Warzone

« Transformers: EarthSpark ep 16 »
"Warzone"
Production company	Entertainment One Nickelodeon
Airdate	March 3, 2023
Writers	Greg Johnson
Director	Matthew Humphreys
Animation studio	Icon Creative Studio
Watch this episode on Paramount+

Megatron gives the Maltos a history lesson on the end of the war...one that becomes all too real.

Featured characters

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

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans	Terrans
Bumblebee (1) Optimus Prime (3)	Shrapnel (2) Nova Storm (4) Starscream (6) Megatron (7) Soundwave (8) Shockwave (16)	Dot Malto (5) Mo Malto (12) Robby Malto (13)	Thrash (9) Twitch (10) Jawbreaker (11) Hashtag (14) Nightshade (15)

Quotes

Twitch: "And now I, Megatron, shall end this war!"
Hashtag: "You'll have to deal with Starscream first!."
Nightshade: "Wait!" (makes a time out gesture) "You're Soundwave! I'm Starscream!"

"You think you can just start over? With these lower class hybrids?"
"Class? You have learned nothing!"

-Shockwave gets called out by Megatron over forgetting the Decepticons' origins.

"When the day comes from you to emerge from hiding, expect harsh words from those who do not understand. Standup for yourselves, yes. But remember, do not let your disagreements divide you. The Decepticons and Autobots could have accomplished so much more had we remembered that. Do not do what we did...do better."

—Megatron gives some words of advice to the next generation.

Notes

Continuity notes

• Megatron still bears a scar on the left side of his chest where Mandroid tried to surgically remove his arm in "Age of Evolution, Part 2".

Transformers references

• The AllSpark and the war fought over its life-giving properties have been a central component of many prior Transformers series. Its appearance in EarthSpark most resembles its appearance in the live-action film series.
• Megatron refers to the final battle of the Transformers War with the AllSpark being in Decepticon hands as their "darkest hour".
• Megatron's disgust over Shockwave's "lower class" comment and his statement that he began the war so that "no one would kneel again" hearkens back to the class-based origins of the Great War in many previous series, most notably the Aligned continuity family and the 2005 IDW continuity.
• The Cybertronian remembrance flowers that grow from the AllSpark are based on the flowers that first appear in issue 44 of More than Meets The Eye, where they were planted on the Necrobot's planet. While their appearance is visually identical, they work slightly differently; each flower represents an Autobot, Deception, and human who died during the battle, and are not linked to particular killers.
• What appears to be Blitzwing and Astrotrain (in space shuttle mode) cameo in some art depicting scenes from the Transformers' war on Earth. They are the only Decepticons featured in it who haven't appeared in the series proper.
• A new version of The Immobilizer is introduced in this episode. It debuted back in the original The Transformers cartoon and new versions of it showed up in Prime and Cyberverse. It largely seems to function identically to it's previous incarnations.
• Shockwave's tentacled claw and mind probe is very similar to the cortical psychic patch that first appeared in the Prime cartoon, in which it was created by the series' own resident Shockwave.

Real-world references

• Spacebridge Memorial Park seems to take inspiration from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, specifically the black stone walls with the names of those who died in the war etched on to them.

Trivia

• For those wondering, none of the Ancient Autobot script on the memorial walls spell anything.

Foreign localization

German

• Title: "Kriegsgebiet"
• Original airdate: March 9, 2023

Italian

• Title: "Zona di guerra" ("War zone")
• Original airdate: March 6, 2023