So, if I don’t like the first two episodes of the series I just need to rewatch them?

I watched the first 3-4 with my kids, but lost interest. My daughter was a little freaked out by the imagery of Megatron inside Bumblebee’s head. My only fear, after reading this editorial, is that if... when we watch Cyberverse, it’s going to make us want the figures.

 

Alright, you sold me. I did a hard pass initially because of how god-awful Bee's voice was but I'm genuinely and pleasantly surprised they actually fixed it.

Will I miss anything by skipping season 1 and starting with ep 201?

 

I watched a few episodes based on this article. There is about much depth to stories in cyberverse as a dorito. If you hold it at the right angle maybe it has some. This is kiddie show we all thought it was. It improves from the gut wrenching sly stale season 1 but very predictable.

 

Spoiler: Please don't read if you want to watch the show

Season 1:
Bumblebee has a shattered memory which is in pieces after his pod crashed out of the Ark, Windblade comes looking after not hearing back from the Ark in millions of years and helps Bee repair his memory while they hunt for the ark and are hunted by a seeker team lead by Slipstream, consisting of Thrust (non-conehead), Thundercracker (best boi) Hotlink Nova Storm (now female), and the consistently gender-switching Acid Storm.

• Ep1: Windblade finds bee in a dessert, small skirmish with Thundercracker, they need to find the Ark.
• Ep2: A 5-minute long seeker fight, Bee and Windblade steal the Decepticon ship to help bee restore his memory
• Ep3: Bee goes into his memory, remembers the time he relayed the Allspark to Optimus, Optimus chucks it into space and it is lost.
• Ep4: Bee remembers the time he, Optimus, and Grimlock Explored earth, they all enter their stasis pods at the end.
• Ep5: 10-minute long skirmish with the seekers.
• Ep6: Bee looks up to Megatron as his hero, his confidence in him wavers as the warm goes on until bee joins with Optimus, gets captured, and megatron rips his voice box out.
• Ep7: Bee remembers the time he crashed a Cube game (basically football)
• Ep8: Blurr, Hot Rod, and Bee go racing on velocitron, Comic Rust infects the planet, Blurr dies.
• Ep9: Bee remembers why Shadowstriker hates his spark.
• Ep10: Macadam is established, teases Grimlock on earth.
• Ep11: Shockwave tries to hijack Bee's memory. He fails.
• Ep12: They find the Teletran X, seeker shinanigans.
• Ep13: Alpha Trion gives Optimus the Matrix in a flashback.
• Ep14: The seekers kidnap Windblade and read her mind, plan to repair the space bridge to bring Decepticons to Earth.
• Ep15: They find and revive Grimlock.
• Ep16: 10 Minute Seeker Skirmish, now with Shadow Striker!
• Ep17: They find the ark, Decepticons arrive outside of earth.
• S1 Finale: Deceptions arrive on earth, greeted by the newly awaked Autobots

Season 2:
Very Classic Autobots vs Decepticon Action:

• Ep1: Autobots and Decepticons are publicly known on earth, Battle on the moon, Megs demotes screamer in favor of Slipstream, Megatron has an injured leg.
• Ep2: Starscream kills Megatron and takes over Decepticons, Autobots destroy the moon canon, Megatron returns and kills Starscream.
• Ep3: Wheeljack and Grimlock hijinks, Cheetor appers for the first time in cat mode.
• Ep4: Megatron does a Facebook live for Starscream's funeral (pins on the autobots), Megatron tells his cons to kill Optimus, this include Shockwave, Soundwave, Slipstream, Clobber, Lockdown, Shadow striker, and Bludgeon.
• Ep5: Cheetor reveals himself and has Optimus and Megatron do a trial by combat The seekers steal the Allspark and vector sigma when they aren't looking, Starscream is alive.
• Ep6: Screamer was accidentally revived by Cheetor, he creates a scraplet army.
• Ep7: We a shown the history of Optimus and Megs attempting peace talks, Slipstream sees how crazy Starscream is and leaves to tell the others, She gets to Windblade and she agrees to have Slipstream go tell Optimus and Megatron, but Bludgeon kills Slipstream before it can happen, peace talk is unsuccessful.
• Ep8: Scraplets drain the Energon of the Decepticons, then Autobots, Cheetor saves the day.
• Ep9: Cheetor becomes a scout after looking for his place in the crew, gets kidnapped with bee by Starscream and they escape with a scraplet.
• Ep10: Shockwave kidnaps Wheeljack to help him control scraplets, awesome swordfight between bludgeon and Windblade.
• Ep11: An episode about Jetfire and Skybyte fighting.
• Ep12: Starscream is fused with the Allspark, Kills Thundercracker, NovaStorm, Thrust, AcidStrom, and 4 generic seekers. Both armies go to attack Starscream, but almost die until the Matrix saves them, leaving Optimus unconscious and Starscream captured.
• Ep13: Optimus wakes up, the Autobots officially leave earth.
• Ep14: Wheeljack gives everyone Allspark Badges, turn everyone evil when Starscream gets one, Optimus and Cheetor save the day.
• Ep15: Cheetor, Hot Rod, and bee go surfing with Sharkticons.
• Ep16: Windblade abruptly leaves the ship with red eyes, turns out she was going to speak with a Titan, Croaton. Starscream escapes.
• Ep17: Whole crew accepts Arcee and Grimlock get shut down due to a nova blast, hijinks ensue.
• Season 2 Finale: Weird Multiverseal space bridge shenanigans (thank god the shroud happened or TF omni-lore would be fucked), arrive on Cybertron.

Season 3:
Very much a Story-based season in the first half with the Quintason ark and then light-hearted one-offs in the second half.

• Ep1: Autobots remember about there journey, Perceptor and Chromia break out of Decepticon prison, fakeout destroys the ark and drift is there.
• Ep2: Massive battle, lots of cameos (Kup, Strika, Deadend, Dirge, and Whirl to name a few), Shadow striker tries to snipe Optimus but kills Prowl instead.
• Ep3: Battle continues, Drift betrays them, and Drift and Hot Rod die.
• Ep4: Bludgeon and Windblade rematch, Bludgeon, and Vector Sigma die. Cheetor and bee revive Cybertron, but Cheetor dies.
• Ep5: Everyone is trapped in a victory loop while the quints drain their sparks (basically the plot of Matrix), Hot Rod is trying to save everyone (they have to transform to break free), frees Clobber by accident, Perceptor is there too.
• Ep6: Clobber tries to free lockdown, Dead End is freed instead. Macadam gives the refugee (Quints aren't allowed in his bar), Hot Rod reveals that he just survived, pool gave him a black redeco.
• Ep7: Hot Rod tries to break Optimus free, frees Whirl instead, Percepter figures out that Maccadams Oil house is on top of Iaconous, the city bot.
• Ep8: Macadam reveals the history of Iaconus after combat room hijinks.
• Ep9: Try to save Windblade, fail, enforceable wake-up Soundwave by accident which makes him glitchy. Hot Rod is kidnapped and then escapes
• Ep10: Soundwave is glitchy because he was Improperly removed (revealed to have killed Hound), they go to attack the Quint Scientist.
• Ep11: Soundwave reveals how he got laserbeak. The scientist is a Soundwave collector, everyone is freed.
• Ep12: An alliance is formed between both sides with the help of Hotrod and soundwave. They learn how to work together. Windblade wakes up Iaconus.
• Ep13: The judge of this universe is revealed, Starscream.
• Ep14: (Fun Kup Narration) It's shown how he became a Judge (told them where the Allspark was).
• Ep15: Windblade fully wakes up and uses Iaconus. Optimus, Bee, and Wheeljack get stuck in an alt-universe.
• Ep16: Iaconus battles the Croaton from earlier. Iaconus is killed along with Macadam.
• Ep17: One last stand against Star Scream and Croaton, Megatrons arrives from alt-universe adventures with Dead End, Astrotrain, and Meg's own Matric. Everyone in the main cast gets glowy power-ups. Windblade splits her spark to free Croaton. Quints are defeated.
• Ep18: Cybertron is split in half between both sides. Clobber is an Autobot, Bee breaks into enemy lines to get Windblade's body.
• Ep19: Chromia and Bee go to Crystal City, meet Thunderhowl, get Windblade's spark fragment.
• Ep20: A Transformers Spegtti Western (it's honestly great)
• Ep21: Bee Meets Metorfire, they go and save Windblade's spark fragment and his old adventure partner, Cosmos.
• Ep22: Repgnus civil war, get a fragment of Windblades spark.
• Ep23: Rack N' Ruin has to rescue Ratchet.
• Ep24: Chromia and Bee meet Hammerbyte, Helps him defeat a Cthulu titan (the Deweler), get Windblade's memory. Optimus talks to Macadam through the matrix reveals he is Alchamest prime.
• Ep25: Autobots go to destroy Meg's matrix that has the final piece of Windblade's spark, Tarn The idea Decepticons appear from another world.
• Series Finale: Galvatron Megatron X appears and kills Megatron. Matrix beam struggle, Megatron X is defeated, Astrotrain leaves with Megatron X. Windblade wakes up.

 

I feel similarly to it being a successor to g1, just wish it was given more time to shine and expand

 

Wow! Great article! Very informative and actually made me want to check out the show. I'm going to start watching it tonight. Thanks a lot!

 

I can't do it. I hated the first handful of episodes. Mostly for the voice acting. The cadence was off and so forced and uncomfortable. I kept hearing good reviews so I forced myself to watch season 2 and that was a struggle. I couldn't wait for the last 4 or 5 episodes to be done so I could at least wrap up season 2. People seem to like it, but it wasn't for me. I grew up with G1 and loved Animated and Beast Wars and really enjoyed RiD 2015, but this was definitely a step down for me.

 

Completely agree, great show, awesome voice acting, characters are so deep, animation style is so unique

 

Hasbro needs to work with Shout again to get TF Shows like this & other\'s out on dvd. Like the 2001 & 2015 Transformers Robots in Disguise & Rescue Bots.

 

I'll be honest, I 100% agree with you. For me, after the G1 cartoon, this ranks second. Depending on how the new Netflix series goes, this may get knocked down to #3 though.

 

So legit question since I know people could take this the wrong way:

I'm like 9 or so episodes into season 2, and I keep finding myself stepping away from it because it feels like the show has two writers: Serious Guy and Funny Guy. Serious Guy writes the scripts and puts together a wonderful, ongoing plot with great lore and cool characters. Funny Guy then rolls in, takes the scripts, and goes "OKAY BUT DIS EPISODE GRIMLOCK RUN FAST A LOT". There's just this tonal dissonance between the humor and the rest of the show. Does that go away? Does it get better? Does it ever stop feeling like it's directed at two totally different audiences at the same time? I'm not bashing it, I really just wanna know if it improves or if I just have to choke down my bile for the rest of the show.

(Also, I still think Deluxe Cyberverse Grimlock is one of the best Grimlock figures we've ever gotten)

 

And the whole thing\'s on youtube.

You\'ve convinced me to give it a look.

 

It started uneven but it found its footing. The time-skip between S1 and S2 was most welcome as I thought,"Well, here comes the get-established-on-earth-season-and-get-saddled-with-humanszphase" so when they swerved that hard and skipped all that (and kept it bot-centric to boot) I felt from there they knew exactly what they wanted to do.

Other thing I love about this series is that for the first time in ages, we got a bonefide large cast.

The action is still a bit too pew-pew for me but overall, I've enjoyed Cyberverse the most out of a TF series in years.

 

Bludgeon was just a speechless automaton who eventually just became Windblade's whipping mule. But no shock there since that was the way of every Decepticon who was somewhat of an arch nemesis to an Autobot (Prime constantly bashes Megatron with that stupid Autobot shield, Hotrod easily beat drift, Windblade shoots down every seeker flying, etc). Ironically the only time that Decepticon's were relevant fighters were when they teamed up with Autobots to easily beat up Quitesson drones.

Didn't see Tarn but based of what was exp. I wouldn't have missed anything anyway. This show is clearly meant for ages 4-8 IMO. They're less likely to question why Decepticon's just stand there to get punched in the face in most fight scenes.

True but quality CHUG versions of characters like Bludgeon, Tarn, RackNRuin etc. where what I wanted to begin with. I have yet to buy any of those Cyberverse figures after forcing myself to watch this show and still have no plans to.

 

Since it's over I see no reason not to, but TF: Prime despite its few flaws will be tough to beat. I think that there's nothing wrong with humans, because their perspective on a war brought over from aliens is a valid one. If done right. The humans in Prime were all interesting.

 

It's not like the two previous non-Rescue Bots TF shows were hard to beat, but yes. Cyberverse wasn't bad. Surprisingly enough. Because my hopes for the show weren't high.

 

Regarding the notion of skipping around to various seasons. I think it's a little more complicated than that. Rather than splitting the show up by season, I would split it up like this.

Bumblebee's Memory loss: Season 1 Episode 1 till Episode 11

This is the the weakest area of the series but there are a few key episodes in here I wouldn't recommend Skipping.

Megatron is My Hero: Which actually shows us a younger version of Megatron before he was leader of the Decepticons. It's done really well for the short run time that it had and is something I would love to see expanded on in it's own series.

Shadowstriker: I love this character, her introduction in the show sets up this tragic back story. She doesn't really do all that much in later seasons and you might not understand why she was such a great character if you skip over this episode. Yes her introduction episode title is also her name.

Maccadam's: Considering this place will become important later in the series you can't miss the episode that originally introduces it.

Finding the Ark: Season 1 Episode 12 till Episode 18

It's actually at this point in the series that things stop being a bunch of random unconnected events shown to us via Bumblebee's memories and start actually having a purpose. This section also contains the first proper introduction of Grimlock. We had technically seen him before this but he never transformed. This is the first time we're seeing his beast mode, we're also given an explanation for how he got his beast mode and why he has dual personalities depending on which mode he's in. It's a great episode but it's not as self contained as others since it is part of a continuing story arc.

AllSpark Armor: Season 2 Episode 1 till Episode 12

Trials: This is really the start of the story. Everything before this episode is just self contained stories with the occasional Cheetor cameo. You can skip them and won't miss a damn thing.

Infinite Vendetta: This episode introduced both Jetfire and Skybyte... but it's just not a good episode. They're basically the same character and it fails to actually establish why they hate each other so much. The episode has a very unique style that might have worked had they not made the characters so similar to each other but as it is it's just one of the worst character introductions in the series and not worth watching.

Return to Cybertron Season 2 Episode 13 till Season 3 Episode 4

Party Down: It's a self contained story... and not a really good one... Not going to hurt the rest of the arc if you skip it.

Wiped Out: This is the introduction of the Sharkticons and while they come back later it doesn't really matter that much since they don't even really seem to remember or care about the events of this episode... And I'm fine forgetting it too.

The Crossroads: While the idea of a Multiverse will be brought back again later in the series this episode doesn't handle it well at all and leaves us very confused as to what universe we're even in. It's best to just skip it entirely. There's only one scene in the episode I actually liked and that's a quick scene with Grimlock in robot mode interacting with another Grimlock in beast mode. Beyond that quick little bit the rest of the episode is really poorly written and gives me a headache thinking about it.

The Quintesson War: Season 3 Episode 5 till Episode 17

This is one of the first times in the series where you actually CAN'T skip any episodes. The story arc all fits together in a way that you either have to take all of it or skip all of it.

Megatron X: Season 3 Episode 18 till Episode 26

I think a lot of this can be skipped... There's build up to an event but I don't think you really NEED to watch those episodes... I mean it helps but not by much. Do to a recording error I actually watched these episodes out of order and I don't feel like I missed much. I will recommend...

Rack N' Ruin N Ratchet: I haven't talked about them much before this point but I actually love Rack and Ruin in this series. They are used rather sparingly but whenever they do have screen time they manage to leave a lasting impression. So I have to recommend one of the only episodes that puts focus on them as a main character.

Silent Strike/The Other One: Unlike other multiple part stories in this series this one doesn't use the same title for each episode. But I honestly feel like these two episodes are one continuous story that has to be watched together. This is what all the previous episodes have been leading up. And while there are some issues here even if you didn't skip the previous episodes it's still a really great idea...

Spoiler

By the way this is what I really wanted to see back in "Crossroads" as this Megatron is clearly a different character from our main Megatron.

All that being said I think you should watch the full series and judge for yourself. They're quick episodes so it's not a huge time commitment to get threw it. You might have a different opinion of the episodes I talk about here. There's a few of them that I don't even hate that much but just felt like they didn't add anything to the over arcing story. Thunderhowl for example, I love his design and can't wait to get the toy but I just didn't like his episode enough to recommend it. I can see why other people might like it but if I don't love the episode or feel like it's necessary to understand something in a later episode I'm not going to recommend it.

 

I don't hate this series but I probably won't get to it until I've seen everything else. Right now I'm working on Beast Wars II, and G1. If it's fast paced I'm sure I will love it because I'm finding G1 to be a chore to watch. I'm somewhere in season 2.

 

Most definitely recommended. I stayed long enough to \"tolerate\" the Bumblebee and Windblade show but at least during those flashback episodes in Bee\'s head, we can see what was going on back in Cybertron. Once they started featuring easter eggs such as \"Velocitron\" and \"Cosmic Rust\", I was down. Surely a great update to the G1 Franchise. Not to mention the inside joke of Season 3\'s The Matrix is the The Matrix (blue pill or red pill?) and Hotrod leads the ragtag team and a blind Perceptor. Sad that it ended though. The cake at the end when \"Tarn/perfect Decepticons\" showing up to have an alternate Megatron at the lead with a dark matrix of leadership was surely an excellent homage and respect to past Transformers lore. 

 

gotta admit I watched a handful of episodes from the first season and haven\'t been back since...I have picked up the occasional toy from the show though just because I thought they were neat (simple but neat)...