Review: Transformers Combiner Wars “Unforgotten”

You’ll be surprised by what they DID forget, though!

Transformers as a franchise has always been a very easy premise to convey: Good robots fight bad robots while turning into vehicles. Even with all the intricacies of the stories, characters and other meta-textual aspects, that summary has been the most instrumental in keeping everything present in modern pop culture. Sure, if you dig further into the more niche and specialized parts of the franchise, you’ll find more subversive and varied takes on that, but even then, it’s generally pretty simple to understand where everyone stands.

It’s clear by now that this series takes place long after the end of the original Transformers cartoon. Peace has (temporarily) been achieved, both the good and bad factions are putting things aside for a greater goal, and it does genuinely feel like time has passed and these many of these characters have matured and moved on. That can be a legitimately interesting story idea in its own right, to continue where things left off and how the players we followed have changed and grown. However, it’s starting to look like this one might not have been all thought out.

SPOILERS

Optimus and Windblade arrive in an abandoned stadium on…some planet(?) in order to find the person needed to help them destroy the source of creating future Combiners. As it turns out, that person is Megatron, former leader of the Decepticons, who has been kicking the shit out of a few other Decepticons who are also there inexplicably. My guess is they’re basically around to be stress balls, now that Starscream, Megatron’s usual punching bag, is no longer available in that position. Though what I’m more curious about is why this was the first choice to go with. Were there really no other AUTOBOTS they could have gone to for help before this? And why is Megatron so important for this job?

Optimus approaches his former rival, while Windblade stands in the nosebleeds. Megatron notes that he’s heard of her reputation as former Speaker (still no clue what that’s about) and current killer…which I find a bit confusing, as well as indicative of a problem in this episode which might end up leaking out into all the others if not addressed soon. See, I was hoping, once she had slowed her roll and wasn’t trying to kill everything in sight, that she’d become more likable and mix in better with the characters she interacted with, but she’s actually becoming more of a snarky hot-head that just tends to assault everyone in sight. Granted, she hasn’t exactly been around many characters so far, but she’s still interacted with more than anyone else so far, and she’s only NOT wanted to kill ONE person out of all of them. And even then, she’s only killed ONCE at the beginning of the series. We’ve heard no mention of her taking lives of anyone else before then, and I doubt one incident would be enough to actually become huge news that even reached Megatron, who has apparently been in exile.

Similarly, he and Optimus begin talking about the last time they met, which was also the focus of Optimus’ Prelude video: The Autobots and Decepticons had one last fight which ended with Optimus pointing his gun point blank at an injured Megatron. We learn now that Optimus let him live to be exiled and then ran away himself, which is pretty short-sighted and selfish for a character like Optimus. That may well be the point, but there’s just so much of it that’s only informed.  Like with Windblade’s murderous reputation, a lot of this is simply told to us and not shown. It’s not enough to buy the stakes and circumstances of things if we aren’t able to experience them for ourselves.

 

Anyway, Optimus says he walked away to make sure there was peace (which doesn’t really tell us anything) and Megatron tells him he just wants to fight because he secretly craves war, which leads to them fighting for a bit. Windblade finally states why they’re actually there, to ask for his help. Then she smacks him in the face just as Optimus tells him about the whole Enigma of Combination thing. I guess this gets Megatron to respect Windblade more? Possibly? He also learns that Starscream’s on the council, which gives him double reason to get involved, and the three charge off to their glorious mission…which leads into the potential problem going forward.

What is the goal here? Destroying the Enigma to prevent the creation of more Combiners, I suppose. But why? We’ve only seen one actual instance of Combiners doing actual harm (again, in the first episode), the worst that happened was one casualty, and it was by complete accident for all we know. Now, that’s certainly a reason to be cautious and take preventative measures, don’t get me wrong, but not nearly enough to justify getting rid of everyone in a single group just because of one asshole, especially since said asshole was being stopped by another Combiner at the time. And even then, the council is also clearly being cautious about the situation…although that may have changed after Windblade tried to shoot the Enigma and Optimus made her shoot Starscream instead. So essentially, we have a blood-thirsty radical in Windblade who was forced into accidentally injuring a political official by Optimus, who decided to recruit Megatron, an infamous war criminal, simply because Windblade told him the council was planning bad things despite no actual evidence.

This show started out well enough, and we still have another 4 episodes to go this season, so I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. But a red flag is a red flag.