Shockwave discovers a team made of distaff counterparts to the Autobots robbing his Energon stores, Megatron orders him to capture Elita One, their leader and Optimus Prime’s beloved, to force his nemesis’s surrender.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: All of Elita's team qualifies, being active warriors (and Moonracer boasts that she's the best sharpshooter), but special mention goes to Elita herself, who catches a missile and throws it. No wonder Optimus likes her so much.
- Amazon Brigade: Elita One leads an all-female resistance that fights Shockwave's rule over Cybertron.
- Damsel out of Distress: When Elita is captured by the Decepticons to lure Optimus into a trap, he's the one who ends up endangered when he nearly falls into acid and Elita has to break out to rescue him by activating her time-stopping ability.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Elita One’s special power stops time for a few seconds, at the cost of draining her power.
- Exact Words: Elita begs the Decepticons to let Optimus go. Starscream thus commands that he be let go… into acid.
- Faking the Dead: Prime gets saved by Elita from the Death Trap, but somehow, debris ends up in the vat, which Starscream uses as proof that Prime has been disintegrated.
- Living Prop: Greenlight and Lancer are unnamed on screen and get no lines to characterise them.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Elita One remains unaware of Alpha Trion’s role in her creation, though she notes that he’s always been “like a father to me”.
- Never Trust a Title: Optimus knows where to go to find Alpha Trion and the “search” takes him about 30 seconds.
- Official Couple: This episode establishes Optimus Prime/Elita One, Ironhide/Chromia, Powerglide/Moonracer and Inferno/Firestar.
- Remember the New Guy?: The female Autobots debut here, with a flashback establishing that they failed to make it onto the Ark because of a sudden air raid.
- Something Only They Would Say: As Alpha Trion reveals that Prime is the only robot whose circuits are compatible with Elita One’s, Optimus notes that “only my creator would know that”. Trion then gives him an offhand comment to affirm this.
- This Cannot Be!: Shockwave assumed the female Autobots were extinct prior to Chromia ruining their attempted heist.
- Unhand Them, Villain!: As the Decepticons dangle Optimus Prime over a vat of acid, Elita pleads for them to let him go. Naturally, they let him go into the acid, and Elita has to save him by freezing time and pulling him to safety.Elita One: Please, let him go.Starscream: Very well, my dear...let him go...into the acid!
- Villainous Face Hold: Starscream holds Elita One's chin this way while the Decepticons are holding her captive. It's rather creepy.
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