A Stygi Situation

« Transformers: EarthSpark ep 19 »
"A Stygi Situation"
Season	1
No. in season	19
Production company	Entertainment One Nickelodeon
Airdate	July 28, 2023
Writer	Isabel Galupo
Director	Matthew Humphreys
Animation studio	Icon Creative Studio
Watch this episode on Paramount+

Jawbreaker seeks to train with Grimlock, unaware of the danger that lies within.

Synopsis

Grimlock stomps through some woods, eventually coming across the Malto kids, who are collecting flowers and taking selfies. He chases them back to the Malto farm, and Jawbreaker, unable to get away as fast as the others due to the lack of an alternate mode, is tossed through the air by the Dinobot. Bumblebee races out of the barn and tells Jawbreaker to keep back. He attempts and fails to transform his arm into a gun, forcing the rest of the Maltobots to step in. They're able to subdue the Dinobot, Twitch's EMP forcing him to revert to bot mode.

Grimlock awakens in the Dugout in a paniced state, but Elita-1 and Bumblebee calm him down. Jawbreaker is meanwhile complaining about being benched during fights, despite Robby and Mo trying to make him feel better. When Grimlock appears and apologizes for his earlier actions, Elita-1 suggests he could try training the young bots. Grimlock and Jawbreaker head to a junkyard where Grimlock tries to get Jawbreaker to bring out his inner fury on an old car. This leads to Jawbreaker apologizing to the car after accidentally breaking its wing mirror off. Grimlock demonstrates on a car himself, and encourages Jawbreaker to use his bot mode to its fullest, eventually giving Jawbreaker the confidence to toss cars around. Jawbreaker wants more instruction, but his mention of Bot Brawl gives Grimlock a brief flashback, and Grimlock decides they should instead go see what Elita's up to.

Elita turns out to be in the quarry throwing rocks at Hashtag as a training exercise. Jawbreaker immediate joins in, smashing some of the rocks to Hashtag's annoyance. He ends up accidentally knocking Hashtag out of the air, and as Elita helps her up, Grimlock reminds him not to let his inner power control him. Jawbreaker asks for more help training from Grimlock, but his enthusiasm triggers more flashbacks in Grimlock. The Dinobot's visor flashes red and he seismic-stomps the ground, knocking Jawbreaker over and crumbling nearby rock to reveal a dinosaur fossil. Jawbreaker is captivated and to the surprise of Elita and Grimlock, scans the fossil to give himself a dinosaur alternate mode which Mo identifies as a Stygimoloch. Jawbreaker resumes trying to wrestle Grimlock, encouraging his teacher to change to dino mode. His rambunctiousness triggers more flashbacks to Bot Brawl for Grimlock. Elita-1 tries to calm him down, but Grimlock loses control, transforming to dino mode and departing at speed. Leaving Mo to look after Jawbreaker, Elita and Hashtag go after the Dinobot.

The citizens of Witwicky flee as Grimlock starts rampaging through town. Elita and Hashtag arrive, and while Hashtag puts out fires, Elita tries to talk her friend down unsuccessfully, before trying to shoot him with her blasters set to stun. Meanwhile Mo helps Jawbreaker get over his anguish at enraging Grimlock. Elita and Hashtag are still struggling to subdue the rampaging Grimlock when Jawbreaker and Mo rejoin them. They're still left fleeing the Dinobot, but Jawbreaker is sure he can get through to Grimlock. Though it takes some property damage and headbutting Grimlock's seismic-stomp, Jawbreaker is eventually able to get through to Grimlock, who transforms back to bot mode and earns a hug from Jawbreaker.

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in dream sequences.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Humans	Terrans
Grimlock (1) Bumblebee (9) Elita-1 (11)	Mo Malto (7) Robby Malto (8) Mandroid (10)	Hashtag (2) Jawbreaker (3) Nightshade (4) Twitch (5) Thrash (6)

Quotes

"Listen, kid. Uhm...about last night and the incident in Philadelphia. I was, uh, not myself."

—Grimlock apologizes to Jawbreaker.

"Jawbreaker, let's focus on making you feel more fierce, OK?"
"Deal! Wait, but how? I mean I don't even have an alt mode."
"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: you don't need an alt mode to be your best self."

—Grimlock and Jawbreaker get ready to start training.

"You taught me, the real us is always inside. I may be looking at a T-rex, but I see you, Grimlock."
"Thanks kid, I needed to hear that."

—Jawbreaker successfully calms down Grimlock.

Notes

Continuity notes

• This episode takes place the morning after the events of the previous episode, "Home, Part 2"
• Jawbreaker calls back to the conversation he had with Elita, in "Outtakes", when saying he'll know in his spark what the right alt-mode for him is. Also calling back to that episode, Hashtag is present and among some of the first to get see Jawbreaker's alt-mode, like he promised at the end of the episode.

Transformers references

• Grimlock's visor in bot mode alternates between the colors of blue and red, with red seeming to brought on when he's angry or in battle. This is a double-reference to Grimlock's visor being blue in the original cartoon, while it was red on his original toy.
• Fellow Dinobots Slag and Sludge can be seen on the cover of comics scattered throughout the Dugout; an interior page also depicts Thrust. Whether or not they're still around in the present day of the show remains to be seen.

Errors

• A paleontology one and part of the (admittedly strange) commonality of dubious pachycephalosaurid representation in Transformers, but Stygimoloch and pachycephalosaurs as a family are not known from Pennsylvania. In the United States, they are instead found the North West (Wyoming, Dakota, Alberta and Montana).
• In the first shot of Grimlock's dinosaur mode as he rampages across Witwicky, his chest has a G.H.O.S.T. Autobot symbol, instead of the usual red Autobot symbol.

Foreign localization

German

• Title: "Eine schwierige Situation"
• Original airdate: July 29, 2023