Transformers Animated season 4
Transformers Animated came to an end with its third season, but it wasn't always intended to be that way! Various plans existed for a fourth season that would have continued the story of the series, taking it in a new direction inspired by the live-action movie.
Development and cancellation
When originally plotting what the show's fourth season would be about, story editor Marty Isenberg imagined that it would move in a Beast Wars-inspired direction. Considering Megatron's story effectively finished after the third season, he envisioned a season set on Cybertron, with Blackarachina as the main villain, experimenting further with technorganics. However, the success of the first live-action movie nixed those plans hard; to ride the wave of movie popularity, Hasbro insisted that the fourth season would have to maintain a degree of similarity to the film, which meant that Megatron had to be the villain, and it had to be set on Earth. Furthermore, the Autobot team membership had to be changed, removing Bulkhead and adding Jazz and Ironhide, to match the Autobot line-up from the movie.
With these rules in place, Isenberg and company mapped out a season's worth of potential episodes, beginning with a three-part premiere. The three episodes centered on Megatron's trial, which the Decepticon leader used as a cover to put a new plan in motion, transplanting the city of Kaon from Cybertron to Earth so that he could plunder a new variety of techno-organic energon that had begun to grow on the planet. While Bulkhead and Sari remained behind on Cybertron to help with the recovery effort following this disaster, Optimus—enhanced by "Powermaster" armour—and his new team pursued the Decepticons back to Earth, setting up the rest of the season's storyline, which was also set to incorporate some of Isenberg's earlier ideas about Blackarachnia. Hasbro even began to develop some new toys, including a Powermaster Optimus Prime (pictured at left), and the new triple-changing "Marauder" form that Megatron would adopt partway through the season. However, a combination of factors—principally, Hasbro's desire to launch their own network—saw the plans cancelled, leaving both the season and the toys unmade.
Episodes
In the years since the end of the series, The AllSpark Almanac II and issue #71 of the Collectors' Club magazine, along with various interviews and comments from the creative team, have revealed a lot of information about what would have taken place in the season, including a list of proposed episodes.
"Trial of Megatron"
While no episodes of the season made it to finished, fully-scripted form, a complete "outline"—that is, a scene-by-scene breakdown describing all the plot and story beats, action scenes, character arcs, sample dialogue, and act breaks—was written by Isenberg for the proposed three-part premiere, "Trial of Megatron." The outlines for these episodes languished in Isenberg's desk drawer for years, unseen by the world... until 2019, when Isenberg was invited to UK-based Transformers convention TFNation, and it was arranged to turn the outlines into a special pre-recorded "script-reading" event exclusive to the convention. Isenberg was able to get the entire regular cast of the cartoon (save for Tara Strong, and guest star Judd Nelson) to reprise their roles, and Eric Siebenaler even created brand new designs for three new characters featured in the episodes—Uplink, Trac-Tor and an Animated version of Obsidian—which were used by the convention organisers to create artwork to accompany the reading.
The script-reading was initially strictly exclusive to the convention, with no recording permitted, but notes made by editors Jalaguy and The Wadapan enabled TFWiki to create articles providing detailed summaries of these three episodes. Two years later, the entirety of "Trial of Megatron" was livestreamed via YouTube for all to see as part of TFNation's 2021 "online convention" (held in place of a regular event due to the COVID-19 pandemic), featuring even more accompanying artwork compared to the original recording. It's important to note, though, that as an outline, the content of these episodes, like any other in the series, would have been subject to alteration as production continued; Isenberg threw everything he could in, fully expecting not all of it to make its way into the finished product. Thus, it does not necessarily represent exactly what would have been seen on-screen had the episodes actually been made.
| 1 | "Trial of Megatron, Part 1" | |
| His victory over Megatron had made Optimus Prime the popular choice to replace Sentinel as Cybertron's new, permanent Magnus, but Sentinel isn't afraid to play dirty to stay in power. Meanwhile, Sari begins her Cybertronian education under Arcee, raising new questions about her mysterious origins. | ||
| 2 | "Trial of Megatron, Part 2" | |
| As Cybertron comes under attack from Strika's Decepticons, Sentinel arranges a public show trial for Megatron, which the cunning Decepticon leader uses to his advantage. | ||
| 3 | "Trial of Megatron, Part 3" | |
| Megatron launches the city of Kaon from Cybertron and sets course for Earth, with a Powermaster-enhanced Optimus Prime and his new team in hot pursuit. | ||
Other episodes
Between them, the The AllSpark Almanac II and the club magazine provided a list of twelve further episodes, describing their basic premises in a sentence or two, refraining from giving any detailed plot information about them, or answering any of the questions the premises raise; what you see here is all we know. Further, given that this brings the total up to fifteen, and a season was normally only thirteen episodes long, it's almost certain that not all of these episodes would have actually been made even if the season had gone ahead.
| "Turf War" | |
| Dirt Boss and the Constructicons abduct Bulkhead and force him to become part of their new combined form, Devastator, leading to a "turf war" with the Decepticons for control of Detroit's Energon deposits. | |
| "This is Why I Hate Organics" | |
| Rattletrap finds himself on Earth, surrounded by the one thing he fears: organics. He manages to scan an Earth vehicle mode, but he quickly finds himself a target for both Autobots and Decepticons alike. | |
| "Mirror, Mirror" | |
| Attempting to transwarp back to Earth to rejoin their friends, Bulkhead and Sari find themselves transported into a mirror universe of evil Autobots and heroic Decepticons. | |
| "Gremlins in the Gears" | |
| The Mini-Cons who run Kaon are on the loose and causing all kinds of havoc in Detroit by disassembling all machinery they come across, including the Autobots. To save their friends, Ratchet and Captain Fanzone must team up to stop the renegade Mini-Cons. | |
| "What a Tangled Web We Weave" | |
| Flashbacks tells the story of how Blackarachnia fell in with the Decepticons and how she turned Blitzwing into a Triple Changer, while in the present, she begins adding to her army of technorganic Predacons. | |
| "S.T.E.A.M." | |
| When a group of steampunk anti-technology vigilantes called "Save The Earth And Mankind" run afoul of Soundwave, the Autobots have no choice but to save their most ardent detractors. | |
| "It Came from Planet Cybertron" (or "It Came from Cybertron") | |
| Cosmos comes to Earth with an important message for Optimus, but after scanning a prop flying saucer from the set of a B-movie, he loses his memory in an accident and hijinks ensue when comes to believe he is a legitimate alien invader. | |
| "Triple Threat" | |
| Blackarachnia upgrades Megatron into a new triple-changing form, but like Blitzwing before him, the process leaves him with an unstable personality, and he becomes a one-'bot army, blowing away anything and anyone in his path. | |
| "Allspark-alypse Now!" | |
| When Sentinel comes to Earth intending to use the AllSpark to kill Megatron, Prowl's ghost must possess the Cybertronians animated by shards of the AllSpark to warn Optimus about the consequences of Sentinel's plans. | |
| "Process of Elimination" | |
| Bumblebee investigates a series of deadly attacks on his old boot camp platoon, who are being picked off by a mysterious assailant. All signs point to either Waspinator or Shockwave... but when they too are attacked, the mystery deepens! | |
| "Megatron Must Be Destroyed!" Part 1 | |
| As Megatron's plan to reformat Earth into a new Decepticon homeworld reaches fruition, the Autobots must join forces with Decepticons under the command of Slipstream, Blackarachnia's Predacons, and the Dinobots to defeat Megatron once and for all. | |
| "Megatron Must Be Destroyed!" Part 2 | |
| While Powermaster Optimus Prime and Megatron battle, Sari discovers a deeper connection between herself and someone familiar that may save the Earth and Cybertron. | |
Additionally, during a panel at Auto Assembly 2010, Derrick J. Wyatt claimed that Optimus Primal would have appeared in an episode named "Trukk vs. Munky" as a failed clone of Prime created by Blackarachnia. Wyatt also designed an Animated version of Bludgeon for inclusion in this season, but which—if any—of the listed episodes he might have appeared in is unknown.
Gallery
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Marauder Megatron headshot. -
Resin prototype of "Marauder" Megatron toy. -
Ironhide's Earth-mode design; an alternate design from the Hasbro concept sketch above, but still influenced by the movie version of the character. -
Concept illustrations of Kaon blasting off from Cybertron and settling in Lake Erie. -
Devastator headshot. -
Resin prototype of Hot Shot's toy. -
Sketches of Bludgeon by Wyatt.
