In your headcanon who killed SkyFire, in the original cartoon?

Alternatively, how do explain his absence for most of Season 2?

 

I am going to say that Starscream had SkyFire dead to rights but Skywarp was not having it and teleported then killed SkyFire (thus spoiling Starscream's day).

 

I don't like the idea of Starscream being the one who kills Skyfire. They were originally friends and even though they ended up on opposite sides of the war you do still see Starscream mourning his friend when he goes back under the ice for a while. I don't know why anyone ever thought he was dead considering he was found frozen in ice to begin with so why would being frozen a second time mean death if the first time didn't do it?

Anyway... I'd like to think Megatron killed him right in front of Starscream giving him even more of a reason to hate his leader.

 

Luckily someone thought he might be recoverable.

It is not too hard to imagine Megatron being the killer.

Do you have it that SkyFire died before Powerglide came onto the scene?

 

If that were the case considering Powerglide is one of the Autobots who just showed up one episode with no explination at all as to where the heck he came from... what if they're actually the same character.

Skyfire was a very large Autobot. Even when he stuck around he couldn't stay at the Ark because of his size. He had to stay some where off sight and the Autobots just contacted him when he was needed.

Powerglide on the other hand is much smaller, also happens to be a flyer, and since we 1. Have no idea about what his origins are and 2. Autobot flyers are so rare, it's not entirely implausible that Wheeljack or someone might have built the smaller Powerglide body and transferred Skyfire's "Laser Core" since the concept of Sparks didn't exist yet, into that new body which would finally allow him to stay at the Ark with the other Autobots instead of being alone off sight.

It's also possible that Powerglide wasn't even meant for that purpose but Skyfire just happen to get badly wounded around the same time so they did the transfer in order to save his life. Rather than taking Powerglide to Vector Sigma they just put Skyfire's personality in there. And then he simply changed his name as we've seen other characters some times do when they're rebuilt into new bodies.

 

I don't consider a character dead unless it's explicitly told so. Skyfire's disappearance to me is simply due to him doing other things not shown onscreen.

 

I loathed how they just brought in a new set of characters with no explanation. Interesting theory, but, I think Moonracer or at least one of the Fembots could recognize Powerglide so I think Skyfire just died with no rebuild or transfer of personality (unless he became Perceptor, which I doubt).

On the introduction, for the S2 Autobots (except Omega and Cosmos), I think their bodies were found and Teletraan 1 gave them earth style vehicles. Maybe Powerglide was always a plane, but if he wasn't the Autobots made him a plane to replace Skyfire.

That would be pretty funny to see. I was actually thinking of the Who shot Mr. Burns episode when I started this thread.

One of my favorite lines goes something.

Smithers: What is the difference between shooting a someone in the head v shooting someone in the knee?

Krusty: About 50,000 volts.

 

Long term science mission into deep space.

 

That is a nice way to look at it. But, what would types of things would he be doing offscreen?

With Skyfire, I think he was really needed for the most part of season 2 (due to the amount of Decepticon jets). At least until the Aerialbots arrived.

With disappearing characters, I only like to think that they are dead because often I think they are just as good if not better than the characters that replace them.

Essentially, go out fighting for their cause.

There may be some exceptions. I like to think Hound was suffering from anxiety after events in the 1986 movie and is working in a national park somewhere.

If I was a producer, I would probably go with an explanation like that.

I guess he was an explorer and he could have felt that earth (at least the Ark) was the right place for him.

Maybe he was sent to help out the likes of Ultra Magnus and Springer. If that was the case it would have been good to see him in the movie.

 

This has long been my headcanon explanation (in fact I'm reposting this from the headcanon thread):

The reason Skyfire disappeared from the cartoon early on is because the Autobots exiled him after Shockwave tricked them into thinking Skyfire was a double agent passing information to him. It worked because before the war, when Skyfire and his partner Starscream were scientists/explorers, they actually were working for Shockwave, and Skyfire couldn't prove that he was innocent. The Autobots believed that Shockwave let Skyfire escape from Cybertron (during "Ultimate Doom") and that their fight immediately preceding the escape had been faked. After setting up the circumstantial evidence, Shockwave completed the illusion by inexplicably traveling to Earth (he's seen in "Autobot Run" with no explanation for his presence) and allowing himself to be seen alone with Skyfire. The Autobots felt they couldn't afford to give Skyfire the benefit of the doubt and sent him away.

 

And I thought it was just an animation error in the Autobot Run. Maybe Cliffjumper kept nagging Skyfire (I thinking about Mirage in the Traitor episode) about his background.

This why I would love to see new G1 episodes to fill in these holes.

 

I'm sure it was an animation error (it was AKOM, after all) but this provides a nice explanation for his presence. Good observation about Cliffjumper.

 

Thanks.

If Skyfire was to survive at least to Dark Awakening, maybe he and Optimus did not get on that well. Or just because he could fly really well caused some resentment with other Autobots.

I guess that could lead him taking on some other role, rather than fighting the Decepticons on earth.

 

Eh, I never thought about the details. Probably fighting other decepticons that weren't onscreen at the same time, like how they explained the abscence of Omega Supreme and combiners in the movie.

 

this

That's also why I didn't need introductions to any characters. They were just doing other things off screen before they were shown on screen. It's not like they magically popped up. In real life people also exist before you meet them and sometimes they don't even get introduced to you   And sometimes they just disappear without reason and you never know what happened to them.

 

Pre-Stunticons, I guess the Constructions were absent from quite a lot of episodes and so were the Insecticons. So he could have been fighting them, I guess.

 

For some characters, I feel like you do not need much of a introduction (there just mundane cars or something). But in S3, for the Autobots, you have a leader, a deputy leader, a freak in Sky Lynx and another giant in Broadside. I think it would have been nice to know what they were doing for at least the last 4M years.

 

That's true. I never really thought about this before, so maybe deep space mission?

 

I think there was a deep space mission, but Skyfire did not join that mission.

In the Secret of Omega Supreme episode, there is no reference to Skyfire, flying to the asteroid as an option. Cosmos says that he and Powerglide can lead an all-out assault but Optimus chooses to speak to Omega (the only other Autobot capable of flying to outer of space). Unless Skyfire and some other Autobots were fighting Insecticons (or doing something really important) during that episode, I would rule out Skyfire be utilized to assist other Autobots in deep space.

I think that the most likely scenarios are that Skyfire is either banished from earth as per Ikkstakk's theory or he is dead by the time of the Secret of Omega Supreme (and probably by the of the Dinobot Island episode -if he was alive he could have flown the Autobots to Dinobot Island). This is because Skyfire's size, flight, and transportation skills would be so valuable to the Autobot cause that he even if Skyfire wanted to leave earth (for a space mission), he should be on earth until some suitable replacements arrive. At that point, Omega Supreme was still really grumpy at the start of the Secret of Omega Supreme episode, so I do not Omega Supreme a suitable replacement (and Cosmos is too small to fly Optimus to places).

 

While I don't think he died in the cartoon universe, if he did I like the idea that Starscream is the one who killed him. Adds a bit more tragedy to their friendship and that the Starscream that Jetfire/Skyfire knew before getting trapped in ice died a long time ago.