phase-Sixer finding value in life once more, breaking loose and going on to kill Pipes and Rewind. Overlord even lampshades that without Chromedome's indirect instigation, he'd never have had the will to break free. And that's not even getting into his botched mnemnosurgery on Prowl leading to Megatron and Bombshell taking over Prowl's mind and kickstarting a Decepticon uprising on Cybertron over in RiD.
• Visual Pun: His real name is Tumbler, and he transformers into a Cybertronian vehicle with no small resemblance to the Batmobile from The Dark Knight Trilogy.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rewind displays minor shades of this toward Chromedome as the latter's explaining how he can get Overlord off-ship. Subtly played later by Brainstorm when he advises Chromedome not to wipe his memory of Rewind, because Rewind would truly be dead then.
• We Used to Be Boyfriends: However close he and Prowl may have been in the past, it clearly doesn't extend into the present day.
• Worth Living For: Rewind is basically the only reason he's still alive. Which makes Rewind's death incredibly hard on him and Rewind II's arrival all the more heartwarming.

Velocity

A somewhat naive scientist/medic and old friend of Nautica's. Initially serving on the Vis Vitalis as Thunderclash's doctor, she joins up with the Lost Lighters as part of the medical staff.

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• Action Girl: Of a Combat Medic variety.
• A Degree in Useless: Due to the culture of her birthworld, she thinks that her medical studies are this.
• Affectionate Nickname: "Lotty", used mostly by Nautica.
• Arm Cannon: She has two small guns located in her wrists, though she averts Bottomless Magazines by mentioning they don't have a lot of ammunition.
• Book Dumb: She's clearly pretty intelligent, but it's noted that she took so long to get her medical license because she kept flunking her exams and book work.
• Combat Medic: She's just as skilled at taking apart enemies as she is at patching up friends.
• Does Not Like Guns: Averted. Like Pyra Magna, Velocity does have wrist mounted projectile weaponry, in spite of her culture being predominantly anti-gun.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After the quest, she retires to a peaceful life on Earth with Nautica. Her duplicate's life is probably considerably less peaceful but still happy exploring the new universe.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Due to Caminus's emphasis on performing arts as worthy, Velocity grew up believing that her medical studies and lack of interest in performance was weird and worthless.
• Hospital Hottie: One of the ship's resident medics and fairly attractive like most female Transformers.
• I Choose to Stay: She decides to go with Nautica and the rest of the Lost Light, rather than return to Caminus.
• Ship Tease: She seems very fond of Nautica, the Ship Tease being especially clear in issues LL 8 and LL 9.
• The Medic: A newly graduated one and becomes the ship's main medic for the latter part of season two after Ratchet and First Aid's departures and before Ratchet's return.
• Sixth Ranger: Joins the crew towards the last quarter of Season Two.
• Toyless Toyline Character: As of 2020, she still has not gotten an official toy in any Transformers toyline.

Recreation

Swerve

I'm here for the quest. Love a good quest. Haven't been on a quest since the whole Luna-1 thing. The Moonquest.

A metallurgist and the ship bartender who joined the quest in hopes of doing something notable in his life. He's a Motor Mouth who loves talking with everyone but is secretly very lonely and desperate for companionship. He loves pranking and irritating his fellow crewmembers.

---

• Achey Scars: He has an old war wound in his shoulder that acts up on occasion. Because it has one of Agent 113's data bullets lodged in it.
• Angst? What Angst?: Despite the death of his best, and in fact only friend Skids during the events of Dying of the Light, Swerve is remarkably chipper the very next day as Anode rather tactlessly points out. It's because he, and some other members of Team Rodimus are having Velocity administer "mood suppressants" to suppress their feelings of grief over Skids' death rather than trying to actually process them.
• A-Team Firing: He's a terrible shot, particularly in the heat of the moment.
• Bad Boss: He's quick-tempered and rather callous towards Ten. In fairness, he doesn't think that Ten is sentient.
• The Bartender: Wanted to be one since before the war broke out.
• Birds of a Feather: He and Misfire hit it off very quickly after Team Rodimus and the Scavengers meet up in Mederi/"Cyberutopia" due to their love of recaps and puns. Their newfound Odd Friendship is enough that they when Swerve is down an arm and can't open the Matrix of Leadership that Rung created for him in his Heroic Sacrifice, Misfire helps him do it.
• Bittersweet Ending: Swerve is broken by the thought of ending the quest. The duplicate that stays on New Cybertron sets up a “Swerve’s” franchise and lives a peaceful life, but his attempts to turn his bar into franchise fail and he’s left bitter and depressed over the quest’s ending. The one that jumps to the new universe is ecstatic about the new opportunities for adventure.
• Breakout Character: Quickly became a fan favorite and is now heading up the recaps at the beginning of each issue.
• Butt-Monkey: If something bad happens on the Lost Light, and it's not to Rung, it's probably to Swerve.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Has a few such moments, such as dispatching a Legislator or knocking out Paddox with Rung.
• Deadpan Snarker: A pretty good one at times. Though given the sheer volume of stuff he says, probability dictates that at least some of it has to be this.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Part of his Sad Clown tendencies and why he was so excited to come along on the Lost Light "quest".
• Early-Bird Cameo: First appears among the Autobot and Decepticon scientists consulted by Thunderwing about Cybertron's rapid environmental degeneration.
• Epic Fail: Star Saber is standing right in front of him when he shoots. Star Saber is several times his size, and Swerve still manages not to hit him even once. Not to mention…
• Facial Horror: That time he shot his own face off.
• Fan Boy: Of Blurr, particularly the speedster's pre-war racing career. He can quote the exact statistics of every single one of Blurr's races from memory.
  • Subscribed to Fisitron's Wreckers Declassified, though he complained about the repetitive phrasing.
• Gaslighting: Pulls this on Red Alert. Given that Red Alert is The Paranoiac it's kind of a dick move.
• Heel Realization: The psychic assault he underwent in issue 50 (which causes the target to experience things they secretly feel guilty for) had him imagine Ten was yelling at him for treating him as less than sentient. Swerve felt awful about this, and bringing Ten along on the trip to the Necrobot's planet was an attempt to make it up to him.
• Hidden Depths: He's a skilled metallurgist, even finding the cure for cybercrosis, and is devoutly religious in his own private way.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: He accidentally shoots Rung in the head, and later blows his own face off (fortunately neither case was fatal).
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He's secretly very lonely and desperately wants true friendship. Deconstructed as he's quick to take any kind action towards him as a sign of genuine friendship.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While Swerve can be a bit mean and doesn't believe himself to truly make friends, there are bots he truly cares about. Demonstrated in Issue 18, where Swerve is concerned over Skids' safety after the Lost Light is overrun by Legislators.
• Kick the Dog: He treats "Ten" horribly. Tellingly, "Ten" has not made a replica of Swerve in his diorama. By the end of season two, however, this ends up being subverted as he comes to treat Ten like an equal and a friend.
  • His Gaslighting of Red Alert is also pretty assholish, since he's basically triggering Red Alert's mental illness for a laugh.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Ends up calling himself out during the "Lost Light" arc.
  [After Rodimus is apparently disintegrated]
  Swerve: That wasn't normal lightning - that was God's judgment.
  Ratchet: You're half right. "Normal" lightning wouldn't have made Rodimus disappear - in fact, he'd probably have acted as a conductor.
  Swerve: A lightning Rod! (Why am I like this?)
• Medium Awareness: While under the effects of Brainstorm's Meta-Bomb.
  • Seems to still be going on. Issue 43 reveals that the issue recaps are canon, and that he occasionally just turns to the wall and explains what's going on, because he suspects that there are readers observing him. And the entire issue (involving him subconsciously creating an entire holographic earth that runs on sitcom tropes) was his way of dealing with his growing awareness that he is Out of Focus in Season 2.
• Motor Mouth: His nickname at the academy was Shut The Hell Up and he's literally incapable of doing so for more than a few seconds. This turns out to be because he has Logorrhea.
• My Little Panzer: My First Blaster ™, a large gun designed to look like a children's toy, courtesy of Brainstorm.
• Non-Action Guy: Describes himself as one of the weakest bots on the Lost Light and, according to Sunstreaker, he was voted "ship's coward." All of this is on top of his poor marksmanship and small size. Despite all this, he's had a few awesome moments of his own knocking Paddox out with a transformed Rung and destroying a legislator that was unfortunate enough to teleport into his bar with assorted weaponry.
• Nonstandard Character Design: Swerve has Four-Fingered Hands.
• Out of Focus: In the first half of season 2 he does notably little compared to season 1, largely staying in the bar. This turns out to be for a rather dark reason; see Medium Awareness above.
• Sad Clown: For all his jokes, he feels incredibly isolated, and is no stranger to loss. He mentions Cyclonus killed some of his friends during his takeover of Kimia.
• Secret Stab Wound: Seriously wounded in Spotlight: Hoist when the shuttle crashes, but he deliberately hides the injury to keep the others from panicking.
• Smarter Than You Look: Most people forget that he was a researcher in Kimia. Underneath the Motor Mouth and bad puns, there's a gifted engineer/doctor who used to treat his own injuries. In fact, he's the one that actually unravels Pharma's notes on how to treat Cybercrosis, Ratchet then makes the cure based on Swerve's theory. Lampshaded by Swerve himself.
  Swerve:Who says you can't be a metallurgist and a bartender?
• The Smart Guy: Mostly Downplayed, but his metallurgy expertise proves critical in deciphering Pharma's notes on cybercrosis and realizing that Metroplex is infected with an alchemical virus.
• Stepford Smiler: "Everyone thinks if you make jokes, you're happy. Why? Why is that?"
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: The Wise Guy to Skids' Straight Man.
• Watering Down: He does this to the drinks in his bar. It ends up saving the crew when Brainstorm poisons the bar so he can time jump out.
• What Does This Button Do?: When examining the Shoomer, he puts pressure on what he thinks is a secondary grip, but in reality it's the trigger (since it was Whirl's weapon, the trigger had to be sized up to accommodate his wider claws). It's what leads to the above Facial Horror.
• Your Head A-Splode: Gets his head crushed by Tarn on the duplicate Lost Light.

Ten

Ten.

A reprogrammed Legislator who Swerve uses as a bouncer. Due to his brain being damaged, he can only say "Ten." Though Swerve writes him off as a mindless drone and accordingly treats him poorly, there's a lot more to "Ten" than there initially seems.

---

• Annoying Arrows: Apparently fought Atomizer when the Legislators stormed the ship. As a bouncer the arrows still stick out of him, and he moves around fine. Though in Our Steps Will Always Rhyme he gets cleaned up and has the arrows removed when he goes drinking with Minimus.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Ultra Magnus is the only one who takes Swerve to task over treating Ten like dirt. It does not go unnoticed.
• Butt-Monkey: Ten suffers a number of humiliations at Swerve's hands, including not being allowed to sit on bar stools, being whacked across the head, and getting the words "I failed the Ambus Test" spray painted on his back.
• The Dog Bites Back: A subtle, but very poignant example of this. It's very telling that he's not made a toy of Swerve, who's been humiliating him since day one.
• Eyeless Face: Like his fellow Legislators, he doesn't really have eyes.
• Fan Boy: He's a huge fan of Ultra Magnus.
• Gentle Giant: He's huge and seems intimidating, but he's incredibly friendly his hobbies include art and making models of his friends.
• Hidden Depths: Ten isn't the mindless drone he appears to be. He's actually capable of independent thought, and artistic expression. Also, he really doesn't like his new "boss" Swerve.
• Killed Off for Real: Sadly, his glee at finally being to speak allows Mederi to extract his spark and kill him in front of a horrified Rodimus.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": His reaction towards Ultra Magnus.
• Mook–Face Turn: A damaged Legislator that Swerve patched up and reprogrammed to act as the bar bouncer.
• More than Meets the Eye: Pun intended. Despite appearing as a mindless drone, he's not only sentient, but a gifted artist. Turns out he can speak in complete sentences and is suprisingly eloquent.
• Perpetual Frowner: Due to damage around Ten's eye dents, and the way his mouth is structured, it makes his face look sad all the time.
• Pokémon Speak: "Ten."
  • Verbal Tic Name: Got his name because it was the only thing he could say.

Others

Ratchet

I've been doing this too long.

The grouchy and snarky chief medical officer, Ratchet is starting to feel the effects of age and joined the crew in their quest in the hopes of finding a worthy successor. His staunch atheism and rational personality cause him to often bicker with the overly-superstitious Drift.

---

• A Day in the Limelight: The Delphi two-parter and Our Steps Will Always Rhyme revolve around him - notably, the latter was the first time he'd been in the spotlight for quite some time.
• Awesome by Analysis: He figured Ultra Magnus was a Legacy Character from the very beginning.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: His Snark-to-Snark Combat with Drift is eventually revealed to be leading to something closer than just Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Bittersweet Ending: Him and Drift finally confess their feelings for one another and spend their lives together, only for Ratchet to die of age-related burnout.
• Book Ends: Ratchet was the first Autobot we met in the IDWverse comics all the way back in Infiltration when he rescues Hunter O'Nion and Verity Carlo from Starscream's Decepticons. Part of the final issue of Lost Light, and chronologically the last issue in this continuity (though not in terms of actual release) takes place during his funeral. The series began and ends with him.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Used to have this, back when we first saw him in this continuity.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: On the receiving end of this, courtesy of Pharma, though Ratchet refuses to scream or give Pharma any satisfaction. Spotlight: Orion Pax reveals that Ratchet been tortured before by Bludgeon, who's "hurt him in ways only a doctor could understand". which may explain Ratchet's ability to resist here.
• Cool Old Guy: On full display in Our Steps Will Always Rhyme, where he helps a majority of the main cast with their issues such as Nautica forgiving Brainstorm or helping Minimus with his poetry before leaving the Lost Light.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: His quantum duplicate suffered a nasty one, where Helex forced him to swallow his brain.
• Deadpan Snarker: Comes with his advanced age.
• Dual Wielding: Two pistols, The Transformers: The Movie style.
• Expy: If Pharma is the Joker, then Ratchet is NOT Batman, but rather Commissioner Gordon. Especially considering the torture he receives at the hands of Pharma is a means of breaking him, and just like Gordon, he endures it.
• Fan Boy: Turns out he was subscribed to the Fisitron's Wrecker Files.
• Fire-Forged Friends: As of the season two finale, he's come to develop respect for Megatron, acknowledging that he's really never had second thoughts about his Heel–Face Turn as evidenced by never refusing the placebo Fool's Energon and always holding back when attacked.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: He doesn't believe in the creation mythos.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Averted. Rodimus shows up to his funeral drunk. It’s not Played for Laughs.
• I Will Find You: He leaves the Lost Light to track down Drift and bring him home.
• Life Will Kill You: Lives for some time after the end of the quest for Cyberutopia with his conjunx endura Drift, only to eventually suffer a terminal case of age-related Spark burnout some time later.
• Losing Your Head: Pharma removes his head (and spark) to show off his surgical skills after they meet again on Luna 1.
• The Lost Lenore: Believes he could've been able to save Ironfist.
• Love Confession: Interrupts Drift's own love confession with a "I know, me too".
• MacGyvering: Rigging Ambulon's corpse to make a one-shot energy gun to dispatch a Legislator.
  • Combat Pragmatist: He's been around long enough to know that fighting fair for the most part gets you killed.
• The McCoy: Right down to being the ship's doctor.
  • Combat Medic: Make no mistake, Ratchet's perfectly willing to fight, as Pharma learns.
• The Mentor: To First Aid, whom he sees as his replacement.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Ratchet's response to suddenly turning gunmetal grey (a sign of death for Cybertronians) and then turning insubstantial is a tired "Oh, terrific." The final issue reveals that when he was finally diagnosed with a terminal case of Spark burnout, his response was simply "Bugger".
• Mythology Gag: When he returns from his bus trip, he's got a design that bears quite a few similarities to his Prime counterpart - namely the white helmet with an orange crest.
• Nerves of Steel: Ratchet's been held hostage by experts. He's long since gotten bored of maniacs holding guns at him.
• Noble Bigot: Towards the constructed cold, just a little bit. He has no problems befriending them or treating them, but he also claims that the deft hands of a great doctor can't be built, and thus that only forged Cybertronians can possess them.
• Old Soldier: Ratchet has very much an old man POV on life and is so worn down that his hands are seizing up. He also kicked the crap out of Pharma and his immediate reaction to Overlord popping up behind him was to turn on a dime and shoot him in the face.
• Put on a Bus: Leaves to find Drift on his own in issue #40.
  • The Bus Came Back: He and Drift return in issue #51 to help battle the DJD.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: He's known all along that "Ultra Magnus" has actually been a succession of 'bots in Powered Armor, all the way back to the very first, original Magnus, but never saw a point in letting people know. He also considers Minimus, the longest holder of the title to be the "true" Ultra Magnus.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: As a medic during the Great War, which saw both sides employing horrific ways to kill each other, oh yeah he's this.
• Sherlock Scan: Can pull these off, such as figuring out First Aid's transformation cog wasn't working when they met at Delphi. Given he's one of the most skilled medics alive, it's not surprising.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: He and Drift spend ages verbally sparring. Then they get married.
• Take Up My Sword: He's been training First Aid to become his replacement, which finally happens when he leaves the Lost Light in Our Steps Will Always Rhyme to find Drift.
• Token Religious Teammate: Inverted. He's the Token Antireligious Teammate, being the one most likely to complain about anything being presented as mystical or supernatural.
• Took A Level In Cynicism: He used to be more pleasant, though everything that's happened to him throughout the four million year war has evidently taken its toll on him.
• Tsundere: Towards Drift. Ratchet does honestly care about him, but is unwilling and unable to admit it before he left. This might just have something to do with Drift's history of mass-murder, given Ratchet mentions he thinks about the time he and Drift met constantly.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Drift.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • When Ratchet refuses to let First Aid assist in fixing Ambulon, First Aid calls out him out on his supposed inflated sense of pride. Turns out Ambulon was already dead, and First Aid apologises for his rant, though Ratchet still agrees with him.
  • Whirl calls him out on apparently being the cause of everyone on Team Rodimus dying, since it was the desperation of his situation that made them fly into compressed space, which supposedly killed them. An exasperated Ratchet admits he has a point.
• When He Smiles: A smile from Ratchet is vanishingly rare, what with his general grumpiness, but when it does happen, it's amazing to behold.

Drift

My faith will protect me. My faith and my sword.

An ex-Decepticon and Rodimus' former third-in-command, Drift recently found religion after a near-death experience. Relentlessly and offensively upbeat (on the surface), he was the most spiritual member of the crew and frequently clashed with the atheistic Ratchet. Following the Overlord debacle, he was exiled for his part in it. He has his own miniseries covering the interim, The Transformers: Drift: Empire of Stone.

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• Anguished Declaration of Love: Thinking it could be their last time together, he tries to confess to Ratchet but before he could finish is interrupted with a "I Know, me too".
• BFS: His Great Sword, though he rarely uses it.
• The Big Guy: Among the bots in charge.
• Bittersweet Ending: Him and Ratchet become Conjunx Endura and live a nice life together, only for Ratchet to die of old age. He also loses touch with Rodimus and it’s suggested their friendship has fallen apart, though they come to some reconciliation during Ratchet’s funeral.
• The Bus Came Back: His appearance in Empire of Stone is his first in about a year and a half. Later, he returns to MTMTE in issue #51, a whopping three years since his departure.
• Canon Discontinuity: He's sporting an Autobot badge when he and Ratchet re-appear in issue #51, which suggests the plot-thread from Empire of Stone, where Drift no longer identified as an Autobot, is being quietly ignored.
• Con Man: It's implied that before he switched sides, he stole at least a billion Shanix from the Decepticons war funds.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Underneath his annoyingly positive exterior is one of the deadliest warriors in Cybertronian history.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: On the duplicate Lost Light, Helex forces him, Ratchet and Hound to eat their own brain modules.
• Depending on the Writer: Generally, when his creator Shane McCarthy is writing him, he becomes more of a brooding Flat Character as opposed to the more fleshed-out take on him written by James Roberts.
• Disposable Vagrant: Nearly. Sonic and Boom tried to kidnap him as a test subject for the institute, but were stopped by Orion Pax.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: He confesses to Rodimus that when he stabbed himself during the events of Chaos, he saw a future where Rodimus was needed to save it, which is why he decides to take the fall for Rodimus.
• Easily Forgiven: Deadlock was one of the most prolific murderers the Decepticons had. Ratchet's treatment of Drift is probably a deliberate aversion of this.
• The Exile: After issue 16. Issue 21 reveals it was prearranged.
• Facial Markings: The new body he's sporting when he shows up on the Necrobot's planet has them. They are not too dissimilar from Windblade's, who also has Japanese-style markings on her face.
• Fall Guy: He takes the blame for Rodimus.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: No-one in the cast has an especially high opinion of Drift. Not even Rodimus, who Drift mentions berates and insults him frequently, or even threatens him with being jailed for his crimes just for not answering his calls quickly. When Drift takes the fall for Rodimus, a mob forms to boo him out of the ship.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Before his Heel–Face Turn, he was a homeless junkie who managed to become one of the most dangerous mass-murders the Decepticons had.
• The Fundamentalist: Although it's implied to be at least partially an act.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: He begs Ratchet to kill him when infected with the red rust virus and he thinks the DJD might be coming. Ratchet refuses.
• I Owe You My Life: Ratchet saved his life back before the war, and Drift is fairly protective of him in the present.
• Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: Rodimus strips him of his Autobrand before exiling him.
• Kaleidoscope Eyes: apparently he can change his eye colors, as noted by Thunderclash. The art doesn't reflect this, though.
• Katanas Are Just Better: His weapons of choice.
• The Mole: Worked with Prowl to smuggle Overlord on board the Lost Light.
• The Needs of the Many: He says he will take the blame for Overlord, so that Rodimus can continue with the Knight quest, as Drift believes something ominous is approaching and Rodimus, and the Knights of Cybertron are needed to stop it.
• Occidental Otaku: At the end of his first mini, his paintjob sports ドリフト, the katakana for "Dorifto", and is seen posing with his swords among cherry blossoms.
• Official Couple: With Ratchet.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When it becomes obvious that Crystal City was attacked, he's clearly pissed.
• Parody Sue: Not as obvious as Thunderclash, but every now and then he has flashes of this.
• Power Trio: With Rodimus and Ultra Magnus.
• Put on a Bus: Following his exile due to his involvement in the Overlord affair.
  • The Bus Came Back: He and Ratchet return in issue #51 to help battle the DJD.
• Reformed, but Rejected: To a far lesser extent than, say, Cyclonus, but he still isn't widely liked or trusted. Magnus in particular has to resist the urge to arrest him on sight.
• Religious Bruiser: Ever since he survived skewering himself, he's become far more religious.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Especially in Empire of Stone.
• Stepford Smiler: When asked if he has any regrets, he just buries his face in his hands. And during the Shadowplay arc, he briefly mentions what Rodimus says about him, before instantly breaking out a wide grin and changing the subject.
• Taking the Heat: He claims sole responsibility for the Overlord fiasco, only naming himself and the Duobots (both of whom are dead by that time) as the ones involved.
• That Man Is Dead: In Spotlight: Drift, he declares that Deadlock is dead, and that his name is Drift.
• Token Religious Teammate: He's one of the few crew members to be highly religious, alongside Swerve and Cyclonus (and diametrically opposite Ratchet and Whirl), and is the only one who actively tries to convert others; Rodimus mentions that Drift has attempted to convince him to take up Spectralism before.
• Unreliable Narrator: Deliberately, to get on Ratchet's nerves, and Ratchet names the trope while calling him on it.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Permanent Revolution reveals that the DJD were planning to leave and spare the alternate Lost Lighters after killing Overlord, but the sight of turncoat Drift set them off and they went into a psychotic killing spree.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Ratchet.
• Warrior Poet: He writes most of Rodimus' speeches.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Is called out by Ratchet after his first instinct towards Dent was to kill him.
• Yes-Man: Ratchet comments that he was appointed to the command structure for only telling Rodimus what he wanted to hear.
• Zillion-Dollar Bill: His currency card seems to have at least 1 BILLION shanix of funds in it. It's implied he stole it from the Decepticons' stockpile of war funds.

Rewind

Everyone's shape serves a purpose.

A friendly and trusting archivist and Chromedome's Conjunx Endura. He discovered the Matrix Map and supposedly joined the crew to find the Knights, but actually joined in hope of finding his long-missing previous Conjunx Endura, Dominus Ambus. He's highly protective of Chromedome and wants him to quit using mnemosurgery. Midway through Season One, he apparently dies trying to halt Overlord's rampage, but his body is never conclusively found.

At the beginning of Season 2, the crew finds the remains of a second Lost Light created in the quantum mishap at the beginning of the series. Its Rewind, the sole survivor of a DJD massacre, unexpectedly survives the overwriting of his ship and joins the crew.

Tropes which apply to both Rewinds:

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: The original G1 Rewind has a place as one of Blaster's mini-cassettes, but in this continuity, he and Blaster have zero relationship.
• Camera Fiend: Keeps his camera on at all times, in case what he films is significant.
• Cool Old Guy: He's actually pretty old, but seeing as he has the outlook and enthusiasm of a much younger bot, you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: A benign version, but he doesn't really react well to Chromedome bringing up his past relationship with Prowl.
• Cunning Linguist: He has a pretty good grip on Old Cybertronian and its predecessor language, though he still mistranslates something fairly important.
• The Cutie: Is he ever.
  • Break the Cutie: Being locked in a jettisoned pod with Overlord to protect the crew from him will do that to you. His last words to Chromedome that he never heard were "I'm sorry it didn't work out." Rewind II has one he survived in being forced to record the DJD's slaughter of his version of the Lost Light crew and then being left alive.
• Defiant to the End: Before the Functionists detonate his obsolescence chip in the alternate timeline, he throws a pretty badass speech their way.
• Determinator: It doesn't matter that Dominus has been missing for millions of years, or that there's absolutely no evidence as to where he's gone, Rewind is gonna keep searching until he damn well finds him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Each version of him attempts at least one.
  • Rewind I locks himself in the slow cell with Overlord while disengaging it from the hull. This one seems to have stuck, as we haven't seen him since Chromedome destroyed the cell.
  • Rewind II attempts one in his introductory arc by way of pressing the Reset Button, but he somehow survives. Later he attempts this on behalf of the entire Cybertronian race by trying to stop the architect of the Great War from ever coming to be.
• Keet: Though usually quieter than most.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Chromedome's.
• Made a Slave: Was around when the Functionist Council came up with the Grand Cybertronian Taxonomy, which reclassified 'bots like him as Disposable, not considered proper Cybertronians.
• Nice Guy: So long as you're not Prowl.
• Non-Action Guy: Officially, though his search for Ambus usually leads him into battles anyway.
• Official Couple: With Chromedome.
• Older Than They Look: Old enough to remember Nova Prime before the guy went off the deep end. That's somewhere to the order of six million years old. It doesn't exactly show. Being a robot aside, even his holomatter avatar is pretty young-looking.
• Plucky Guy: Despite being for all intents and purposes male, he fits this trope better than Determinator.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: His and Prowl's attitudes towards each other are certainly reminiscent of this.
• The Smart Guy: Archivist-style.
• Uniqueness Value: One of the last few living Disposable class Cybertronians, and with his sheer wealth of knowledge, he's too valuable to risk in combat.
• Your Head A-Splode: Suffers this fate at the hands of the Functionists in the alternate timeline.

Tropes which apply to the first Rewind:

• Kill the Cutie: Seems like it, though we're not sure yet.
• Dead Man Writing: Issue #22 is mostly the rough cut of a movie Rodimus had him put together.
• Mercy Kill: Chromedome blows up the slow cell with him and Overlord in it to spare him a worse death at Overlord's hands.
• Never Found the Body: He was inside the Slow Cell when Cromedome blew it up. The only visible part of him was him camera. Forty odd issues later, Overlord claims he murdered him, but we've only got his word for it.

Tropes which apply to the second Rewind:

• Back from the Dead: Sorta. He's a Quantum Superpositional duplicate, as real as the other Rewind, and one that survived the DJD massacre when they attacked his own Lost Light.
• Bittersweet Ending: His attempts to complete his archives eventually end up giving him a neuro-degenerative disease that leaves him trapped in data stick mode. However, he’s still with Chromedome and they love each other more than ever, so he’s not too upset over it. Presumably not an issue for his quantum duplicate on the universe hopping Lost Light.
• Break the Cutie: In his own way, and he gets it arguably even worse than the original Rewind.
• Death Seeker: Becomes one after "his" Chromedome is killed, but ceases to be so when he survives his attempted Heroic Sacrifice and is united with "our" similarly bereaved Chromedome.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: He and "our" Chromedome become this for each other.
• Easily Forgiven: The Lost Light forgives his shooting the unborn Megatron in Elegant Chaos by virtue of him still coping with the trauma of the DJD massacre, among other things.
• Handicapped Badass: In the epilogue, he picks up a neuro-degenerative condition that leaves him stuck forever in his alt mode.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: In Lost Light #5, he despairs that Cybertronians have so much hatred for their various divisions, and invariably end up turning that hate on the rest of the universe.
• The Needs of the Many:As horrible as Functionist Cybertron is, only Rewind realizes that preventing the war will save untold billions more organics.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Shoots an unborn Megatron, creating the Functionist world.
• Replacement Goldfish: Worries that he and this Lost Light's Chromedome will devalue each other as these.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Witnessing the DJD's atrocities has traumatized him.
• Power of Love: Nightbeat jokingly states that's the reason why he survived/remained after the Quantum Engines were shut off on the duplicate Lost Light.
• Reset Button: Presses one and avoids falling victim to a Ret-Gone thanks to Brainstorm's paradox free time machine.
• Ret-Gone: Brainstorm's Bad Present slowly starts overriding him, much to his horror.
• Sole Survivor: The only one who survived the DJD's rampage.

Whirl

If I'd known that was the best you got, I'd have said something genuinely offensive.

An ex-Wrecker with (possibly) Borderline Personality Disorder, who loves to fight and antagonize others. He claims to hate everyone (himself included), but this is sometimes thrown into question through his actions. He joined the crew pretty much by accident (on the basis that Rodimus couldn't just leave him lying around where he might hurt others) and has a strong rivalry with Cyclonus. This later develops into a Friendly Rivalry, and eventually what could almost be considered a friendship.

Despite his abrasive personality and violent tendencies, there's a lot more to him than he lets on.

---

• An Arm and a Leg: Shears off one of his own arms in Megatron's malfunctioning internal space bridge while trying to kill him.
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: When he finds out (in the Christmas Special) that a colony of scraplets have disguised themselves as a protoform to, in his own words, "manipulate me into putting my life at risk by feigning kinship...all just so they could live to kill again." His reaction? He's incredibly proud of them.
• Ax-Crazy: To the point where when left to his own devices for a while he decided the best way to spend his time was mutilating dead Sweeps.
• Bash Brothers: He and Cyclonus certainly aren't buddies, but they fight pretty well as a team.
• Berserk Button: Senate goons will set him off. And doorknobs. And asking him the time. As his history is revealed this third one becomes clearer.
• Bittersweet Ending: Without the quest to occupy him, he slips into a life of petty crime and ends up in-and-out of prison, drifting apart from the rest of the crew as a result. However, his life is starting to look up after Cyclonus and Tailgate offer a place for him to live after he’s released, and he’s finally overcome his feelings of self-loathing and guilt.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even when he's giving good advice, the way Whirl looks at the world is a little different to everybody else...
  Whirl: (kicking open a door) Time to weapon up, wallflowers! Rewind! You're wanted up front!
  Rewind: ...By who?
  Whirl: By me! I want you to take some footage of me limbering up before I land on foreign soil and start killing for the greater good! It's for my biopic: Harder, Faster, Wrecker.
• Blood Knight: He loves fighting way more than he should and will find any excuse he can to get into a new fight.
• The Big Guy: He's by far one of the tallest and strongest crew members; Rodimus finds him extremely useful for his fighting skills and readiness to fight.
• Break the Haughty/Break the Badass: Forced to question his own abilities when Megatron reveals Whirl only survived the war because Megatron ordered his troops to leave him alive.
• Broken Ace: Word of God confirms that he used to have hands as masterful as Ratchet or Pharma before he was subjected to Empurata. Issue 47 implies that it may be a mental obstacle rather than a physical one; Whirl's room is revealed to be filled with well-made clocks he's been building only to throw them aside, saying they're "not right".
  • At the climax of the Elegant Chaos arc, he successfully performs the Cybertronian equivalent of open-heart surgery on Megatron's unborn corpse, purely out of sheer spite.
• Brutal Honesty: Whirl always says exactly what he thinks, with no regard for the opinions of others. It's the reason why Cyclonus seeks him for advice.
• Character Development: Lots, changing from someone who everyone agreed would betray the crew within a week to a capable, well trusted, but still slightly crazed hero who realises that he no longer wants to be fixed and now has a family with not just the crew but mostly with Cyclonus and Tailgate.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: A very trigger-happy and unstable one.
  Whirl: (pointing a blaster at Cyclonus through the doorway of his cabin) Sorry about the mess.
  Cyclonus: (looking around the spotless and empty room) What mess?
  Whirl: That's what people say in these situations, isn't it? "Come on in, sorry about the mess. How was your trip?"
• Combat Pragmatist: As Megatron found out.
• Comedic Sociopathy: His stock and trade. Whirl is positively delighted to learn that Cybertronians are the only race to be blacklisted from the Galactic Council. When the crew are stuffed onto a rather cramped ship, Whirl opts to lie down on the ground in order to take up as much space as possible.
• Cultured Badass: Surprisingly, Whirl, of all people in the crew, is a huge fanboy of Jean-Luc Godard.
• Cyber Cyclops: After Empurata was inflicted on him as part of a concentrated effort to punish him for daring to change jobs.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Whirl might seem like a trigger-happy idiot - and he is a trigger-happy idiot, but one with the skills to back up his aggression. Remember: He went one-on-one against Megatron and held his own.
• Deadpan Snarker: He possesses the perfect poker face, and even he doesn't know if he's being sarcastic - or maybe he's being sarcastic about that; it's impossible to tell.
  • Depending on the artist, Whirl can betray some degree of emotion through his body language and the tilt of his single optic, but it's still very hard to tell.
• Death Seeker: As an Ex-Wrecker, this is inevitable. The TFwiki has suggested that he intended to burn himself alive along with the Sweep corpses before Cyclonus walked in on him. Lost Light issue 16 has him admit he was trying to get himself killed all these years. Winding up on Merderi, which tries to cater to all those sane people's expectations of Cyberutopia before killing them, only disappoints him, which is why he sees through it.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: He spent some time as a flight instructor, and apparently scarred Rotorstorm for life.
• Epic Fail: Almost everybody on the Lost Light is some kind of failure. Whirl's schtick is that he is so crazy and impulsive that he managed to get himself kicked out of the Wreckers, a feat roughly akin to being too sadistic for the DJD. An Ex-Wrecker is usually a corpse.
• Everyone Has Standards: Whirl has a long line of despicable and / or violent acts to his name, but even he objects to tricking Tailgate into aggravating Megatron into killing him just to get Megatron kicked off the ship for murder.
• Expressive Mask: Some artists allow him to convey emotion by squinting with his single optic. Presumably it's outfitted with some sort of artificial eyelid.
  Whirl: Word of advice, when my eye does this, clear the area.
• Eyepatch of Power: His holomatter avatar has one, representing his face on a human body.
• Fearless Fool: There doesn't seem to be anything that Whirl won't fight, any odds he won't challenge, nor any battle he'll leave. You don't send Whirl into a fight you might want him to pull out of later.
  Whirl: So this is what running away feels like? I'm not keen. It's like fighting, but in the wrong direction.
  Cyclonus: Rodimus told us not to engage.
  Whirl: He did, yes, he absolutely did. And I'm going to interpret that as a veiled order to attack... Care to join me?
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Whirl can be a real Jerkass, as well as impulsive and violent. He likes hanging around with the others, but doesn't seem to understand (or care) just how hard he makes it for people to like him. At one point, Swerve threw a theme party where everyone dressed up as the person they most wanted to punch in the face. Everyone except Rodimus (who picked Megatron) dressed up as Whirl.
• Freudian Excuse: He's a Jerkass because the Senate ruined his life, mutilated him, used him as an enforcer, and hung him out to dry.
• The Gadfly: If Whirl can say or do something to antagonize other people, particularly for his own amusement, there are better than even odds that he will. Witness the hostage standoff with Fortress Maximus, where he attempted to goad a mentally unstable Max into shooting him and probably Rung as well. Since he has zero fear of consequences, this also allows him to say things no one else would, for good or for ill.
• Girlish Pigtails: On his holo-avatar.
• Groin Attack: The one and only character in the franchise to get away with kicking Megatron in the crotch.
• Gun Nut: Loves hearing Brainstorm talk shop. He has a particular fondness for the smell of new guns.
• Foil: To the calm, stoic Cyclonus. Even their armour is a foil - Cyclonus' style is like a samurai, while Whirl's is more like a ninja.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Whirl is very much Team Rodimus' comic relief, except his comedy stems from how wildly inappropriate most of his actions are. For insance, he once spent a fair amount of time goading an emotionally unstable hostage taker into trying to shoot him; this normally reckless and unsympathetic act is treated as just another Whirl moment by the rest of the cast.
• Hidden Depths: Who knew a guy like Whirl would become a fan of Jean-Luc Godard? He also proves to be surprisingly socially gifted when he's not going out of his way to antagonise people, such as his poking at Rodimus in "Lost Light" - although admittedly Rodimus's buttons are not well hidden.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Every so often he shows concern for the other members of the Crew in his own special, rather obnoxious way. More importantly, when he does something nice, he has not yet been known to ask for anything in return. For example, when he donates a Jump-Start to Rewind...
  Chromedome: Thank you. If I can ever do anything - anything - I mean it Whirl, you saved two lives today.
  Whirl: ...Okay, enough with the hugging.
• Insane Troll Logic: A big fan of this kind of logic, as seen under the Fearless Fool entry above. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether he means it or if he's just slapping together whichever ideas will let him do whatever he wants to do.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Zig-Zagging Trope. It is true that Whirl would like his hands back, but at the same time, he uses The Power of Hate to cushion himself from having to act normally or feel bad about the bad things he's done. By the Distant Finale, he concludes that he doesn't need his hands back; he's not broken and he doesn't need fixing.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Not very obvious at the beginning, but it becomes increasingly clear throughout the series that Whirl is not a deliberate loner.
• It's All About Me: He's presented with a choice. Let Megatron never exist so the War doesn't happen with trillions of innocent organics living but the Functionists still being in power or let the Great War happen killing trillions and twelve people who wronged Whirl. He hates Megatron, but not as much as he hates the Functionists and he ensures Megatron's existence so they'll burn. Turns out it was the right thing particularly when the Functionists start their own Great War. And he makes the decision so nobody else has to.
• Irony: He's partly responsible for Megatron. Not just for showing him the importance of violence when he beat him up when he was a cop, but by giving him a forged point-one percenter spark after his original spark was destroyed by Rewind.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As early as Spotlight: Trailcutter it was being shown that Whirl can care about other people, and by the Transformers Holiday Special story Silent Light, and MTMTE #48,'' there is no doubt that he has a conscience - even if he does keep it to himself and likes to pretend it doesn't exist.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare: Loves the works of Jean-Luc Godard.
• Kuleshov Effect: Despite being a Cyber Cyclops with no real face to speak of, Alex Milne's pen still makes Whirl surprisingly expressive (if not one of the most expressive members of the crew) through careful use of shading, angles, shadows and body language.
• Large Ham: Instructs Trailbreaker on the importance of this. It's kind of understandable that he would be one too, because if you don't have a face to express yourself with, that you need to do it in other ways.
• Lean and Mean: His design is very unique in that he's drawn pretty "skinny" for a robot, with his legs and arms as thin as Rung's, but still unusually strong.
  • The "lean" part is averted with his appearances in the past, where he was more blocky with a G1 build, though the mean part is still there.
• Little Miss Badass: Inverted. Whirl is one of the tallest characters in the series, but his human avatar is a skinny little pre-teen girl with pigtails and an eyepatch. Sending Whirl into battle is like handing dual pistols to an eight-year-old.
• Mark of Shame: The Empurata. He's never had it fixed because he's worried he might start feeling bad about all the really bad things he's done.
• Men Can't Keep House: Subverted, surprisingly enough. Whirl's cabin is spotless and practically bare. But he still apologizes for the mess whenever letting people in, because he assumes that's what you're supposed to do.
• My Greatest Failure: It's implied a few times that being indirectly responsible for the war weighs on him much more than he would like to admit.
• Nonstandard Character Design: Most of the characters in the IDW continuity are based heavily on their simple, rather blocky G1 design. Whirl's design is distinctly skinnier and rather birdlike, as well as being radically different from his occasional comic portrayals in Marvel.
• Naytheist: Has admitted he doesn't disbelieve in the gods so much as he actively hates them. Naturally, the revelation that Rung is Primus, who he's previously assaulted and nearly strangled to death, sends him into a laughing fit.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A lot of people, himself included, blame Whirl for turning Megatron into the mech he is today. It's almost as if Megatron shouldn't be blamed for the war at all!
• Obfuscating Insanity: On the surface, he's pretty much all about violence and bloodshed, but he's got a good brain under the crazy. Best exemplified when Fortress Maximus takes him hostage, and his badgering Max to kill him is both a completely insane course of action and an attempt to get Max to identify with him.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Despite normally acting pretty much batshit insane all the time, and a complete jerkass, there are times when Whirl comes up with some really smart ideas - it makes sense since you'd have to be pretty smart to make watches.
• Odd Friendship: With Cyclonus. Both are hyper-violent, but with incredibly differing personalities. However, Whirl having all the subtlety of a jackhammer makes Cyclonus trust him for advice, and they both work together surprisingly well, whether it be in a fight against Legislators, or fixing a big gun. Whirl even lampshades it:
  Whirl: Even our colors are complimentary!
• The Paranoiac: Despite being on an Autobot ship, with no reason to suspect he'd ever be in danger, Whirl always answers the door by opening it a crack and sticking his gun through.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: In Stet he brutally murders a Senate mook to vent his anger at the Senate mutilating him. He may have turned him into a sparkeater. Oh dear.
• Pet the Dog: Despite how much of a jerk Whirl can be, he's still an honest Autobot. In issue 12, he turns out to be the only person with a compatible spark to jump-start Rewind's, and volunteers even though we're told the process can be painful and risky. Later, he gives Cyclonus the Healing Shiv idea which saves Tailgate's life.
  • Saves Tailgate again by attracting Cyclonus' attention with his holomatter avatar, to lead him to a message he'd left by resetting all the clocks in his room. And he did this while fighting to stay conscious, having had his memory erased by the "Nudge Gun".
  • Those Scraplets Whirl saved in the holiday issue are now his devoted pet. It's saved both his life and everybody else's.
  • When Tailgate rejects him and chooses to stay behind on Necroworld, Cyclonus sits alone and on the ship and starts slicing up his own face in grief. Whirl instantly grabs his arm and demands that he stop, then quietly sits down beside him.
    Whirl: Don't.
• Police Brutality: His shtick as an agent of the senate in the past. Not all of it was done willingly on Whirl's part.
• Portal Cut: Loses an arm in this fashion while trying to kill Megatron.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Makes disparaging remarks about monoformers in Issue #13, and appears to be bigoted on the whole forged/constructed cold issue as well. It is sometimes suggested he says these kinds of things to irritate people, more than because he believes them.
• The Power of Hate: Has rationalized that all the bad stuff that has happened to him means he can feel angry and bitter all the time, and if he got his hands fixed he wouldn't know how to deal with feeling otherwise.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Not to mention his holo-avatar is a little girl brandishing a pair of uzis.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: With Cyclonus. Ironically (considering their respective color schemes) Whirl is the red.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Zig-zagged. It's all about perspective. Whirl certainly sounds selfish in his reasons for saving Megatron - but while a data-slug like Rewind would have a lousy life without Megatron to take down the Senate, Whirl wouldn't have lost his job as a law-enforcer, empurata wouldn't set him apart as a freak since it was so common, and on the whole he would have been much better off. They both make sacrifices. It's just that they're different people.
• Robotic Psychopath: Again, his idea of a therapeutic hobby was mutilating corpses.
• Shipper on Deck: Revealed to have become one for Tailgate and Cyclonus by The Dying of the Light.
• Smarter Than You Look: He's much more intelligent than his personality would suggest - he manages to talk Fortress Maximus down, and he works out within minutes that Tailgate seriously wounded Cyclonus.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: When he fights beside Cyclonus.
• The Unapologetic: Whirl does not have the social graces to say 'sorry' for the terrible things he does. Most of the time. He eventually starts to develop the emotional maturity to feel remorse for his misdeeds, and it's a noticeable part of his character arc that he genuinely understands the importance of simple phrases like 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' in dealing with other people.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Door handles.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gets vetoed out of the Wreckers by Roadbuster for trying to Mercy Kill a comatose Springer right before the events of the series. He explains that he hated the idea of Springer just fading away in a coma.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: He tries to bait Megatron into attacking him, as part of a scheme to get Megatron kicked off the ship. Megatron sees through it and refuses to bite.

Cyclonus

Everyone can die. Trust me, I know about these things.

The former right-hand man of the warlord Galvatron, Cyclonus is a proud patriot who's disappointed by the current state of his homeworld and wishes to find the Knights to restore it to it's former glory. Extremely stern and abrasive, he has difficulty forming attachments to others and struggles with his ever-strengthening bond (and eventual romance) with Tailgate.

---

• Adaptational Heroism: Cyclonus is usually Galvatron's fanatically loyal Number Two, almost to Soundwave-like degrees. Here, he turned on Galvatron towards the end of "Chaos" after seeing the damage he'd done to Cybertron and has joined the Autobots aboard the Lost Light.
• AM/FM Characterization: Develops an affection for "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News; in particular, he's shown belting out, "Change a hawk to a little white dove." That's exactly what his time on the Lost Light and his relationship with Tailgate does for him: brings out the heart under his stern, warlike exterior.
• An Arm and a Leg: In Lost Light, he gets one of his arms torn off, along with half his face.
• Back from the Dead: At the end of The Transformers (IDW), Vector Sigma restores him to proper life, for aiding in stopping Galvatron. It actually becomes a plot point in Issue 21, where he uses the residual energy to cure Tailgate.
• Bash Brothers: With Whirl. Whenever they fight together, they can bring down almost everything around them.
• Berserk Button: Being analysed by Nightbeat made him angry enough to threaten to kill everyone present, which also included Optimus, Rodimus and Hardhead.
• BFS: He gets to keep one at the end of "Remain in Light".
• Black Speech: His singing in primal vernacular sounds like this.
• Blood from the Mouth: Starts vomiting up black Energon when the Dead Universe infects him.
• Boom, Headshot!: Helex kills his quantum duplicate this way.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: He and Tailgate (eventually) form this kind of friendship and then romance.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Back when he was working with Galvatron. A lot of 'bots tend to overlook this fact when they bring up the things he did during that time, though it doesn't help that Cyclonus is unapologetic about what he did.
• Bruiser with a Soft Centre: He's introduced as a blunt, sharp-edged killing machine, but starting with "Cybertronian Homesick Blues", he starts to open up and show his softer side. Falling in love will do that to you.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Plants himself between Rewind and a bomb, and later blocks Tailgate from a barrage of fire from security.
• Bullying a Dragon: In Issue 12. Cyclonus repeats his desire to kill Whirl very clearly even after he suggests they leave it behind them, so can you really blame Whirl for locking him in a room with a bomb?
• Character Development: He's slowly doing almost a complete 180 in terms of kindness thanks to his deepening friendship with Tailgate.
• Cool Old Guy: On occasion. It starts to happen more and more frequently as the series goes on.
• The Corruption: Reinfected by the Dead Universe during The Transformers: Dark Cybertron.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He's grim and brooding, served Galvatron and has the appearance of a Decepticon, but he proves to be one of the most noble, heroic, and sensible members of the cast.
• Defector from Decadence: Everyone thinks he's one in season 1. He is not a Decepticon (and in this continuity never was), and woe to anyone who forgets that.
• Defrosting Ice King: He's kind of a dick at first, especially to Tailgate, but as time goes on, he thaws out of it more and more.
• Ear Ache: Loses one of his horns in a fight with Whirl in the first issue. Because of his religious beliefs, he doesn't get it fixed until the end of "Remain in Light."
• Earn Your Happy Ending: He and Tailgate get to settle down together and live out their lives happily. He even invites Whirl to live with them. Doubling down on the happy, he remains on the duplicate Lost Light alongside Tailgate, Whirl and his extended family.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Proud Warrior? Check. Puts a lot of emphasis on honor? Check. Looks like a living Tosei Gusoku armor of the samurai? Check. Has a BFS? Check!
• Facial Horror: In a sense. Those black patches on Cyclonus' cheeks aren't part of his paint scheme, they're actually empty cavities. It's especially noticable during his duel with Star Saber and when talking to Whirl on the Lost Light afterward. When he starts yelling, the corners of his lips separate and make it look like he ripped his mouth open.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Not to the same extent as Tailgate, but he's from a much different Cybertron than everyone else on board, and spent several million years stuck in the Dead Universe. Part of the reason he joined the Lost Light is because he didn't feel at home on the reborn Cybertron.
• Foil: To Whirl, clearly deliberately. They are both enthusiastic, courageous and skilled warriors with pasts that weigh heavily on them, are disliked by the rest of the crew, and both can prove difficult to control for High Command. However, Cyclonus is calm and rational while Whirl is brash and Ax-Crazy, Cyclonus can plan ahead while Whirl is extremely impulsive, Cyclonus is subtle but forthright, while Whirl can be obnoxious but cunning, and Cyclonus is an honourable warrior while Whirl will do almost anything to win his battles.
  • Even their designs are foils; Cyclonus has a distinctly Samurai-based motif, while Whirl's design appears to be more ninja-orientated.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Thanks to the crew stereotyping him as a Decepticon. The fact he participated in several notable Autobot massacres after the war doesn't help. However, as his Character Development goes on, he is accepted by the crew after events like saving Rewind and Tailgate's lives. He even leads the crew in a sing-along of "The Power of Love" at the end of Elegant Chaos. Rodimus thinks he's so responsible that he is willing to put him temporarily in charge of the crew.
• Good Is Not Soft: While undoubtedly far less sinister now than when he served Nova Prime and Galvatron, make no mistake, Cyclonus is still a savagely brutal bastard with a blade whenever the situation calls for it.
• Handicapped Badass: Gets impaled by a Legislator during the "Remain in Light" arc, and receives what could only have been a rushed fix from the Circle of Light. He spends the next few issues helping them destroy a horde of Legislators, and he's the one who ends up forcing Star into a retreat. During The Transformers: Dark Cybertron, he's infected by the Dead Universe and begins bleeding out corrupted Energon. He still manages to take on Nova Prime long enough for Orion to get a Heroic Second Wind.
• Heel–Face Turn: Formerly served under the war-mongering Galvatron; now a respected founding member of the Lost Lighters.
• Heel–Faith Turn: It's implied that his faith in Primus was a factor in fully committing to the crew, as seen in his duel with Star Saber.
• Hope Is Scary: He apparently was more idealistic and optimistic when younger. Until the Dead Universe changed that.
• Horned Humanoid: Adding to his "Space Samurai" look, as it makes his head look like a Kabuto helmet.
  • Horn Attack: Right in Star Saber's eye. Ouch.
• Hypocrite: But heartwarmingly so. He explicitly told Tailgate not to hope for a cure in case he would be let down, but Cyclonus obviously isn't following his own advice.
• Imagine Spot: Has one of these when he imagines killing Whirl by pushing him into a smelting pool following his duel with Star Saber, but ultimately agrees to call off the vendetta.
• Insistent Terminology: He is Not A Decepticon. He wants it on screen.
• It's Personal: Quotes this just before stabbing Star Saber in the eye with his horn.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: This trope becomes evident in Before & After when he befriends Tailgate and saves Rewind's life. It shines through more as the series progresses.
• Karmic Jackpot: Deciding not to kill Whirl, even though he fantasized about it, is why he was able to save Tailgate, as it was Whirl the one with the idea of trying the Healing Shiv method to cure Tailgate. In fact loads of great things happen to Cyclonus because he didn't kill Whirl, so by now they've just given up and become friends.
• Kick the Dog: His behavior towards Tailgate in issues 4-12.
• Made of Iron: He walks away with a patch job after an explosion that very nearly killed Rewind, who he was deliberately shielding. Later, a Legislator impales him on a BFS, which he immediately shrugs off. He's basically supercharged with the energies of Vector Sigma, making him pretty damn hard to kill.
• Mercy Kill: Tailgate asks him to give him one. At one point, it seems Cyclonus is going through with it, but is instead a case of using a Healing Shiv method to try to cure him.
• Nightmare Face: He outright looks demonic when facing Star Saber.
• No Social Skills: Played subtly. He has extreme difficulty forming attachments and the friendships he does forge either take a long time to develop or begin as very awkward. When problems start arising between him and Tailgate (due to Getaway's manipulations), they get worse very quickly because Cyclonus is too stoic to actually talk to Tailgate and fix things. In the season two finale, he claims that important things are felt, not said, which is likely why he and Tailgate are not Conjunx Endura despite the two having fallen in love.
• Old Soldier: One of the oldest Cybertronians still alive.
  • Just how badass is he? Cyclonus managed to piece together at least the gist of Getaway's plan when Whirl tried to warn him, runs straight towards Megatron's quarters, kicks the door open, and fucking throws his sword into Megatron's chest. He then beats Ravage unconscious, tears off a chunk of Megatron's recharge slab, and bashes his fucking head in with it before grabbing Tailgate and making a run for it. Then the security team shoots him in the back about 50 times, and despite looking like Swiss cheese from behind, he's basically fine.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Was undead for all of The Transformers (IDW), then Vector Sigma restored him to life due to his actions against D-Void. Is back to being undead due to a mishap during his incursion to the Dead Universe during the events of The Transformers: Dark Cybertron.
• Perpetual Frowner: By virtue of the way his face is molded.
• Pet the Dog: It becomes clear that he's not a completely bad person in Before & After when he starts treating Tailgate better and saves Rewind from the bomb in Snap Trap's base.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: He takes his Cybertronian pride very seriously, to the point where he decides to join the Lost Light mission entirely because the reformatted Cybertron isn't the one he knows.
• The Quiet One: He doesn't talk much, but he's decisive when he does.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: He's still the same as he was serving under Galvatron, just working with the Autobots now.
  • Easily Condemned: Whenever something bad happens, he tends to get the blame for it, like when Red Alert tried to kill himself, or when everyone and everything starts disappearing.
• Religious Bruiser: Downplayed. While spiritual, he comes in pretty toned down vis a vis Drift and the Circle of Light.
  • Nay Theism: He seems to believe there's something larger out there, perhaps the Guiding Hand itself, but thinks they're not the infallible figures myth makes them to be.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Since he feels whatever God is out there allows Cybertronians like Star Saber seemingly go on forever doing their atrocities with impunity, and on whatever deity's behalf, while innocents, like Tailgate, go on to die in cruel and pointless ways.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When Rodimus left the ship along with Megatron and Ultra Magnus, Rodimus personally took time to let Whirl know that Cyclonus was being left in charge. Despite once taking part in heavy fighting against the Autobots at Galvatron's side, Cyclonus is considered both reliable and honourable. It's worth noting that Whirl was going to tell him, but was interrupted.
• Secretly Wealthy: At least, there's a rumour going around the ship that Cyclonus is fabulously wealthy due to "Tetrahexian real estate". However, this rumour was started by Tailgate back when he was lying about being a badass soldier and bomb disposal soldier who served with the Primal Vanguard, and Cyclonus has never commented on the matter himself (or how he could possibly still have such a fortune after his time in the Dead Universe and Cybertron being devastated by the war), so it's questionable how true it is. At least the newer members of the crew, like Velocity and Nautica, seem to believe it.
• Self-Harm: After he finds out Tailgate is dying, Cyclonus slices his claws across his own face, seemingly to help deal with how he feels. He begins to do it again in issue 7 of Lost Light after Tailgate rejects him and decides to remain on Necroworld, but is gently stopped by Whirl, who sits with him instead.
• Ship Tease: Season Two makes it increasingly clear that he's in love with Tailgate, and he admits it privately to Whirl in the season finale.
• The Stoic: He doesn't emote much at all.
  • Not So Stoic: He does feel, he's just awful at expressing himself constructively.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Though he's a lot more "Ice" than "Sugar" and his warmer side mostly only shows itself around Tailgate.
  • Tsundere: with Tailgate.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Everyone seems to think he's a Decepticon for some reason. Must be the purple.
• Taking the Bullet: In Before & After he throws himself in front of Rewind to protect him from the bomb in Snap Trap's base. Both survive and it's strongly implied that Rewind would've died had Cyclonus not done so.
• Token Religious Teammate: The only Clavis Aurea believer on the ship (and one of the only ones on Cybertron), although his is more personal than Drift's.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Post Remain in Light.
• True Neutral: Of the 'balance' variation. Cyclonus says he doesn't want to be an Autobot, but whenever it comes up he is very insistent that he's not a Decepticon either.
  I am not a Decepticon. I want that on screen.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Cyclonus is brutal despite his sense of honor, and has voiced some confusion over why you would want to spare an enemy.
  Rodimus: (about Getaway) He really thought we were going to kill him.
  Cyclonus: (beat) You weren't?
• When He Smiles: Cyclonus' benign smiles are rare, but always significant. Of course, he indulges in other smiles which should always be considered an invitation to cut and run.
• Whispered Threat: Delives one to Whirl in Issue 2, after the latter refuses to admit responsibility for attacking him.
  I'm going to kill you. Not today. Maybe not for a while. But I will kill you. And don't think you'll see it coming.

Tailgate

"I've got a panic coming on."

Nicknamed as "Panic Button" thanks to his tendency to panic at various... everything, Tailgate is a naïve and childish bot who was trapped underground for millions of years before escaping and joining up with the Lost Light crew. Due to the massive change in the intervening time, he's struggling to adapt to the modern world and find a place to belong. He and Cyclonus, despite the latter's best efforts to suppress his feelings, form a close friendship, which eventually blossoms into a full-fledged romance.

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• And I Must Scream: Lost Light issue 7 ends with Tailgate stuck in a tiny box, bombarded with radiation that might kill him, with the timer set for release in six million years, thanks to Fangry, who then buries any trace of it. And since the radiation was designed to rob Tailgate of his super-strength, he can't get out, and no-one but Kaput knew he was there at all... If he really did die in that box as Fortress Maximus says, then it got so bad his spark destabilized and exploded.
• Ascended Extra: In a meta-sense for the entire franchise, this is the first time that a character with the name of Tailgate has ever gotten a starring role, let alone characterization (at least on the scale he has).
• Ambiguous Gender: Subverted. Tailgate was envisioned as being male by James Roberts, but he unintentionally coded him as if he could be female. Roberts admitted to it being an accident when it was brought to his attention, but was pleased when he learned of the interpretation nonetheless, stating that while not strictly canon, he had no problem with the interpretation.
• An Arm and a Leg: Lost both of his legs when he fell into that pit.
• Audience Surrogate: He Slept Through the Apocalypse, so there's a lot of things he missed - the various social upheavals leading to the War, the events of the War, and the very existence of Autobots and Decepticons. He's prone to asking questions that few others would in-universe, which works for the benefit of the readers.
• Bad Butt: He's surprisingly effective in a fight, but he's still an adorable little guy.
  • Took a Level in Badass: If working on the bomb enough to reduce its blast radius wasn't enough, slowing down Tyrest on his own long enough for the others to recover should seal the deal.
• Big Damn Hero: At the end of Remain in Light.
• Break the Cutie: Life started ganging up on Tailgate from two weeks after his birth, and hasn't really let up since.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: After Whirl tells Tailgate that he's the one who's been grievously injuring Cyclonus every time he recharges, Tailgate decides to end his relationship with him by pretending that he no longer feels anything for him and has decided to remain on Necroworld, but urges Cyclonus to carry onto Cyberutopia without him. In reality, he just wants Cyclonus away from him while he has Kaput try to figure out a way to De-power him to ensure that he cannot hurt Cyclonus anymore. Unfortunately, Tailgate wasn't aware that Fangry was still nursing a grudge.
• Consummate Liar: How else do you describe someone who can get Rewind (who's trusting but still intelligent) to tell him how to drain a bomb and then make Rewind think it was his idea all along. If only Rewind had known how to deactivate the bomb.
• Crosscast Role: Tailgate was played by Susan Blu in the Botcon 2014 script reading.
• Cute Bruiser: After his Outlier powers activate. He's still small and adorable looking, but now also strong enough to bench press the Rodpod.
• Dead Man Walking: Not anymore!
• Deadpan Snarker: Torturous sessions with Ultra Magnus tend to bring this out.
  • Disabled Snarker: While he would be snarky every now and then, he becomes a lot snarkier when he found out he was dying.
• Disability Immunity: His cybercrosis renders him deaf to certain frequencies... like the one Tyrest uses for his "weapon of mass suggestion".
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: After his Point One Percenter super-strength manifests, Tailgate certainly realizes he's strong, but fails to grasp just how strong he is, or the ramifications of such strength (or what it might do to him). Cyclonus shows him a battlefield littered with the bodies of dead Decepticons on Necroworld early on in Season Three, and reveals that this is entirely Tailgate's handiwork; everyone else was busy fighting elsewhere at the time, meaning all the dead Decepticons here died by Tailgate's own hand. He's also been tearing Cyclonus limb from limb every time he recharges because he's been suffering fits where he tries to tear his own Spark out, and mauls Cyclonus when he restrains him. Finding this out from Whirl finally clues him into just how strong he really is, and Tailgate resolves at that point to get rid of his super-strength.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: He’s reunited with Cyclonus and they live out their lives together happily.
• Fall Guy: Due to his naïveté, he's groomed by Getaway to be this and basically sets him to do something really stupid to Megatron that would likely end up in his death.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: By six million years. Tailgate's understandably a bit behind on modern events.
• Human Popsicle: Except not quite. He spent most of that time unconscious, but not frozen or suspended.
• I Just Want to Be Special: The reason why he lied about being a bomb disposal expert. All he really wanted was to be a hero for once.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: After finally doing a heroic deed, he confesses to Cyclonus that being a hero is overrated and he would give anything for another movie night.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: This was done to his quantum duplicate by one of the DJD.
• Mercy Kill: Asks Cyclonus to give him one to spare him the agony of the final moments of the cybercrosis. Cyclonus does seem to come through with it, but is instead a case of Cyclonus trying a Healing Shiv method to cure him.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: He ends up indirectly causing the start of the Great War by making Rung get him a curly straw.
• Naïve Newcomer: Comes with the territory of having been trapped for six million years underground and missing the entire Autobot/Decepticon war. He understandably has a lot of catching up to do.
• Non-Standard Character Design: He's seen "crying" in an exaggerated fashion whenever he gets upset or scared, with his optics sparking. Other characters are shown doing this, but only rarely or much more subtly. In-Universe, he's noted to be built different from most Cybertronians since he was never around to get upgraded.
• Not Now, Kiddo: When he and the other members of the team are imprisoned on Luna 1, he offers some suggestions for escaping their cell, which are promptly ignored. Two issues later, escapologist Getaway has joined them and comes up with a successful plan to escape... which bears a striking resemblance to the ideas Tailgate had.
• Odd Friendship: With Cyclonus and Getaway. Both relationships become romantic, although Getaway's supposed interest in Tailgate turns out to be part of a sinister scheme to manipulate the reformed Megatron into murdering Tailgate — luckily for our heroes Cyclonus ultimately manages to deduce Getaway's plan and foils him.
• Official Couple: With Cyclonus.
• Phony Veteran: The "-osal" writing on his arm isn't part of "bomb disposal" like he claims, but "waste disposal". He was never a member of the Primal Vanguard.
• Put on a Bus: Absent throughout the whole of The Transformers: Dark Cybertron, while he's recovering from Cybercrosis. He returns once it's over^note This was because James Roberts initially intended Tailgate to succumb to cybercrosis, and would have been, well, dead.. Happens again while on the Necroworld undergoing treatment for his spark. Initially it looks like a Bus Crash when Fortress Maximus says they found his chamber with signs his spark had exploded, but he was actually teleported to Mederi by the Magnificence, or rather the Omega Guardians communicating through it, for the sake of using him in it's bid to get rid of any threats to the Omega Guardians' plans, allowing him to reunite with the team.
• Secretly Dying: For a while after his diagnosis, though he later comes out about it and is cured not too long after.
• Series Mascot: Tyrest refers to him as the "ship's mascot" when he threatens to kill Tailgate, who he's using as a Human Shield.
• Ship Tease: By the end of season two, he's fallen in love with Cyclonus. The ship is officially canonized when Cyclonus eventually reveals that the feeling is mutual.
• Shoot the Hostage: Invoked by him, asking Rodimus to just shoot him anyways when Tyrest takes him hostage as a Human Shield.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: He fell into a pit millions of years ago and fell in out of stasis lock while trying to escape. Meanwhile, Cybertron suffered a massive, planet-killing, civilization-ending civil war. When he finally reached the surface the war was over and the planet was healing itself.
• Spanner in the Works: To Tyrest in a big way. Tailgate's cybercrosis deafens him to the frequency that Tyrest's paralyzation command travels on, leaving him unaffected. This allows him to surprise Tyrest from behind and shut off the signal paralyzing the rest of the crew who aren't being killed by the activation of the killswitch, which ultimately leads to Tyrest's defeat and the stopping of the killswitch. And then, after Tyrest is defeated but the crew is being swarmed by his Legislators, Tailgate is able to use his extensive knowledge of the Tyrest Accord that he learned from Ultra Magnus to revert the Accord back to its original form, causing the Legislators to cease their attack, saving the crew.
• Super-Strength: His Outlier power.
• Tempting Fate: Played with. He is discharged, gets his Autobot badge, others acknowledge him and treat him with respect, which promptly causes him to question how his day could get any better... then a Legislator appears right on top of him. Fortunately it turns out to be Swerve's bouncer.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: The combination of quantum radiation from Brainstorm's time case and the shock of seeing Cyclonus getting injured causes Tailgate's latent Outlier powers to activate.
• Younger Than He Looks: He reveals to Cyclonus that he'd only been alive for two weeks before he fell into the Mitteous Plateau and spent the next six million years out of commission, thereby missing out on all those millennia of life experience and maturation.

Skids

Let's Dance!

An amnesiac theoretician/diplomat searching for the answers to his past. Skids is highly protective of his fellow crewmembers and tries to be friendly despite his fatalistic worldview. He's a "super-learner" capable of mastering skills that he picks up in a matter of minutes.

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• The Ace: He's far and away one of the most competent members of the Lost Light crew.
  • Broken Ace: He's also wracked with guilt over what was done at Grindcore, to the point of wiping out his own memories to get away from it. Once those memories come back he becomes utterly useless, dying from the despair of it all and calling himself "Scum".
• Amnesiac Hero: When we first see him, he's forgotten everything about himself. He quickly remembers the essentials, but two large chunks of his life remain missing.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Despite having a very fatalistic view of the world, he always strives to do the right thing and helps others.
• Arch-Enemy: Subverted. He nominates Misfire, but they never meet on-panel and Word of God would later explain that the idea of that scene was that since Skids couldn't remember his actual archenemy, he picked Misfire because he happened to be nursing a Misfire-coloured drink at the time.
• Awesome by Analysis: Described as a "super-learner" and capable of picking up skills quickly and easily. Case in point: he quickly masters the attack patterns of Legislators and defeats an army of them alone.
  • It also makes him incredibly bored once he learns everything about a subject.
• Badass Abnormal: He's an Outlier.
• Badass Adorable: He was quite The Cutie in the "Shadowplay" flashbacks.
• Blessed with Suck: While his Outlier power of picking skills up impossibly quickly and easily makes him one of the most capable bots on the Lost Light, (Not that that's saying much) it also makes him easily bored and unfulfilled when he's learned everything about a subject.
• Catchphrase: He has a motto, but he doesn't think much of it.
• Combat Pragmatist: He's not above repurposing the corpses of other Cybertronians into makeshift bombs to get an upper hand, though he does apologize to the corpse in particular.
• The Cynic: And after Grindcore why wouldn't he be? Even if he can't remember the details...
• Dark and Troubled Past: Even though he doesn't remember it. If Chromedome says your past sucks, then it probably does. It's eventually revealed that he spent time in Grindcore Prison, a glorified death camp, and was tricked into helping murder five hundred fellow prisoners while there.
• Despair Event Horizon: Recovering his memories of Grindcore sends Skids hurtling over this. His spark shrinks to a pinprick and while Ratchet is distracted talking to Megatron, he begins desperately trying to crawl away to find Brainstorm, to tell him about Quark, all the while sobbing about how he's scum. He dies soon after, hating himself and what he did.
• Foreshadowing: When he wakes up first and tries to reassert his memories, he at first remembers his name as "Scum" instead of "Skids" before correcting himself. When his memories of Grindcore are restored all he can do is wallow in his own misery as he dies of grief, calling himself "Scum" in his dying words.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: One of his hands turn into this.
• Hollywood Atheist: Issue 49 reveals that his loss of faith in Primus was caused by his horrific experiences in Grindcore. His narration notes that when Tarn murdered Quark and hundreds of other prisoners in front of him, his faith died alongside the prisoners.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Back when he was a student at the J.A.A.T. before the war.
• Irony: In the conclusion of Season 1 of MTMTE, Skids was able to pass through the barrier, because his mind was free of guilt after discovering who he was. Come the climax of Season 2, Skids, consumed by guilt over his part in the death of Quark and hundreds of others at the hands of the DJD, dies.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Courtesy of the Nudge Gun, around a year's worth of memories before he first appeared are gone, completely.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's fast on his feet and has a ton of weaponry. Swerve even mistakes him for an Ex-member of the Wreckers or one of Megatron's Warriors Elite do to him swiftly and brutally taking down a Legislator.
• Mysterious Past: While much of his past was explained in "Remain In Light," a pretty big chunk of his earlier memories were subconsciously removed before then.
• One-Man Army: Dispatches swarms of Legislators during "Remain In Light."
• Only Friend: Appears to be Swerve's, in spite of him usually treating Ten like crap.
• Only the Worthy May Pass: Of the three 'bots who try to enter Tyrest's space bridge— himself, Rung, and Pharma— only Skids is actually able to pass through because he carries no "guilt", and not just because he's not a criminal. Rung hypothesizes that only those who are truly at peace with themselves and carry no self-doubt or anguish can pass through. Skids is able to enter the portal because since discovering the truth of his identity, he is completely at peace.
• Pintsize Powerhouse: While being only average-to-short height for a Cybertronian, he's disproportionately powerful among the lot.
• Platonic Life-Partners: James Roberts have confirmed that Skids relationship with Nautica wasn't romantic at all, and that they loved each other as friends.
• Religious Bruiser: Was this at one point.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Part of the reason he's lost so much of his memories; he went through something so traumatic that when he used his nudge gun on himself, he wiped his memories of Grindcore Prison to escape the mental torment.
• Ship Tease: He becomes very close to Nautica and seems disappointed when she makes him her Amica Endura, and is often seen with her. His last moment with her is them holding hands before he sacrifices himself, and she's devastated by his death.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Straight Man to Swerve's Wise Guy. Same with Getaway.
• That Man Is Dead: Subscribed to this at first, taking his amnesia as an excuse to act however he felt like, but after the visit to the Crystal City he reconsidered, and decided to try and find out who he was.
• Took a Level in Badass: Skids started off as a puny theoretician, easily intimidated by large 'bots like Roller. Compare that to the Walking Armory badass secret agent he is now.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: A large part of his memory is still missing, and whatever it was that caused it, Chromedome refused to see. All we known is that a piece of music known as 'the Empyrean Suite' is involved. Issue 48 and 49 reveals that it involves him being sent to Grindcore Prison, one of the worst prisons in the galaxy, and getting tricked by by Tarn into helping execute hundreds of fellow prisoners. The music plays in his head constantly because, no matter how much memory he's lost, the events associated with it are seared into his mind. In issue #54 he finally asks Chromedome to bring the memories back so the trauma it will cause him will cause a spark surge that will temporarily power everyone else up like what happened to Tailgate, but the shock of those memories kills Skids shortly afterwards.
• Walking Armory: Has many, many concealed weapons on him.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Might be a clever bit of Foreshadowing. Present-day amnesiac Skids might not be that sneaky, but in all likelihood, Diplomatic Corps Skids was. Kinda comes with the job.
• You Bastard!: Says this verbatim to Getaway, after being told that Getaway interviewed him about whether or not Megatron deserved a second chance (Skids apparently felt he did) or where he'd stand in a coup against Rodimus and Megatron (he apparently wouldn't stand with Getaway) and then got shot with a nudge gun, removing his memory of the conversation.

Nightbeat

Not worried. Intrigued.

A brilliant but antisocial detective who was believed (and sort of) dead for many years. He's obsessed with solving mysteries and riddles and desires to use the Lost Light's quest to solve the biggest mysteries of the galaxy.

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• Allergic to Routine: If he's not facing a mystery or riddle of some sort he seems disinterested and detached, as if he spontaneously becomes lethargic. In issue 41 he spends a fun party literally staring at the ceiling until getting fed up and going off to snoop around.
• Back from the Dead: Maybe. It's still a little unclear how Brainstorm got all the Dead Universe infectees functional again. The important thing is that Nightbeat and the others are functional.
• Boom, Headshot!: How he originally died.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: When Orion and co. find him in the Dead Universe, he's still Nova's Manchurian Agent, though he hides this fact to lead them into a trap. Rodimus eventually devises a way to free him.
• Brutal Honesty: Tact is not his strong point.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: His holomatter avatar resembles Idris Elba's portrayal of Luther.
• Cool Old Guy: Since he's one of the first Constructed Cold, that makes him one of the oldest Cybertronians still functioning.
• Crisis of Faith: In issue 44 he reveals that he's been suffering one ever since his near-death, which has caused him to fear that the afterlife doesn't exist. He overcomes it thanks to a talk with the Necrobot.
• Deadpan Snarker: In a World of Snark, Nightbeat still manages to be head and shoulders above almost everyone else. He even does it while Brainwashed and Crazy.
  Nightbeat: I'm sure if I was in full control of my mental faculties, I'd feel bad about betraying you.
• Defective Detective: His deep love of solving mysteries has clearly left him with difficulty socializing.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Meets the crew in Dark Cybertron and joins them for real in Season 2.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Riddle: Rodimus poses a question to him in an attempt to shake his Manchurian Agent programming. It works.
• Jerkass: While not of the venomous variety, it's clear that his mysteries and riddles mean more to him than his fellow crew members do, and he's casually dismissive of their emotional attachments.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As antisocial and insensitive as he can be, a lot of the minor things he has investigated have turned out to be pretty significant in the long run.
• Killed Off for Real: In Lost Light issue 17, he figures out what Rung's alt-mode is for, which makes him content enough to "ascend" into the Afterspark, forcing his Spark out of his chest. Issue 18 reveals that the Cyberutopia everyone was in was fake, but Nightbeat is most definitely dead.
• Manchurian Agent: The reason why Hardhead killed him in the first place, but his manchurian programming is gone thanks to Rodimus.
• The Mole: Albeit completely unwillingly, and he's later freed from this programming.
• No-Sell: Swerve tried to outsmart him during the bogus Crewditions. Didn't end well.
• No Social Skills: Comes with his obsession with mysteries.
• Not a Game: Gets called out by Megatron for caring more about the riddle than what was actually happening.
  Megatron: You failed. You solved the mystery, but only after everyone was taken. You were too slow to save them.
  Nightbeat: Yes, but at least I worked out what was happening. That has to count for something, doesn't it?
  Nightbeat: (Dejected) Doesn't it?
• The Nothing After Death: He doesn't remember seeing any sort of afterlife when he was shot in the head. This has caused him to fear that the afterlife may not exist at all.
• Odd Friendship: With Nautica.
• Older Than They Look: Was one of the first of the first to be Constructed Cold, during the age of Nova Prime.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Thanks to the Dead Universe, although he can function normally now thanks to Brainstorm.
• Sherlock Scan: Well, duh.
  • Sherlock Homage:
• Shout-Out: Hyper Intelligent Defective Detective, with a questionable grasp on morality, so of course his Holomatter Avatar is John Luther as played by Idris Elba. Who were you expecting?
• Skewed Priorities: If there's a mystery that needs solving, Nightbeat will usually be more interested in that than anything else going around, like what's up with the alternate wrecked Lost Light than the fact that its version of Rewind is still alive and is the ship's only survivor.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He's smart, but not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
• The Smart Guy: Detective flavor.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor/Sixth Ranger: Starts off as Nova Prime's brainwashed lackey, but immediately reverses allegiances when freed. He later becomes the Sixth Ranger in a different sense, joining the crew after the events of Dark Cybertron.
• Villain Has a Point: He found himself agreeing with a lot of the pre-war Decepticon ideology. Lampshaded when Megatron discusses Decepticon double agents and suggests that Nightbeat's the type.

Ravage

A calm and collected spy who's stowed away on the Lost Light following Megatron's trial, than became an honorary member of the crew after being caught. He's undyingly loyal to Megatron and is a master of stealth who can detect people's emotions through smell.

---

• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Notably averted. He thinks Swerve and Bluestreak are wasting their time on human culture. In fact he seems to be one of the only crew members who doesn't enjoy human movies.
• Ambiguous Syntax: His last words are "Don't change back", said to Megatron as Ravage lays a paw on Tarn's Decepticon mask that Megatron has appropriated as a badge. Ravage either touched the mask fondly and asked Megatron to remain a Decepticon or indicated that he made peace with Megatron's desire to abandon the Decepticons and was encouraging him to continue on his non-violent path.
• Berserk Button: Don't treat Ravage like an animal — that includes petting him.
• Cats Are Mean: He's still loyal to the Decepticon cause, almost fanatically so. As such he's not particularly cordial with the Autobots on the Lost Light crew.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: After using Ten as a distraction to escape the DJD, he ends up returning to save him, Ratchet and Drift.
• Character Death: Dies as a result of being torn in half by Tarn at the end of Dying of the Light.
• Character Focus: Continuing his characterizaton from Robots In Disguise, this version of Ravage has received more focus and screentime than most, who are usually just snarling beasts.
• Disappointed in You: Outright says this to Megatron, after he Megatron initially refuses to help fight the DJD. Notably it's the only time in the comic so far that Ravage has had any sort of genuine criticism for Megatron.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For all his aloofness and sass Ravage genuinely loves Soundwave, the other Cassettes and Megatron.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's far from the most heinous of Decepticons and genuinely believes in the best the cause has to offer. Which is why he decides to stay on the Lost Light after seeing the aftermath of a DJD rampage.
• Evil Detecting Cat: His enhanced senses cause him to notice the invisible monsters on the Vis Vitalis.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: During the final battle with the DJD, Tarn rips him in half at the waist. Ravage survives it thanks to Megatron's intervention, though he only hangs on long enough to beg Megatron not to change back into his old self before expiring.
• Hates Being Touched: Or more accurately, hates being petted like a cat. Since Nautica is a minor Cuddle Bug who thinks Ravage is adorable, she annoys him greatly. Megatron and Soundwave however are exceptions to this, Ravage content in letting either give him a friendly caress.
• It's Personal: He makes it very clear that Megatron's defection hurt him on a personal level. Thankfully the two are able to reconcile.
• Living Lie Detector: It comes with his enhanced senses.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Yeah he's a Decepticon, but he genuinely believes in the cause and thinks that they'll lead the galaxy into an age of peace and equality. And while he's dour and stoic towards others, if you actually get him to open up you see that he's a decent person deep down.
• Kick the Dog: On the Necrobot's planet, while attempting to scout the forward base set up by Kaon, Helex, and some of Deathsaurus' Decepticons for their ship, he reveals he knows that Ten has followed him, because Ten actually has a good idea to hold off the Decepticons, but keeps being told to be quiet by everyone else. Ravage acknowledges that Ten wants to help, and can...but then asks Ten to remind him how tall he is. When Ten stands up, he's spotted by the Decepticons who proceed to attack him en masse just so Ravage can take advantage of the distraction and search the base. Ten puts up a decent fight, but ultimately gets mutilated by the Decepticons and is about to be executed, only being saved via the timely arrival of Ratchet and Drift.
• The Mole: He's spying on Megatron and the rest of the crew for Soundwave.
• Mook–Face Turn: He was originally a henchmen for Soundwave. By the end of issue 33, though he hasn't gone as far as to renounce his Decepticon membership, he's genuinely joined the crew due to seeing how monstrous the DJD is.
• Noble Demon: Was this during the war.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Whereas most Transformers are at least vaguely humanoid, he's built like a cat. This is due to him being part of the "beast" class; a Transformer who's forged or constructed body is designed to look like an animal of some sort.
• Old Friend: With Megatron. The two have known each other since right before the Great War started.
• Only Friend: For Megatron. He's been slowly warming to the rest of the crew. His death sets Megatron off to the point that he tries to murder the Autobots with his destroyed cannon.
• Panthera Awesome: Even more awesome than most incarnations of the character.
• Perception Filter: He uses attention deflectors to help himself hide. In a bit of light deconstruction, he got so used to being able to hide whenever he wanted that he nearly suffered a panic attack when he encountered the personality ticks, which could see through his deflectors.
• Pragmatic Hero: His proposed solution to the alternate Lost Light's spreading quantum foam (which may or may not have devastated Ofsted XVII if not stopped) is to get back in the shuttle and fly away as fast as possible.
• The Sneaky Guy: He's a master of stealth and often hides or spies on the rest of he crew when he doesn't want to be bothered. He does it so much that Getaway has Brainstorm make a device to counter his attention deflectors in order to see if Ravage is spying on him.
• The Stoic: He doesn't talk very much, though he breaks somewhat during a heart-to-heart with Megatron.
  • Not So Stoic: He absolutely freaks out when he encounters the monsters on the Vis Vitalis. When the DJD arrive to execute Megatron, he's almost in tears, having narrowly survived an attack from Tarn.
• Tastes Like Purple: Although to a lesser degree than his boss, Soundwave.
• Transplant: Leaves the cast of Robots in Disguise after The Transformers: Dark Cybertron.
• Twofer Token Minority: A fantastical version; he's both constructed cold and a beast class mech.
• Undying Loyalty: To Megatron. It's why he followed him onto the Lost Light. He also makes it clear that if Megatron said so, he and Soundwave would just kill Galvatron in a second.
• What Measures Is A Non Cybertronian?: In the past he suffered from discrimination under the Functionist regime because of his beast class body. Averted in the present; after Functionism died out everyone treats basically as any other Cybertronian, with the only exception so far being Nautica for an extremely brief time when she first met him, as Caminus doesn't have beast class Cybertronians and she didn't know he was sentient.

Anode

A treasure hunter with a mysterious past.

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• All Lesbians Want Kids: Confirms her desire to settle down and raise some sparklings with Lug in the final issue.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Kisses Lug in #24
• Break the Cutie: Cutie might be exaggerating things but she breaks down when she realizes Lug was a hallucination.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Anode is ditzy and impulsive (among other things), but she does definitely know protoforms.
• Chekhov's Gun: The snowflake she carries proves vital in resurrecting Lug.
• Coming-Out Story: She was assigned as male since that was all Cybertronians knew, but after leaving the planet and seeing the universe for herself she came to realize that she identified with female pronouns and got a modification of her chassis to match.
• Cool Plane: She turns into a Cybertronian bi-plane.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Her function in the GCT is "blacksmith", someone who helps mould protoforms who have trouble forming (essentially a Cybertronian midwife). That means she's second in ranking next to the Functionists. In issue #6 of Lost Light, she finds a way to use the Necrobot's flowers to bring Lug back to life.
• Easily Forgiven: She mentions that she caused the death of a protoform due to her inexperience, and was let off the hook. Justified in that her coworkers were very sympathetic and understanding due to the difficulties involved in the job.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Her and Lug retire to New Cybertron and Anode becomes a Blacksmith once more, helping the new generation of Transformers grow. Her duplicate continues her adventuresome lifestyle aboard the second Lost Light.
• Foil: To herself. In the main timeline, she's a slacker who runs from responsibilities and wants money for herself and Lug. Alternate!Anode is a serious commander who's embraced her function to its full potential but gave it and her life of luxury up to help the impoverished.
  • She's also one to Rung. The mystery surrounding him is what he can do. Her's is what she did.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: While nobody hates her (except maybe Magnus), nobody on Necroworld seems to like her either.
• Hallucinations: The Lug of the present day is nothing more than Anode hallucinating her old friend as a result of temporal energies playing havoc on her mind.
• It's All About Me: Velocity and Nautica have legitimate reasons to question and distrust her, but she just blows them off without an explanation and before that she tried to hijack the teleporter so she and Lug could escape, potentially stranding everyone else on Necroworld. Later when she's trying to find Lug, she interrupts Kaput, Velocity and Nautica during open surgery.
• Jerkass: When she learns that the Necrobot performed a religious ritual on Lug when she died to see off her Spark, Anode's response is to point out Lug wasn't religious and the Necrobot had no right. Though to be fair to her, she wasn't in the best mental state at that moment, having learned Lug was actually dead.
• The Lancer: Her Functionist Universe counterpart is one to Nine-of-Twelve.
• Mysterious Past: Word of God is that she's not from Caminus despite living there for some time and her presence on the Necrobot's list suggests that she lived on Cybertron at some point. Lost Light issue 8 reveals she's old enough to remember the days of the Primal Vanguard when they were big names, and like them realised she was transgender during her time exploring the universe.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Okay, Transformers don't wear clothes, but her character design◊ gives off this vibe: her face is silver, as is her lower torso, but her upper torso has green plating that reads like a top. There's even a small recess in the linked image that gives the impression of a navel.
• Self-Deprecation: While her coworkers forgave her, she didn't. Lug even postulates that Anode wanted to be hated so she faked a crime.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While working at the Lighthouse, she kept boasting about her skills despite still being in training. Deconstructed as everyone took her boasts as true and she was assigned a complex operation before she was ready. She failed and the protoform died.
• Tragic Keepsake: That snowflake? It's the remains of the protoform she accidentally killed.

Lug

A treasure hunter partnered with Anode. She's kinda sorta back from the dead now.

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• All Lesbians Want Kids: She and Anode discuss plans to "raise some sparklings" together in the final issue.
• Back from the Dead: Anode uses her snowflake and a portion of Lug's Spark preserved in one of the Necrobot's flowers to bring her back, though it will take time for Lug to fully mould her new body into her old form.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The foundation of her relationship with Anode.
  I hate you. As in, I actively hate you. I am in hate with you.
• The Big Damn Kiss: With Anode in #24
• Coming-Out Story: Like Anode, started out assigned as male because that was all Cybertron really had. When she left the planet and got to see the universe, she identified more with female pronouns. However, she didn't have any alterations done to her chassis.
• The Conscience: She always advised Anode to play it safe, and Anode's hallucination of her chides her for her moral choices and being insulting to Ultra Magnus.
• Equippable Ally: She turns into a backpack for Anode to wear.
• Foreshadowing: The fact that she was dead is cleverly planted throughout the first four Lost Light issues. Anode is the only one who speaks to her and while she's shown reaching for Anode's hand in issue #1, she never takes it.
• Hidden Depths: She has some musical skill.
• It's All My Fault: She believed that Anode wanted to be with her and gave up her internship as a result. Lug subsequently felt guilty and that she should indulge Anode.
• Imaginary Friend: Anode hallucinates her on Necroworld.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Absolutely nothing about her design suggests she's female. Her body is even based on a toy of Rewind. It's eventually explained that while Anode decided to have her body reformatted after deciding identifying as female was a better fit for her, Lug, who came to the same conclusion about herself, felt no need to do so.
• Posthumous Character: Turns out the Necrobot only saved Anode, not Lug. However, thanks to Anode using a preserved portion of Lug's spark and her sentio metallico snowflake trinket she's Back from the Dead.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Subverted. It looks like she ran off after Anode confessed the truth, but Anode's time travel induced hallucination of Lug just wore off.

Roller

You starting something, buddy?

Orion's partner on the force and best friend. He helps out Orion and the Senator but is suspicious of the Senator's intentions.

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• Ascended Extra: Goes from being a flashback character to joining Team Rodimus.
• Big Eater: He's rarely seen without a Kremzeek branded drink, even in the midst of battle or otherwise tense situations.
• The Big Guy/The Smart Guy: He served both of these roles before he was taken by the Necrobot.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Subverted. It was suggested in issue #6 of Lost Light that he might have intentionally given Terminus a false set of coordinates to take Megatron to, and ensure he got left behind in the Functionist Universe (and also destroying his reputation with at least Rodimus and who knows who else amongst the crew). Apparently, he didn't, and Terminus took Megatron to the wrong place intentionally instead. Word of Roberts is that "any ambiguity was wholly unintentional! (FWIW I don't think Roller's earned the right to be a contender for Mr Duplicitous)".
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He's really fond of lounging around and watching TV, but is a good hacker and a fellow cop.
• Can't Catch Up: Has issues being surrounded by Outliers with fantastic abilities when all he's got is built-in super-strength.
• Functional Addict: He's addicted to circuit speeders. During the finale he's shown casually drinking from two of them at the same time.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Was seemingly this with Orion Pax. In the Functionist Universe, he tries to contact him but Megatron already concluded that Alternate!Orion is either dead or off-world.
• Hidden Depths: As Issue #36 shows, he secretly feels inadequate compared to the Outliers.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's not exactly the best people person, but his heart's in the right place.
• My Greatest Failure: Lost Light issue 16 reveals he feels guilty for not being at the precinct when Whirl's handlers came through and murdered everyone but Orion Pax, because of Pax refusing to release Whirl on the Senate's orders, when he was on secondment.
• Never Found the Body: He disappears in an explosion defending the Alyon hot spot. And given that Chromedome wiped his comrades' memories after, it's unlikely that Orion and co. found him.
• Properly Paranoid: He has his doubts regarding Senator Shockwave. While the Senator was actually a nice enough guy at the time, he's eventually proven right.
• Put on a Bus/What Happened to the Mouse?: Ratchet mentions that the events of Shadowplay were the last time all three were together. His only other mention in the comics was as a candidate for a exploration mission, one that Wheelie ended up going on instead.
  • Issue #36 strongly implies he might just be Tarn. Issue 55 reveals that He isn't, but instead he was rescued by a time traveling Necrobot, and put in stasis while he recovered from the imperfect time travel.
• Red Herring: Ratchet's mention that "Shadowplay" was the last time he, Roller, and Pax were all together was a feint by Roberts to add tension by implying Roller would die. More importantly, "Elegant Chaos" fauxshadows him becoming Tarn (which he doesn't).
• Ship Tease: Gets some with Nickel during the finale, telling her he likes her wheels as she lets him playfully roll them.
• Super-Strength: As a Point-One Percenter, he's incredibly strong by design. He's able to absolutely tear through Functionaries later.
  • Deconstructed, as he reveals that he feels inadequate to the Outliers, who have amazing abilities, while he's stuck with super strength.
• Trademark Favorite Food: K-Juice. One of the most noteworthy images of him floating around online at excess is Roller sipping on it.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He's not the most disciplined, but as a Point-One Percenter he doesn't have to be.

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