[6.0/10] Another underwhelming episode, but again, at least things are coming together.
The weirdest storyline here is Megatron agreeing to use the equivalent of a biological weapon on the Autobots. I get what they’re going for here, with Megatron going to more and more extremes and further and further away from his ideals to end the war with the Autobots. But logically, it makes zero sense. Wasn’t the whole point of the search for the allspark so that the Decepticons could use it to the same ends and reformat the Autobots? Isn’t that basically what shockwave’s virus is doing? Was Shockwave just holding it in his back pocket this whole time? It seems weirdly duplicative, with the only wrinkle being that maybe the virus will also affect Decpeticons? It’s a weird story choice.
There’s also a group of rando Autobots whose names I don’t even think we know protecting the space bridge. The gist of things here is that some guy we’ve never met named MIrage uses his hologram powers to hide the now-functioning space bridge from the Decepticons. Cool, I guess? It feels more like general plot machinery than anything that needed to be a significant part of this episode, but maybe it’s just there to sell Mirage playsets or something.
We also get a Bumblebee energon heist that’s underdeveloped. It’s a neat idea, sneaking into a warlord’s compound to steal some resource, but we hit only the most generic beats imaginable here. The only neat wrinkle to it is that one of the autobots turns into a weapon for the other, thereby helping our heroes evade the Jabba wannabe’s guards and their weapons scans.
Last but not least there’s Optimus and most of the rest of the A-team following Jetfire into the “rust sea” to retrieve the allspark. There’s a decnet throughline here over whether they can trust Jetfire, with him submitting himself to a Suicide Sqaud-style explosion collar to prove his bona fides. It’s just likewise underdeveloped in an already overstuffed episode. Sure enough, he proves his worth by steering our heroes through lightning storms and tornadoes and saving the life of the bot who doubted him. It’s fine, but paint by the numbers. The only cool thing happens when they reach the allspark chamber and get attacked by a swarm of transformer zombies.
Overall, this episode doesn't give me much hope going into the season finale, but hopefully with so much piece-moving going on up to this point, the finale will be able to bring it all together and point us toward the next chapter
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-12-31T23:47:55Z
[6.0/10] Another underwhelming episode, but again, at least things are coming together.
The weirdest storyline here is Megatron agreeing to use the equivalent of a biological weapon on the Autobots. I get what they’re going for here, with Megatron going to more and more extremes and further and further away from his ideals to end the war with the Autobots. But logically, it makes zero sense. Wasn’t the whole point of the search for the allspark so that the Decepticons could use it to the same ends and reformat the Autobots? Isn’t that basically what shockwave’s virus is doing? Was Shockwave just holding it in his back pocket this whole time? It seems weirdly duplicative, with the only wrinkle being that maybe the virus will also affect Decpeticons? It’s a weird story choice.
There’s also a group of rando Autobots whose names I don’t even think we know protecting the space bridge. The gist of things here is that some guy we’ve never met named MIrage uses his hologram powers to hide the now-functioning space bridge from the Decepticons. Cool, I guess? It feels more like general plot machinery than anything that needed to be a significant part of this episode, but maybe it’s just there to sell Mirage playsets or something.
We also get a Bumblebee energon heist that’s underdeveloped. It’s a neat idea, sneaking into a warlord’s compound to steal some resource, but we hit only the most generic beats imaginable here. The only neat wrinkle to it is that one of the autobots turns into a weapon for the other, thereby helping our heroes evade the Jabba wannabe’s guards and their weapons scans.
Last but not least there’s Optimus and most of the rest of the A-team following Jetfire into the “rust sea” to retrieve the allspark. There’s a decnet throughline here over whether they can trust Jetfire, with him submitting himself to a Suicide Sqaud-style explosion collar to prove his bona fides. It’s just likewise underdeveloped in an already overstuffed episode. Sure enough, he proves his worth by steering our heroes through lightning storms and tornadoes and saving the life of the bot who doubted him. It’s fine, but paint by the numbers. The only cool thing happens when they reach the allspark chamber and get attacked by a swarm of transformer zombies.
Overall, this episode doesn't give me much hope going into the season finale, but hopefully with so much piece-moving going on up to this point, the finale will be able to bring it all together and point us toward the next chapter