There's been a lot of speculation on this forum about the quotation marks when Prowl talks about "Tarn's" power levels. It seems most people think that Roller is actually Tarn, but I was thinking along different lines. What if the real Ultra Magnus is not dead, but is actually undercover as Tarn and Autobot High Command came up with the idea of the Ultra Magnus armor to cover up his disappearance? Just wondering if there is anything out there in the story so far to dispute this possibility, or am I just crazy? What do you guys and gals think?

 

It's not a bad idea.

Roller is still a candidate, sure... but I think that the point is that Tarn is somebody. Some people have suggested that the quotes are just there because Tarn took his name from a city. I think there's more to it. Not only does it somewhat defeat the purpose to have a mysterious masked identity if it's nobody significant, but the "quotes" that Prowl used really do seem to signify something... that Prowl knows "Tarn" by a different name.

zmog

 

Why would Tarn be Ultra Magnus or Roller at all? They are too sadistic. Magnus is dead.

 

Well obviously a big part of the theory is that he's not actually dead

 

Yeah, but he is.

 

What was the name of the other Magnus character. Delta? Another possibility for Tarn.

 

yeah Delta Magnus, we never really did find out what happened to him

 

Well they didn't take him, Senator Shockwave gave himself up in exchange for him

 

I tend not to trust "deaths" in these stories unless we have a body and we exhume it every now and then just to be sure. The "you thought they were dead but they're not" is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and Roberts is not above using it. (Between issues 16 and 21, he basically pulled it twice on the same character, Minims Ambus.)

Heck, I'm not even convince that Rewind is really dead. All we saw was a smashed camera lense. And Overlord was holding something... (Admittedly, the predominant theory there is that hes got Chromedome's severed arm, so he can use his mnemosurgeon needles, but there's no reason to rule out rewind.)

But I will give the conspiracy theory this: Tyrest said he died, but we don't really know the exact details on what happened to the original, real Ultra Magnus.

 

So was Anakin Skywalker in A New Hope  

 

I'm still not convinced Agent 113 is Tarn. If he was the mole, Prowl wouldn't have needed to pull that gambit with Overlord. Tarn would have just put "use lots and lots o' ununtritium" on a data slug then fired it into a Autobrand eye...unless there's two moles in the DJD and not just 1...

 

Has anyone considered a double-DOUBLE agent? Maybe Tarn is agent 113, but maybe he has been drinking the kool-aid so long that he enjoys his new life.

 

I'd welcome it if it was done very well, and by that i don't mean the Real Ultra Magnus became a villain.

 

It's not a bad theory, but I'm still with Roller being Tarn over anybody else.

The more this goes on, the more I think that *everybody* knows who Tarn is but we as the audience don't. It's probably like Shockwave in shadowplay, only this time, we've had an ample amount of hints.

 

Ignoring the actual comic and speaking in a broader sense.

I think Ultra Magnus might disguise himself as some sort of council member like character or even some sort of Prime. He could even be another character like Nova Prime perhaps.

If you wanted Ultra Magnus to have that sort of story.

a much simply way to do it is perhaps some thing like this ( In comic terms )-
1) The Original Magnus dies (or is thought to have died)
2) various people impersonate him.
3) The original returns from the dead or his change of identity.

But yes Magnus being a sentient Rollar is an amusing thought as Roller usually is not alive in that sense so in theory some one could "possess" the body of a city bot or base bot's companion character (like Full-tilt or Scamper) but surely they'd only be able to do that due to the Orion Pax reversion and not to any Optimus who was fully with it. There would need to be a mental break or collusion to allow that to happen.

Though the whole idea is more than a little bonkers - I guess it was the armour thing that inspired it with perhaps the odd thought of Pretenders. Combined with how Magnus is in Animated. The city commander trailer might even aid such thinking as after all you can put a different cab inside one of the trailers and it still looks mostly the same.

Personally if I wanted to find an excuse of something bonkers to do with Ultra Magnus I might think of turning him into nemesis Prime or Nova prime over killing him off and replacing him with a non-character at least then the focus is still Magnus and not someone who was just made up for the story.

I always found it a little odd to use an excess of made up characters when there's several Thousand 'real ones' to choose from.

 

... Why do people think Roller is Tarn? I feel like I missed something big here.

 

That's what I'm curious about too. As far as I read Shadowplay shows Roller lived and then we don't hear more of him after that. But I don't see how he could be Tarn, tough I admit to the whole Magnus as Tarn is a very thrilling idea.

 

We seen grunts and not the bosses or even the commanders so who is giving the orders? I doubt Prowl is the leader of spy agency a lieutenant even a commander but not the leader. I doubt Trepan is the head of the Institute.

 

Why would you doubt that Prowl could be the leader of an off the books spy agency?