The Intergalactic Highway

Okay so WorpeX and I were discussing the Transwarp explosion scene and I have a few questions about what exactly happened.

This is a brief recap:

Optimus goes up to duke it out with the planet buster. Then, Optimus realizes he can't bail out like was planned. Megatron's face appears and says something like: "We had the same idea...only in my version the pilot goes down...or should I say up...with the ship, yesssss" and continues to gloat. Then, back at Maximal central, everyone's asking "Why didn't he bail out yet?" and Tarantulas, through Blackarachnia, says: "Too late. Good bye Optimus. BWAHAHAHAHA." AND THEN the explosion happens.

So my question is: Who knows about the magna sealed stasis pod turned escape pod? Who magna sealed it shut?

This is the theory I came up with:

Megatron rigs the transwarp cell to blow up. This would kill Tarantulas before he was able to successfully betray Megatron and the other Predacons. And perhaps he could make sure it happened just as Tarantulas and the pod were flying past the planet buster effectively neutralizing a possible threat (because when he rigged the transwarp cell to do whatever it is he wanted it to do, the aliens hadn't shown themselves yet). Then, when Tarantulas' plans are thwarted by the Maximals, he knows he has no choice but to have Blackarachnia finish the pod. It's better that way anyway, he would live, the aliens gun wouldn't and he could make sure the pilot didn't either. He could, feasibly, take control of Blackarchnia's mind long enough to program the stasis pod to magna seal shut. The Maximals can't really say or do anything to stop them since their only tech-savvy crew mate is in the CR chamber so they'd never know that it was done.

The issue with this theory is that Megatron clearly appears to know about the magna seal. Is he trying to steal the credit or did he actually do it? If he magna sealed the pod shut, then my question is: Why? He thinks Tarantulas will be flying the ship. There is no reason to magna seal it shut. All that would do is keep Tarantulas inside, but he'd still be able to leave the planet as planned. He just needs to figure out a way out of the pod which isn't impossible given the fact that Tarantulas is the one in the pod. If I were betting on which character in the show could find their way out of a magna sealed stasis pod, my money would be on Tarantulas. So it doesn't really make sense for Megatron to magna seal Tarantulas into the pod. It would make more sense for him to program the transwarp cell to mysteriously over heat and explode killing Tarantulas and destroying the planet buster at the same time.

Now maybe Megatron magna sealed Optimus in from the Darksyde when he learned that it was actually Optimus flying the pod, but if that's so then why does Tarantulas seem to know about it? No one says anything about Optimus being dead until season two. All they know is that they didn't see Optimus bail out as planned, but he could have bailed and no one noticed.....maybe Tarantulas says "Too late" just to point out that he was too close to bail out safely, but even in that case he still could have bailed out. He may have damaged himself in the process, but at least he wouldn't have exploded. There is no reason for Tarantulas to assume that Optimus didn't or wouldn't bail out unless he knew that he couldn't bail out. So....if he wasn't the one who magna sealed Optimus inside, then how does he know?

So that's kind of the issue here...Megatron and Tarantulas are clearly not in cahoots, but both seem to know about the magan sealed stasis pod. How would they both know about it?

What do you all think???

The magna seal was Megatron's idea. He rigged the codes in the transwarp cell by reprogramming it's function so it would stay shut once the driver entered it. Tarantulas wasn't aware of it until Optimus' plan went wrong, he was just gonna let Blackarachnia finish setting it up. He put two and two together as it neared the ship and found it amusing, hence the gloating.


WW

I agree with Wicked Woman on this one. I believe Megatron always intended for the hatch to remain sealed, assuring the death of the occupant. Perhaps he even made other modifications to allow him to take over other functions of the pod as well but deemed them not necessary once Primal was trapped.

Tarantulas might have had an inkling of suspicion there was foul play involved when Optimus didn't escape the pod.

Tricky questions and theories, but I also agree with Wicked Woman and Phoenix. Twas Megatron's doing. He's such a jerk.

How did Megatron rig the ship to explode though? Thats all fine and dandy that he sealed the pod, but unless it exploded, it wouldn't stop the alien machine.

The explosives the Maximals planted was to set off the explosion in the show. Perhaps Megatron planned to take control over the stearing abilities of the pod too and crash it into the alien machine instead, but explosives only added to the boom. A moving vehicle can cause a lot of damage after all. The WTCs came down after being hit by planes for example. Since Megs could seal the hatch, I can only assume he was capable of taking over other functions as well.

The Maximals wanted to send the pod, carrying explosives, into the alien construct and Primal was supposed to get out before getting too close.

As much as I'd like to give credit to Tarantulas for the Magna Seal like we did in the fanfiction, I have to agree it was probably Megatron who magna sealed it when he noticed the Axalon's shields were down and he was free to remotely tamper with the pod from the safety of the Darksyde. I mean, I agree that sealing the pod would probably have been overkill if Tarantulas had remained the sacrificial lamb in place of Optimus, since Legs can't fly & thus wouldn't have been able to avoid the destruction of the planet buster even if he'd blown the hatch, but Megs strikes me as someone who would have wanted to guarantee the demise of his treacherous arachnid scientist no matter what.

Tarantulas was probably gloating because he realized that Primal's limited window of escape had closed for whatever reason and he couldn't possibly survive, regardless of whether he knew Megatron was responsible for it or not.

DarkSpark wrote:As much as I'd like to give credit to Tarantulas for the Magna Seal like we did in the fanfiction, I have to agree it was probably Megatron who magna sealed it when he noticed the Axalon's shields were down and he was free to remotely tamper with the pod from the safety of the Darksyde. I mean, I agree that sealing the pod would probably have been overkill if Tarantulas had remained the sacrificial lamb in place of Optimus, since Legs can't fly & thus wouldn't have been able to avoid the destruction of the planet buster even if he'd blown the hatch, but Megs strikes me as someone who would have wanted to guarantee the demise of his treacherous arachnid scientist no matter what.

Tarantulas was probably gloating because he realized that Primal's limited window of escape had closed for whatever reason and he couldn't possibly survive, regardless of whether he knew Megatron was responsible for it or not.

Actually, Megatron tampered with it in Before The Storm while Blackarachnia was distracting Tarantulas. When he noticed that the Axalon's shield was down in Other Voices part 2, he decided to monitor the progress, hence his annoyance when Inferno "killed" Tarantulas.


WW

I agree, twas Megatron who did all the sabotaging.

After all, spiders spin their webs...but he spins them larger. Yessssss...