Not to mention Earth being or implied that it is one of Thirteen colonies. I doubt Megatron will be thrilled that a fleshling comes from same place.

 

They did but that issue came out after I made my comment. Now it is directly stated.

 

Even I know that Megatron's been fairly inconsistent throughout IDW, and I haven't even read all his appearances. He was a stern, no-nonsense, cold and calculating type in Infiltration and Escalation, he reverted to a cackling, obviously evil character reminiscent of G1 Megatron in All Hail Megatron, and from what I've seen of him in the Ongoing series by Costa (which is Chaos Theory and Chaos), he seemed to more-or-less realign his character as a cunning master-manipulator (albeit less stern than in the -ation series), but a bit more open to change, given he stands against D-Void during the Chaos Event so the Autobots can find a way to defeat it. However, he reverts back to more of an obvious bad guy in ex-RID, though fortunately still retaining some of his cunning, manipulative qualities.

Dark Cybertron is where Megatron really started to become interesting to me. He starts out an arrogant villain who thinks he's genuinely in the right, but over the course of the story, through Starscream winning over the people (from his perspective) peacefully and Bumblebee saying the right words to give Megatron some perspective, he gradually loses his pride and realizes that he lost his way. Granted, my favorite character having something to do with his reformation gave me a reason to accept Megatron the Autobot, it would take a lot of effort to completely sell me on the idea from an objective viewpoint. And boy did James Roberts do everything possible to completely make me feel sorry for the guy, which is no small feet. Megatron might have started out as a revolutionary, but became a cruel tyrant who is directly responsible for millions of deaths. So, to sell us on the concept of a reformed Megatron, the ex-tyrant doesn't just mope about and cry about being a monster, he clarifies that he "wants to make amends". He'll gladly accept his fate, but he wants to have done something worthwhile before he's put to death. When it seems like he might relapse, he renounces violence altogether. When Team Rodimus is stranded on Necroworld with one way out, a bunch of "organics", and the Decepticon Justice Division at their doors, Megatron is the first one to insist on staying, and in the end, he gives into violence one more time to single-handedly annihilate the DJD. When again, it seems like he might just relapse, he comes face to face with Terminus, the one who distributed his original writings, discards his broken arm cannon, embraces his old friend, and mournfully proclaims that he "lost his way."

Yeah, all in all, I'd say that Megatron has been a bit all over the place character-wise throughout much of IDW's history, however, given his recent history in the comics, he's had (in my opinion) the best reformation character arc of any villainous character that I've ever seen.

 

I honestly misremember the -acy arcs, every time, as Dreamwave stories. It takes a good five minutes for me to reconcile them every time I think about them. "Wait, Zeta Prime was a thing in Dreamwave... I know he was because they had that dumb fight scene taken straight from the 86 movie."

IIRC, there's a few pre-Season-2 quotes by James that indicate the season was originally going in a slightly different direction. I can't recall what it was, but it was something that seems to have been affected by Combiner Wars, which came along during the real nadir of Season 2.

I thought, from the beginning, that Megs' arc in MTMTE was going to be one of redemption at any cost. I don't believe he's changed, either--I believe he still believes in the rightness of his cause, but his cause now is redemption. However, I think he still believes the ends justify the means. The "I was happy" line in Dying of the Light indicates that he pursued the goal of redemption as single-mindedly as he once pursued the goal of technoism.

These robots live for millions of years, and I think that changes their personalities in ways we can't understand. I'm a different person in my 30s than I was in my 20s, versus my teens, etc. Imagine how much your personality would evolve over millions of years, and I think you'll see why it's not that weird for any Transformer to accept the idea that the most qualified evil member of their race can change.

That said, I don't think Roberts has hit certain things as hard as he could have. Megatron's time with the crew was remarkably cozy, to use a phrase from Chaos Theory. There's been no evidence that he might be "seducing" them into his own philosophy, any evidence that he's willing to truly hurt innocent people to get what he wants, which I think is still a part of his personality. James hasn't leaned on that as hard as he should, IMHO. Nor has he really shown us why the Autobots buy this change of heart. I've extrapolated it from the way they cavalierly speak about millions of years passing, and the presence of information creep as a thing in the series.