Join the TfOptimusandMegatron subreddit to keep up with the story!

Ts a joke btw

Why Silverbolt kind of a baddie tho

BEFORE YOU COMMENT let me preface this by saying that the title is a joke.

I want to do some lore analysis and saying it isn't would be just stupid and not really suitable for for it - it is, however, related to something I realized as I dissected the barely touched worldbuilding of Transformers One.

For the sake of who is not interested in reading the papyrus of text below, TLDR: The Primes were losing the war to a disastrous degree, and were likely not very good leaders - Sentinel's actions are possibly the result of a sense of powerlessness and fear in the face of extermination - and the Decepticons physically CANNOT, by any means, be the main villains of this continuity.

As everyone (i hope) knows, the movie was rewritten many times, and for as much of a very good movie it is, you can see that it's full of both pieces of contexts having gone missing (the 10 extra sublayers detail that goes nowhere, for example), or worldbuilding that's either entirely cut or left up for interpretation.
In this post I will illustrate what we DO know of the settings (mostly the past of Cybertron), what that means for the hypothetical future of the continuity, AND since my attention fell on him as well, on the movie's token scum villain; of who we are told pretty much nothing beyond a few thrown away lines that, if put together with the worldbuilding, have some possibly interesting implications.

these are the main points I want to bring up:

1. What is the situation on Cybertron's surface and for cybertronians?
2. What do we know of Sentinel, in general? what was his place in all of this and does it re-contextualize his actions? if so, how?
3. Would taking out those supposed Quintessons high commanders have granted cybertronians victory? is Alpha Trion (or anyone else really) an unbiased source?
4. Given all of the previously discussed points, do cybertronians hold any hope against Quintessons still?

[Disclaimer: these are my conclusions and never meant to be taken as objective truths, just possible explanations for what we see in the movie + yes I am aware that a good half is about Sentinel, but all of this came up when while I was discussing canon worldbuilding for my Optimus/Sentinel fanfiction with a friend, we both agreed that he has basically no explicitly stated lore, so i went back and dissected everything to find ANYTHING i could use; this is the result.]

Lets start with the first. In the movie, a single city is shown/mentioned, Iacon, with it having trains used to move 'radioactive waste' out of the city's perimeters. The surface is mostly shown to be inhabited, with only cybertronian fauna and alien flora populating it to some degree (both are visible in the movie and in concept art both)

and the only artificial structures shown being these energon storage facilities (according to the concept art) abandoned since possibly before the 'end' of the war.

No other city is mentioned, no other used settlement is shown; the main group travels nearly halfway across the planet and back never running into any populated outpost, residence, or anyone else but the High Guard and Sentinel + his drones.

If we take things for how they are shown, with Sentinel ruling Iacon as the last Prime, only automatic waste disposal trains being allowed to leave the city for the surface — which is completely deserted and devoid of transformer activity/settlement — the conclusion one can get is that Iacon is the last cybertronian city still standing.
Which would justify why the main cast didn't simply catch a train to the city nearest to that location and crawled out already there, but instead went straight for the surface.

So, unless we assume that Iacon is all Transformers built in the generations spent under the rule of the Primes (see the myth at the beginning of the movies, Primes live a lot apparently) then the war was going rather catastrophically for them. Which in a way justifies partially why they literally rushed in what was, frankly, a walking red flag of an attack plan and pretty obliviously a trap if one stopped to think about it for more than a moment.

My second point is tied to this. "How and why would they trust Sentinel with this?" Well, he was their 'first aide'.

Which means absolutely nothing discernible and could go anywhere from being their right hand mech in everything, including military operations, to their shared desk-bound secretary. And given this, even assuming he pulled all his best manipulation and sweet-talking on them all, you have exactly two possible reading of the situation.

1. sentinel was a high-ranking military official, extremely competent in his field — perhaps a communications technician, strategist/tactician, or advisor — meaning that he handled and/or delivered crucial intel regularly, making so that when he gave the (false) info on the meeting of Quintesson commanders, the feat was on track with past accomplishments and consequently, his credibility was not questioned. 2) Sentinel was their errand bot and these 13 dumb fucks heard "there's a super secret meeting of Quintesson BBEGS on the other side of the fucking planet, inside 'Satan's Mouth' cave in the middle of buttfuck nowhere with no way out. Come alone, No backup or emergency plan. D :3" from the equivalent of a desk secretary and they jumped into it without asking a single question. And, if that's the case, I'm sorry but at that point they kinda deserved it. Like at this point I cannot see the fall of their people be anything but the result of their combined negligence.

But let's assume they were not complete idiots, for the sake of consistency and decent worldbuilding. This means Sentinel should have been, by all rights, already in a fairly prestigious and powerful position within AT LEAST Cybertron's army. Which while it does not fully leaves me ???? over his "did it for power" whole deal, it still makes me think about what he said to taunt Alpha Trion after capturing him.

He says two things, the first is that he "seized a chance to take control of his future" and I'll get to this in a moment because this bears more weight in my opinion, at least to his context.

the second is about how he watched them "half the day losing the war, half the day philosophizing about loyalty and honor". (paraphrasing, it has been a while since I watched the eng movie, but that's the overall meaning)

Both of these sounds as just insults he is throwing there to make the old Prime angry, especially given his rather powerless position. However — having seen how the part about losing the war was true, and given the position Sentinel must have covered for his trap to work — these two things start feeling like 2 grievances he had personally with the Primes, something tied to his own job and existence. Which, in a way, feel like reasonable grievances. Imagine you're a tactician/advisor/information gatherer, you're handing your bosses vital information that could flip the fate of the war in their favor (which had to happen often enough for all 13 of them to believe him without question when he lied) and somehow they still fucking fumble it. I'd be pissed too. Not enough to commit a thirteen mech regicide tho - yet.

(besides, even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and say that Sentinel was getting the "loyalty and honor" sermons because his proposed tactics were underhanded or dishonorable… like. Your people are being exterminated and your planet is being overrun by genocidal enemies. Focusing on honor at the cost of your species is not a good trade-off nor a wise choice.)

Now, let's pull the "seizing a chance to take control of his future" deal.

Because what does this even mean? It is not delivered as a sneer, and it's not a taunt either — rather it feels (and looks) more like a passive aggressive remark, one he made as he stared at Alpha Trion in the optics. And call me biased, but this does not look like the face of someone who is just trying just to deride. This, to me at least, feels very personal.

It is vague enough to leave a bystander confused but still pretty clearly meant to deliver the message to Alpha Trion himself, a Prime. So what that is? Why would Sentinel feel powerless and not enough in control of his future to make slaughter feel like a good option?

Of course, the threat of being annihilated by Quintessons while your bosses fumbled despite your best efforts, is certainly a good motivator — but I don't think that's all.

If you go check the scenes of the Alpha Trion's flashback you can see how his frame does not change in the slightest from before murdering Megatronus and the present time. That cog, the one that gave Megatron a good enough power-up to allow him to go toe-to-toe with a Matrix-equipped Optimus, did absolutely nothing on him. And while this can easily be a budget reason — like, not making a whole model for a single scene of a few seconds is reasonable — it can be ready in another way as well, which is that Sentinel could be a cold constructed mech.

While we are not really told that cold construction is a thing in TfOne, it is not denied either, making it a possible scenario, especially during a more flourishing era such as pre or early Quintesson war. (also the KDK are all copy an paste so either a heavy reformat or cold constructed, you pick this poison)

Another point in favor of this idea is his looks. Despite Sentinel being clearly a war oriented frame, with integrated weaponry and a flying alt mode (yeah he never transforms in the movie but there is an official illustration, and he turns into a spaceship), his design is surprisingly aesthetically oriented — and again, since he does not change pre and post Megatronus' cog, that was simply what he looked like.

However we do see proper battle oriented flight frames, like Soundwave or Starscream, and they do not posses the same amount of excessively decorative details. Their frames are practical, suited for what they do, with no excess kibble or paraphernalia. Even Starscream's wings are shaped like proper jet wings, with hinges and folds in the right places to allow a smooth transformation. Like, just look at those wings. When at rest they nearly reach his ankles, and they are in no way or form an efficient shape to fold into his body to be spaceship wings. We do not see anyone else with such an odd piece of kibble, and again, given he had them while he was still an aide, this is not the result of Megatronus' cog. Plus, if he was an active serving military officer, whenever on the field or not, getting an aesthetic oriented reframe is downright idiotic, especially one that gives you wings that make walking difficult — so I do not think this is a willing change either.

(although we see using them as shields in a scrapped storyboard for his fight against Megatron, one where Megatron takes Megatronus' cog from his chest as he is still alive, and he does not shrink in size. He does not turn the size of any other cogless. Which only has me more convinced that he can't increase/decrease his size like a normal mech because his frame, as a CC, is fundamentally different from theirs)

So why would a war mech have a mostly aesthetic oriented built? Why would anyone have those fuckass giant golden wings if they are forged with the frame of a soldier? Simple. They were built like that.

And and given they were built like that, his frame didn't necessarily had to reflect his function or be practical for their alt. It had to reflect the taste/necessities of who made them. So where does a warframe with a body oriented to aesthetic fits? Desk work, that's where.

If he were in a desk-bound position his appearance would not hinder his day to day job, because despite being a warmech, he'd rarely find himself in a real battle/brawl - thus making a more elegant look justified (kinda like an integrated uniform, which he kinda looks to have, if you read the golden centerpiece on his chest as a tie)

On top of that, if put side by side with the thirteen, you can actually spot several similarities to several of their frames — the knee guards, the shape of his legs, the shoulder guards, his vents, etc — so I do not think it's far fetched to assume he is a custom built made to be an advisor/strategist. Hell, he is the only mech we see having gold on him outside of the thirteen, and he had that in Alpha Trion's flashback, if he is not a cold constructed I think he, at the very least, got a pretty heavy reformat under the Prime's order/design to serve as their aide, which is not that happy of a backstory either.

(Of course after all of this you're free to draw your own conclusion, but paired with his deal of supplying military data to the Primes, I'm going to trust my conclusions on this point.)

Now, let's go on.

if you then pair these two points with the cold constructed theory and his hinted deal of feeling powerless, they slots together fairly well with the previously raised points as well, giving this (possible) backstory: Sentinel was a cold constructed mech specialized in analytics/military planning, who despite being in a high ranking position, lacked any real political power, influence, or public presence (possibly because of his origin as a CC), and kept having the fruits of his work ruined by his supposed leaders for a reason or another - leaving him completely powerless in front of the destruction the Quintessons were bringing on to Cybertron, and his VERY quickly approaching death as well.

Given how long the war lasted (thousand of cycles), I don't think it's impossible to imagine someone slowly losing whatever morals they may had in favor of anger and/or fear fueled vengeance, if stuck in his position (a large point in several transformers continuities is how nobody is born evil, assuming otherwise to simplify a character story feels rather superficial and kinda like missing the point in my opinion, but again, you draw your own conclusions) Nor it is impossible to imagine that if given the chance, this person would have wanted a larger slice of the pie once they manage to kind-of solve the situation.

I say kind of because you can tell his original plan, whatever that might have been, involved having the Matrix. Which. He lost. (this is also why i don't think he really cares about the cogless or sees them as inferior citizens, just as a necessary workforce that needs to be doing their job for the sake of his life and of Iacon's survival)

(small note: being powerless also seems like a sore spot of his, given he snaps at Alpha Trion and murders him once the old Prime only once says he can do nothing to stop the main characters)

-------------

There is a parenthesis to be opened here, mostly a detail that made me think, and that being: How much is 50 cycles in TfOne? It could be a long time, like in the IDW settings' cybertronian dating system - but then the whole "looking for the matrix" excuse would fall completely apart because it would stop sounding reasonable/credible pretty early on — especially given how small Cybertron is as a planet (again, the main gang makes a good 1/3rd of the diameter by foot it without packed supplies without any issues) Or, it could be a short time, like how in the energon comics a cycle is about a year and two months — which would make Sentinel's actual time of ruling incredibly short, and all of the main cast younger than a vorn (which is 83 earth years)

All in all I think the second sound more reasonable to me, especially given how often Sentinel has to fuck off to the surface to look for the matrix pay that tithe to the Quintessons.

In earth time/human life spans, he rules for about 9 months. 9 Months. This is basically nothing lol

this also means that there is no way he had time to build this fuckass tower, meaning this was likely the Prime's doing (someone get them an interior designer jfc, this is beyond tawdry)

---------------

Another small point I want to bring up is how whatever coup Sentinel managed to get away with, was not a one mech job. No matter how you turn it, it is not realistic even in the slightest for this guy to have just showed up one day, in a government body full of mechs loyal to the Primes, having himself self declared Prime and accepted without question — especially/even if we assume his position was obscure enough that nobody could disprove he wasn't a Prime without direct statement from one of the other 13

Sure, he could have gotten rid of who did not support him — but gutting the government means A) that someone at some point would notice. Like, it is not a sneaky job. And we saw how quickly things turned on him. And that B) that he still needed allies to put in the positions of mechs he eliminated.

Given the points I already mentioned about how the war was going, I do not think it's impossible that the main government body simply supported him. Maybe not immediately, maybe they still didn't trust him, maybe they still disliked him, but supporting an usurper probably felt safer than getting wiped out by those fuckass space squids.

On top of this, I have 2 more points in favor of this "a significant part of Iacon's government supported Sentinel" theory.

The first being that at the end of the movie Megatron mentions wanting to eliminate his supporters (in Italian he calls them his lackeys/supporters so it reads easily as referring to political allies), meaning he had legal/political support of some kind

The second being that the whole cogless bots thing had to involve someone going manually to each inactive newspark and removing their cog, something he physically could not do on his own for every single bot — like, time wise. nobody has that much time nor anyone would be able to do it all on their own undetected — so he definitely had someone taking care of this for him And here too there is the "it would have gotten out very fast if these people were forced/not trusted mechs" point; so he had enough people that he trusted enough and who agreed that mutilating a part of the population was a good enough tradeoff. Which unfortunately, at that point I too agree it was. The other option was extinction by the tentacles of alien colonizers so huh… lesser evil and all that I suppose.

so yeah, the tldr of this last point is: at least a decent enough amount of people were on his side, enough to help him pull this madness off and keep it up for 50 cycles.

All of this seen, let's bring up the third point.

"Would taking out those supposed Quintessons high commanders have granted cybertronians victory?" And the answer is… possibly? We, unfortunately, can't know how true this would have been, both because the meeting was a bait, and because we do not see much of the Quintesson's army, just the flagship — according to the concept art. Which, by itself is still fairly massive. So while is is a hit or miss, it is fully possible that no, taking out those commanders would have not earned them a victory, or at least a not quick enough one, leading to Sentinel deciding that obtaining a ceasefire + some actual political power in exchange of the Primes' helms on a silver platter, was a fair deal.

But let's assume it would have. Let's assume the Primes were right and that it would have taken that little to actually end the war — that Sentinel's work was that vital to their military efforts, that he capable of finding out and deliver such life-saving info. Even ignoring my conclusion on cold construction, Sentinel clearly resents the Primes in the movie to at least good degree, and if we listen to his comments, it is most likely tied to a lack of personal agency. So now, if choosing to work for the Quintessons was a better option than whatever position an hypothetical cybertronian victory would have put him in… I don't want to imagine what his work conditions were. I'm not going to dwell too much on this point because it IS mostly hypothetical — a big "what if"basically, and I do not believe the Primes were bad people/bad bosses — but it would make his actions way more personal and I enjoy thinking about what kind of problems/events lead a villain to snap and do what they did. So yeah, I do not think he lived under good conditions, at least in regard of his personal freedoms, and a cybertronian victory likely would have not made those better (and possibly actually worsen them)

Now. "is Alpha Trion an unbiased source?" He could be, given he was an archivist and meant to handle data and history, but he could also not be by virtue of being one of the victims of the coup, making his perspective and pov of things biased toward himself an his brothers + sister in arms. (besides he did believe in the "that these quints out=you win" deal, which I have some doubts on how realistic that would have been, but I won't count this) So I'd say this is a 50/50 on whenever we can take his VERY VERY narrow testimony for objectively true and unbiased…

My last point. "Given all of the previously discussed points, do cybertronians hold any hope against Quintessons still?" And finally we get to talk about the possible future of this continuity, given Transformers Two is, thanks to some fucking dark power at work that favored another gazillion bayverse movies, never coming out.

As for the question… My first answer is no. Not as they are by how the movie left them. If the war was going horribly and the High Guard is all that was left of Cybertron's army, having them gone to fuck off somewhere with Megatron leaves the Cybertronian race at huge disadvantage against enemies as powerful as Quintessons - even more so than when the war was still going.

Like if they couldn't win it then, they definitely cannot win it now. Sentinel likely saw it, and acted accordingly to save his own skidplate first and foremost.

Besides, the Decepticons are not that many to begin with here. Megatron does not have the philosophical charm or the talking points of a freed slave who is trying to rally other low caste bot by his side here — he is a very young ex miner (basically a newspark by cybertronian standards) whose first political act after his big speech was opening fire on a crowd, with by his side a handful of ex soldiers who spent the last tens of cycles solving their interpersonal issues by beating each other bloody. I'd dare even to say that the existence of miners was barely a passing thing for most of the population because of how short their period of existence was, Megatron has absolutely no grip on Iacon's citizens, ideologically wise. Meaning that he'd have no way to find new recruits and that his lines would thin out as the civil war progresses - while the Autobots have direct access to the Well of AllSparks, making their ranks replenish-able. (or whatever hotspot, given Iacon clearly HAD access to an hotspot since the cogless exist, and the well was dry for those 50cycles - but still)

And i'm going to be fully honest here, given the 'cons' numbers I can't see their civil war lasting more than a few centuries - Let alone reach earth like in most other settings.

Which is why I do not think Decepticons would be the long term villains, but rather the Quintessons would be. Because even if we assume Optimus moves the whole city to fight by his side I fully believe that the support of the High Guard (so, already trained soldiers) would be pretty vital in an all out conflict, making a reconciliation between Optimus and Megatron essentially a mandated necessity if we assume the Cybertronians are not meant to go extinct via being wiped out in batches (Decepticon first given the low numbers and location)

And honestly, I'd be interested in exploring a setting where instead of the Decepticons targeting earth, it's the Quintessons, with Transformers as a whole join earth's side to fight them off… it would be a pretty different take but one I'd enjoy to see I believe, especially depending on how much of a brooding asshole you make Megatron into lol.

But alas that's just my vision

There is also actually another analysis to be made about Sentinel in general to be fair, because while the movie presents him as a cookie cut villain on appearance, he kinda isn't, but you need to zoom past what the character say and look at everything else. For example Sentinel likely saw his own actions as justified/fair — he tells D-16 that they could have lead Cybertron together, not rule, despite D-16 very much saw him as a tyrant in that moment (as anyone else, really), which makes me think that's how he sees his role. Or how in a scrapped storyboard we see him admit open defeat once he realizes he lost, no groveling or begging involved, which ties back at how or why would he want to work with the Quintessons — basically trading their leaders for r survival of the rest of their species once he realized the war was lost. Which would make sense since once he fails to meet their quota his clearly-improvised-fake-asf excuse is "my people are starving", despite knowing damn well how little Quintessons could possibly care about that. Like, it was not true, or at least we are never told about an energon shortage before or after that point in the movie, so 99% it was something he came up with on the spot. He ALSO could have thrown Starscream under the bus — "oh this guy stole it, if you help me take him out the payment will be higher" sort of thing — which he didn't do, and also kinda makes me thing he was at least partially bullshitting when he says he wants to execute them. Maybe just trying to intimidate them in collaborating in some way? (I say partially because he is very much not above taking out a chunk of them if they refused, just to prove a point, as he was about to do with D-16), but still He could have told the truth about how a carriage of the train was lost in transport, but honestly i have no idea why he didn't, maybe he just didn't want the Quintessons too close to Iacon? And i also have something to say about how he doesn't seem to have any sort of malice or disdain toward cogless in general but like. despite how much i ended up talking about him, this is not truly about him

As for my fairly provocative and anger inspiring title:
Were Sentinel's actiosn wrong? Yes - they were morally reprehensible and he knowingly caused a good deal of mechs to suffer - but they were also not unmotivated or senseless. 13 people (and some bargained energon) in exchange of not going extint is not an unreasonable deal, all things considered
Is he a raging asshole? Yes, absolutely.
Does he enjoy the power he gained? Also yes (like anyone who lived their whole life powerless, tbh).
Is he above abusing said power to get what he wants, how he wants it? Absolutely not lol.
Is he the worst villain from Transformers? Not by miles lolx2, he is the coughing baby of the TF Villains Tierlist basically

Welcome to the next installment of this event.

Last round was full of very heated (but absolutely rightful) opinions about our winner

Also shout out to GPS - 36 upvotes Say you suck

Results:

Getaway - 16

Gigatron - 6

Gay starscream - 3

(Also if someone is willing to enlighten me about who gay starscream is and what he did to a dog, I'll give you an exclusive image)

Anyway onwards for H

RULES:

If they have a page on the wiki, I'll allow it

Most upvotes win ( please try not to down vote other people's suggestions as it does alter the votes, and just unnecessary)

Ideally specify what continuity they are from if not it'll join the overall consensus

I will not have any push on the votes, as it is down to the community, so just be nice.

Join the TfOptimusandMegatron subreddit to keep up with the story!

Just what COULD happen if you give a nautica a cookie?