YMMV / Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy

• Animation Age Ghetto: All three miniseries in the trilogy have been rated TV-Y7 on supposedly the account of it being a Transformers show, despite it having some profanity, pretty rough violence, and not shying away from the darker implications of life on Cybertron. It is currently unknown if Netflix will eventually go back and bump the ratings up to TV-14 in the near future.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Wheeljack saying "He's a pain in the ass" in the first episode. Not only is the series rated as TV-Y7, but there is never another swear like that for the rest of the show. Most of the other swears are replaced with their robot equivalent, so this comes across as out of place.^note The swears in question being one use of "damn" later on in the first chapter, one use of it in the second, and three uses of it in the third respectively.
  • In Episode 4 of Kingdom, the opening dialogue between the Autobots and the Maximals is rather odd. The Maximals act unaware of the importance of the Allspark even though its been established that the future Cybertron is a dystopia specifically because Optimus sent the Allspark offworld. Another odd part of the conversation is Rattrap remarking that the future Cybertron has no need for the Allspark to sustain life but Cheetor stops him from explaining further and the subject never comes up again.
• Base-Breaking Character: Optimus Prime has proved to be one of the most contentious parts of the Trilogy. To some, he’s a whiny, incompetent, and downright awful rendition of the character who keeps making incredibly stupid decisions. To others, he’s an interesting take on the character as a younger, less-experienced incarnation who has to grow into the wise and mature leader that Optimus is usually known for.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The mentions of "Nemesis" in Kingdom referring to an evil version of Optimus Prime surprised very few, since the mentions were always in relation to Optimus Prime and there are very few other characters the name gets brought up to refer to. The Earthrise spoiler pack containing Nemesis Prime along with his brief appearance in said season would also ensure even fans new to the Transformers lore would have familiarity with him and be able to put the pieces together.
• Complete Monster:
  • Siege & Earthrise: Shockwave is a cold, clinical scientist and the wickedest of Megatron's inner circle, with no crime he considers beneath him. Researching the history of Cybertron, Shockwave discovers the power of the mythical Allspark and reveals to his master a devious plan: to use its power in order to spread a virus in order to forcefully reformat all Autobots into Decepticons, turning them into mindless slaves, and steers his boss into using this plan. After the Decepticons capture Ultra Magnus, Shockwave electrically tortures him until his body starts to break apart from the pain and sheer force. With Magnus's death, Shockwave uses his body as a way to cultivate and release a computer virus that will wreak havoc on the Autobots communications, despite the fact that it would lead to chaos all across Cybertron. Shockwave later lures in and sacrifices hundreds of Decepticons to use their bodies and sparks as raw parts to build the spaceship Nemesis while secretly devouring several sparks himself to increase his power for his plans.
  • Earthrise & Kingdom: Galvatron is the future version of Megatron, orchestrating Megatron's harshest fall into villainy for his own purposes. Having rose to power through genocide and cruelty, Galvatron was turned into a slave by Unicron and, in his attempts to avoid this fate, travels to the past and encourages his younger self to embrace his sociopathic selfishness and kill all in his way. Masterminding a massive war between the Autobots, Decepticons and their allies that claims countless lives, Galvatron intends to steal the Allspark and leave Cybertron and all Transformers to die in his wake, uncaring of anyone else so long as he destroys Unicron and secures his destiny of power.
• Critical Dissonance: While many critics have praised the show, fan reaction has been much more mixed. Part of this comes from most critics being less exposed to the franchise when it's written less for children, while fans are more familiar with that material and find it superior to the show.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See here
• Fandom Rivalry: Fans of the Transformers: War for Cybertron games tend to criticize this series for sharing the name of their games and feel that the writing and characters aren't up to par, while fans of this series would prefer for it to be viewed as its own thing.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • This is far from the first series where the entire voice cast was replaced—that distinction actually goes back to Beast Wars, in which Megatron and Starscream were voiced by Garry Chalk and Doug Parker rather than Frank Welker and Chris Latta (due to the former being busy and the latter having passed away). As a matter of fact, almost every Transformers iteration since has never brought back the original cast in full, only bringing in a couple of role reprisals for a few select characters (with any other returning actor from previous series usually cast in new roles)—this includes Transformers: Armada^note With only Chalk and David Kaye returning as Optimus and Megatron from Beast Wars and Beast Machines, the Transformers Film Series^note The sole exceptions being Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and Welker as Soundwave and (eventually) Megatron, Transformers: Animated^note Which brought back Corey Burton as Spike Witwicky, Brawn, and Shockwave, Susan Blu as Arcee, John Moschitta as Blurr, and Judd Nelson as Rodimus Prime, and the Transformers Aligned Universe^note Again with Cullen as Prime and Welker as Megatron and Soundwave, but only in Prime and Robots in Disguise. Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Transformers: Cyberverse, and most recently Transformers: EarthSpark all chose not to bring back any of the previous cast whatsoever, and in all cases, a lot of the reaction was the same as this series. However, much of the recasting in those series was done either at a time where the internet—and thus fan reactions towards these changes—wasn't as prevalent, and came about before Cullen famously reprised the role he originated, and even then fans eventually warmed up to the changes when they saw the full direction the characters were taking (with arguments about who is the best version of certain legacy characters not uncommon). This time, the recast became a bigger sore point because many of the actors attempted to imitate their predecessors with varying degrees of success, not helped by criticism of long, drawn-out and often dull, emotionless dialogue, with criticism from several of the older actors only intensifying things. Thus, the vitriol of the change became much more pronounced.
  • Jake Foushee's performance in WFC was subject to intense scrutiny for attempting to emulate Peter Cullen's performance as Optimus Prime. However, Foushee had voiced Prime before in Transformers: Cyberverse and Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy (with his impersonation being the reason he got the job in the first place). Except in those series, Foushee was given a chance to play Prime on his own while using Cullen's take as a basis; the former series would have him demonstrate some Not So Stoic moments where he was out of touch with his men, and was Out of Focus compared to Bumblebee, Windblade, Grimlock, and Hot Rod.^note Most other actors such as Garry Chalk and David Kaye did their own take on Prime, while Neil Kaplan emulated Cullen with his own spin on the role, albeit before Cullen returned to the part. WFC forced Foushee into doing just an impersonation of Cullen without letting him do his own take, making it more noticeable where he struggled to hit those more emotional notes using just that impersonation alone. The writing and voice direction certainly didn't help matters either, nor did Cullen's own criticisms about being recast (which makes one wonder why Hasbro and Netflix simply didn't bring back the original voice cast in the first place).
  • Fans have taken umbrage with Optimus Prime being crippled with self-doubt and angsting about his constant failures, but he was far from the first Prime to do so. His G1 predecessor from the Marvel Comics, especially under the pen of Simon Furman, was hit hard with this, as was the version from Animated and his Maximal descendant Optimus Primal in Beast Wars. However, those Primes fought through their self-doubt—Marvel Prime pressed on in spite of his issues, Animated Prime Took a Level in Badass and grew into the leader he was meant to be, and Primal eventually got ahold of his rowdy crew to truly inspire them. WFC Prime, however, never got over this doubt, with each chapter seeing it worsen and worsen to the point he almost calls it quits when he sees the corpse of Elita-One lying dead at his feet. Moreover, those Primes learned from their mistakes (noticeably Animated Prime being more gentle with his own rowdy crew and Primal being more understanding of Blackarachnia's defection to the Maximals more than he was with Dinobot), whereas this Prime made some pretty serious ones that cost him dearly, making this flaw more noticeable.
• Growing the Beard: Chapter 3, Kingdom, is generally considered an improvement over the previous chapters, with better pacing, better voice direction, and a more focused plot. The fact that it takes full advantage of the Generation One/Beast Wars crossover only helps further.
• I Knew It!: Character posters for Siege each contained a flashing letter from Autobot alphabet created for the original cartoon. When put together, they spelled out "KINGDOM." This led to the theory being that it was teasing a future Beast Wars production. This turned out to be true, with Netflix soon announcing the third installment in the trilogy, indeed titled Kingdom, which would feature the G1 cast meeting the Beast Wars cast.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: With only a scant six episodes in each of its chapters, War For Cybertron so far boasts one of the shortest episode counts in the Transformers franchise. This has led to complaints about the show rushing through its story and not taking time to adequately delve into the plot lines it introduced.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • While Transformers is far from the most innovative franchise, many of Siege's major plot beats, such as Megatron seeking the Allspark to create a Decepticon army, Jetfire starting out with the Decepticons before joining the Autobots, and the Autobots rushing to fuel and launch the Ark before the Decepticons can wipe them out, have been done in previous entries in the series without this one putting many twists or changes onto them.
  • Dinobot's death in episode 3 of Kingdom felt thrown in there just to reference Code of Hero but while that character arc was built up over several seasons we saw little of Dinobot's conflict and redeeming qualities in this show. It doesn't help that he has to have emotional last words to characters we hadn't seen him with and his last conversation with Primal was just a bad joke.
• Les Yay: Blackarachnia is very affectionate towards Arcee and Airazor. She even kisses the latter after being saved from falling to her death, and Airazor reacts quite happily to it.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Was anyone surprised that the Ark wasn't destroyed?
• Magnificent Bastard: (Kingdom): Blackarachnia is a sultry and manipulative spiderbot minion to Predacon Megatron who plans to overthrow him. Blackarachnia manipulates the feelings of Starscream into helping her discover the location of the Allspark. She later tricks Starscream into wounding the original Megatron in order to gather his Energon to discover a way to access the prophetic Golden Disc, which is only accessible through Megatron's blood-like Energon. After the original Megatron plans to wipe out the heroes, Blackarachnia switches sides to ally with them to shut down his defense systems through her skilled hacking. Even at the end, Blackarachnia is left in good graces with the villainous factions and is ready to face off against the coming threat of Unicron.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Megatron's lips. It has to be SEEN to be believed.
  • The scene where the Allspark version of Ultra Magnus t-poses caught on with the fandom, with people editing the scene to include silly music or effects to emphasize the Narm, or having him assert dominance over a character from the show they don't like.
  • A few jokes were made at the expense of Netflix and Hasbro over how they wouldn't pay the original actors to come back because they were too expensive and instead hired soundalikes, yet Jobby the Hong was able to get David Kaye to reprise his role as Beast Megatron for two toy reviews of the aforementioned character.
  • A lot of people end up comparing Starscream to his Armada counterpart in Kingdom after he learns of Unicron and undergoes a Heel–Face Turn, attempting to get everyone to work together, with many fans noting how this makes him one of the most heroic versions of Starscream.
  • Everyone…talking…so…slowly…in the…series…for…dramatic…effect…
  • This scene for a VERY good reason.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm:
  • Ultra Magnus' cloak, which apparently conceals his identity despite not concealing his Shoulders of Doom in the slightest.
  • Skywarp's fatal injury and death. When he's shot, the way he acts is as if some big betrayal happened, but the shot not only looks incredibly weak, but on his character model it only hit one of his wings, which does not give the impression that the shot was fatal, so it comes off more like he was being mildly jabbed. So when he comes crashing down and then dramatically dies, it comes off more than a bit... dumb.
  • Moonracer's corpse. Her death by getting torn apart by Sparkless is quite chilling, but the body is way too clean for one that was torn apart by zombies. The fact that the characters are based, exactly off of the toy models doesn't help one bit, and makes it look like the Sparkless popped off all her limbs.
  • The voice acting is clearly trying to carry a lot of gravitas, but many fans have instead laughed at it for finding the direction overblown. Particular attention has been directed at how the voice actors tend to make long pauses between words for dramatic effect, which has led to jokes about everyone talking really slowly instead of emphasizing the intended mood.
    • Elita-1 sounds like she is constantly on the verge of tears. The overacting is so intense that it just makes her come off like she's full of Wangst and trying way, way too hard to be dramatic. That most of her scenes are with the stoic Optimus Prime only draws attention to it and makes it come off even funnier, because it comes off like he's just tired of her. This comes back in Kingdom where Elita contacts Prime sounding genuinely sorrowful but Optimus' dull "what is it" reply sounds irritated if anything
    • When Optimus berates Elita for suggesting shooting Bumblebee so he doesn't give away their location he practically screams "We are not the Decepticons!" Similar to Elita's voice acting it's so over the top, especially compared to Foushee's usually restrained delivery, that it comes off more funny than dramatic.
    • In the sixth episode of Earthrise, Optimus refuses to shoot Megatron until he hears his former friend say he forgives him for the act. Not only is it ridiculous that a hardened warrior like Optimus would need forgiveness from his worst enemy in order to kill him but Jake Foushee's over the top delivery just makes the scene all the more hilarious.
    • In general, at times it really sounds like Jake Foushee is straining his voice to hit the depths Peter Cullen reaches. It sometimes makes Optimus sound thin or like he's running out of breath.
    • The Kingdom teaser has Optimus Primal announce to the Autobots that he and the Maximals are "fwom youw futuwe" making the tough big bot sound like a toddler on testosterone pills.
    • Predacon Megatron's voice sounds more like Beast Wars Scorponok, a dim-witted brute rather than the cunning schemer from the original show they're trying to frame him as. It really doesn't help that the first time he speaks, he's in his T-Rex form.
  • In Earthrise episode 2 when Optimus Prime tells the Autobots to 'Transform and Roll Out' only 1 or 2 of them transform while the rest run away or hitch a ride on Prime. While this is because some of the characters don't have cybertronian vehicle modes it's still funny to see the TRANSFORMERS run from an imminent threat instead of driving away much more quickly.
  • Scorponok in Earthrise is an unaffiliated ancient robot who attacks both factions, had no idea about the war before attacking them and compares Megatron to the Quintessons in disdain. But his model retains a Decepticon insignia from his toy, which is visible through a lot of his screentime.
  • Optimus' conversation with Megatron in the fourth episode of Earthrise. Not only does it take up a massive portion of the episode, at one point Optimus gets so close to Megatron that it very much looks like he's leaning in for a kiss.
  • When the Allspark vision of Ultra Magnus attacks Prime it T-poses! Seriously!◊
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Jetfire. In most continuities, he's a Gentle Giant of a scientist who merely wants to help end the war quickly. Here, he does want an end to the war... but he is not only Air Commander of the Seekers, but he's a cold, ruthless and dutiful enforcer of Megatron's will and is a fully dedicated warrior able to kill at a moment's notice given adequate reason. The only point where he draws a line is when he finds out his leader is completely fine with a literal genocide.
  • While Mirage is pretending to be a Decepticon, Skytread and Spinister decide to show him all the Autobots they've killed so far. Cue a shot of a bunch of dead corpses dismembered and impaled on spikes all over a street.
  • The Sparkless, the newest Transformers equivalent of zombies, which quickly overrun the Autobots and tear apart Moonracer.
  • Ultra Magnus's brutal torture by the Decepticons, with him screaming in agony as Shockwave electrocutes him until his body parts begin to explode.
  • In episode 2 of Earthrise, Optimus and the crew of the Ark have been captured by a Quintesson whose faces constantly argue with each other. Optimus thinks that they can use the bickering to their advantage... and then we cut to the Quintesson sawing its other four faces off until only the one insane with rage is left.
    Face of Wrath: Consensus!
  • When Starscream steals the Golden Disc and the sample of Megatron's energon needed to listen to it, he is initially amused when he reaches the point where Megatron is reformatted and enslaved by Unicron. And then the recording of Unicron starts talking to him.
    Unicron: Starscream... (Starscream gasps in shock) Starscream... I know you're there. I know everything.
    • Worse yet, Starscream mentions at the end of the series that he's still hearing him despite Bumblebee shattering the Golden Disc. Unicron didn't just leave a threatening message. His vision can span across all time. If he sees you once, he can always see you as long as you exist within a timeline. And the only way to not do that is to enter the Dead Universe, implied to be a timeline where he's already won.
• Questionable Casting:
  • A controversy grew out of the cast being voiced by mostly unknown actors rather than the surviving members of the G1 and Beast Wars casts, especially with regards to the voice direction the characters took. Of the most significant:
    • The main criticism fans have revolves around how Optimus Prime is not voiced by Peter Cullen, instead having Jake Foushee trying really, really hard to imitate his performance just like in Transformers: Cyberverse, with disparaging comparisons from fans being sadly inevitable. Matters weren't helped in Foushee's case when Cullen himself voiced his disappointment about being replaced. ^note  It should be pointed out that Cullen wasn't just upset over not being asked to participate in a big project like the Netflix series; he was also unhappy over the use of non-union voice actors due to hailing from a time when it wasn't unusual for voice actors to strain their voices due to multi-hour recording sessions.
    • Predacon Megatron sounds like an overexcited teenager trying to do a David Kaye impression and both he and Optimus Primal frequently slur their speech - Primal's "We're from your future" in the Kingdom trailer verges on Elmuh Fudd Syndwome.
    • Tigatron has a voice that's similar to Dinobot from the original Beast Wars cartoon and the reverse holds true for Dinobot.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Elita-1 received criticism in Siege for having an arc that boiled down to "disagreeing with Optimus and not doing much else". Earthrise helped to flesh out her character by putting her in a position of leadership and showing that she's actually rather good at it.
• So Okay, It's Average: Response to the show is mixed because most feel it falls under this category. While it's considered a massive improvement over Prime Wars with stronger animation, a more coherent narrative, and with Kingdom as its strongest chapter for embracing the G1 meets Beast Wars crossover, its shortcomings come from stiff dialogue and voice performances, wasted characters and plot threads, and replacing the existing G1 and Beast Wars casts with soundalikes that struggle to impersonate their predecessors.
• Special Effect Failure: The animation features plenty of Prop Recycling, questionable aesthetic choices and shortcuts to hide transformations or specific detailing. Most detractors tend to compare the animation as on par to, or worse than both the previous trilogy or Rooster Teeth's own RWBY despite Polygon Pictures' involvement.
  • Whenever Rattrap or Blackarachnia transform, the camera cuts away from them in order to avoid having to animate them changing in size. It's rather obvious for Rhinox the first time he transforms, as while Rattrap at least gets to cut straight to robot mode, Rhinox is in the process of standing up while the transformation sound effect plays, despite him already being in robot mode without any shifting parts.
  • A rather infamous example of Optimus's normally solid grille stomach flexing and moving like a human's instead of being a solid rotating piece became a minor meme among the fandom.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: More like Surprisingly Improved Follow-up but the response to the trilogy as a whole has generally been more positive than the last Generations based toyline cartoon Prime Wars. Not by much, but it remains seen as less mediocre.
• Tearjerker: Optimus Prime is clearly having a rough time of it; no matter what he does, people keep dying around him, and he clearly has severe self confidence issues, which come to a head when he meets Sky Lynx in the Dead Universe. It takes Sky Lynx putting it into perspective how self-destructive his self-blaming is for him to stop... Only for him to lose the Matrix to Megatron, which is likely to cause those feelings to come back with a vengeance. Poor guy just can't catch a break.
  • Seeing the Sector 12 Decepticons getting harvested for their sparks, after being so determined to help the Decepticon cause despite their injuries and lack of supplies.
  • Cog's death. After surviving getting blown out into space, he has Deseeus at gunpoint and is about to kill him... before Deseeus quickly turns the tides and escapes, leaving Cog to die aboard the Fool's Fortune, weakly trying to tell everyone to stop firing on the ship until it finally explodes.
  • Sky Lynx's death as well. After Primus knows how long of him trying to get out of the Dead Universe, he gets a chance to escape and loses it, sacrificing himself to let the Autobots get away from Megatron safely.
  • Even Megatron gets this a bit; he's clearly lost it after the Allspark was lost, and sacrificing the sparks of his own people just to gain some kind of hope for salvation is very obviously bothering him, no matter what he tells himself to justify it. If anything, it almost seems like Shockwave manipulated him into doing it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Predacon Megatron's alteration from a cunning, silver-tongued schemer who ran circles around ally and enemy alike, combined with the memorable performance of David Kaye, into a Professional Butt-Kisser for his namesake who had a far less intimidating voice didn't sit well with the franchise's fans.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Due to each series only having 6 episodes and a large, constantly expanding cast to promote the toylines many of the characters end up being very flat and underdeveloped.
  • Moonracer makes her first animated appearance since the original cartoon by showing up late in the series with little to do before she is killed by zombies.
  • Impactor makes his first appearance outside of comic books, and he's a Decepticon goon who gets rescued by Ratchet, reluctantly works for him to fix the space bridge for the Autobots, and is killed in the final episode after barely getting any screentime. Even though he's one of the few characters in the show to get an arc, it felt rushed due to his lack of screentime, redundant compared to Jetfire's more fleshed out Heel–Face Turn, abrupt as most of the other Decepticons are unrepentant psychopaths, and disappointing compared to IDW Impactor's more gradual and fleshed out character development in The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers even though that Impactor was always an Autobot. It doesn't that help that his usual role as the founder and original leader of the fan-favorite Wreckers is completely excised.
  • Arcee gets some focus in one episode's B-plot in Siege when she goes with Bumblebee to steal Energon from Soundblaster and the subsequent firefight. She displayed a lot of personality and grit in that episode that many fans liked her more than Elita-1 and wished she'd been a larger part of the series. Though she's a member of the Ark crew for Earthrise she doesn't contribute anything meaningful until Kingdom, but by then it's too little, too late.
  • Despite being hyped up in the marketing Galvatron's appearance in episode 5 of Earthrise amounts to very little. He randomly appears on the Nemesis for seemingly no reason, gives Megatron flashbacks to events the audience already knew about, made him unleash a random hate plague power up that was blocked by Sky Lynx then never used again in the series, and gets unceremoniously sucked back to the future by Unicron. While he does get more focus in Kingdom his manipulations of Megatron have little impact on the series before he and Nemesis are sucked back to the future for a sequel tease.
  • Sky Lynx doesn't get off much better than Galvatron. After being introduced as arrogantly coveting the Matrix in the past his banishment in the dead universe made him abandon this desire entirely. While he guides Prime out of the Dead Universe he could have served as a spiritual guide to help Optimus better understand himself but is killed off at the end of the episode he's introduced in by Megatron's random power up.
  • While he is built up from both a cameo in Earthrise and the first 5 episodes of Kingdom Nemesis Prime's only involvement is a brief fight with Optimus. Seems like the writers were taking notes from the last time Nemesis Prime was a corrupted Optimus.
  • Unicron has a looming presence over the series from episode 5 of Earthrise and throughout Kingdom but all he does is is suck Galvatron back to the future a few times then have a sequel tease at the very end despite the trilogy being over.
  • It's more than common for Transformers toylines to include characters that don't appear in media, be it original molds or redecos. However, both the Siege and Earthrise toylines relied heavily on various Micromasters released, many of them becoming weapons for the larger figures. Aside from Laserbeak, Ravage and Buzzsaw (who doesn't even has a toy in the line), no Micromasters appear during the trilogy cartoon, making it a wonder why one of the toyline's main gimmicks has no representation.
  • In regards to the Beast Wars cast, only characters who received toys in the Kingdom line were featured. While this means all the Maximals (and Dinobot) were present and accounted for, most of the Predacons are nowhere to be seen, including fan favorites like Tarantulas and Inferno, while Scorponok is reduced to a flat, mostly silent generic. Even Waspinator, who DID receive a Kingdom toy, is sadly MIA.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A lot of the series backstory, such as the Decepticons rising up against Cybertronian classism and Prime, Megatron, and Magnus being pupils of Alpha Trion before Megatron kills him, sound like they would have made for a more unique story than the one in the show. It doesn't help that these events that are only vaguely alluded to are what motivate most of the characters.
  • The Alpha Trion protocols being passed to Bumblebee when Ultra Magnus dies, giving him all the wisdom of Alpha Trion, could have made for an interesting arc with him coming to terms with the knowledge thrust upon him and fleshing out his dynamic with Optimus as someone who had the same thing happen with the matrix. Instead they're a plot device for Bumblebee to join the Autobots and locate the All Spark, after which they're swiftly deleted by a virus created by Shockwave
  • Siege tries to have a plot point regarding hope and a conflict between Optimus' desire to defeat Megatron above the survival of his species and Elita-1 fighting for survival, and Optimus is directly compared to Megatron in terms of his fanaticism. Very little is actually done with this — it doesn't even come up around Bumblebee, the guy whose entire motivation is to survive — and it all boils down to Elita just needing to believe in Optimus more.
  • As pointed out by Jobby the Hong, Bumblebee being unaligned at the start of the series could have had him be the main character as an Audience Surrogate to act as a window for both the Autobot and Decepticon cause and his experiences lead him to chose to join the Autobots, along with showing the audience why they should root for that side. Instead, Bumblebee is forced into the war by the Alpha Trion protocols being passed onto him, therefore making no choice of his own and missing an opportunity to help make the Autobot cause more understandable.
  • Mirage pretending to be a Decepticon lasts a minute before his cover is blown, and he learns very little during that time.
  • At one point we're introduced to the Quintesson Deeseus, with multiple rotating faces and full blown Multiple Head Case, who claims to have helped the Transformers liberate themselves from the other Quintessons. However this claim is never followed up on since his face of wrath slices off the others mere minutes later, removing his conflicted personalities and leaving him a generic, petty despot who just wants to destroy the Autobots before he blows up with his ship in the final episode.
  • The backstory of the the Maximals and the Predacons is radically different than what fans are accustomed to but details of their past and their current conflict is barely elaborated on.
  • You'd think the irony of Nemesis Prime and Galvatron being corrupted versions of Optimus and Megatron working together would make for an interesting dynamic between the two or drama about the present versions of the characters looking at their twisted future but they have no meaningful interactions onscreen.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Several fans view the subplot with Elita-1's team in Earthrise to be this. After Project Nemesis is unveiled and Megatron's crew leaves Cybertron, Elita's gang still get focus as they fight Shockwave, but by this point they are no longer connected to the main conflict of finding the Allspark.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Soundblaster has traditionally just been an in-universe rebuilt Soundwave with a black paintjob. In addition, while he was part of the toy line it was only as a Walmart exclusive for the 35th Anniversary. So not many saw it coming when Soundblaster showed up as an entirely separate, albeit cloned, and distinct character from Soundwave.
  • Earthrise definitely debut a major doozy of a character...Galvatron! And he gets to interact with Megatron!
  • Dinobot’s brief appearance at the end of Earthrise which leads into the equally unexpected appearances of the Beast Wars cast in Kingdom.
  • The trailer for Kingdom showed Galvatron teaming up with friggin' Nemesis Prime! And it turns out that Nemesis is Optimus himself!
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The series initially had a TV-Y7 rating, despite being one of the darkest Transformers series with several brutal deaths, attempted genocide as a plot point, and Wheeljack clearly saying the word "ass".

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