Every generation gets accused of thinking its childhood had the best toys and the best cartoons. Kids of the ’80s have a harder time denying it, since half of those cartoons were basically 22-minute toy commercials, and we loved them anyway. I’ll leave that argument to someone else.

But there is one memory from that decade I can’t file under nostalgia, and it comes back to me mostly in fragments: sitting in a theater in 1986 watching The Transformers: The Movie. The lights, the noise, the music cranked to a volume no child’s ears were built for, and then the part nobody warned us about. Autobots I knew from TV and from my toy box dying on screen, one after another. Then Optimus Prime.

I don’t remember getting to the end of that movie. I’m fairly sure my father took me home before it got there. I didn’t see the rest until I rented it in the early ’90s, and eventually I asked a relative to record it onto a blank VHS for me. It shared the tape with An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, which means one cassette held Orson Welles as Unicron and Jimmy Stewart as Wylie Burp, two final film roles in two animated movies, side by side completely by accident.

Here’s the thing, though. Some of us never grew out of Transformers, a show about alien robots that turn into vehicles, animals and everything in between, with Optimus Prime as the iconic hero out front. And plenty of the kids who walked out of that theater shaken grew up to work in toys, comics and animation.

That was my theory back in the July Geek-Out: forty years later, some of the people running Hasbro are those same traumatized kids, and they decided it was time to apologize on behalf of the people who signed off on killing Optimus in the first place. Hasbro more or less said so out loud, branding the 40th anniversary The Apology Tour.

The tour has been a lot. A remixed soundtrack album. Merchandise in every direction. More Studio Series 86 figures than any of us has shelf space for. Admittedly, I’ve snagged a number of them already, with more in my sights, including some I never had in G1 form, like Blaster and the Constructicons. And the centerpiece, a 40th anniversary theatrical run of the original movie, this time with something new after the credits: a 12-minute short called Optimus Prime: Awakening.

It’s directed by Josh Wassung, written by Ryan Parrott and produced by The Third Floor. Peter Cullen voices Optimus Prime, and Frank Welker returns as both Megatron and Soundwave.

Where Awakening picks up

If you know the 1986 film, you know the setup. Optimus has his final fight with Megatron, is fatally wounded (thanks, Hot Rod) and dies after passing the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus. Awakening starts right there, with the original movie’s audio laid over new CG of Optimus handing off the Matrix and going dark.

What happens next is a spoiler, so it’s tucked away below.

Spoiler: what happens in Optimus Prime: Awakening

Optimus drifts through space until a voice tells him to “awaken.” His lifeless hand twitches (the shot from the teaser), and he’s alive again, face to face with something that calls itself The One. It looks a lot like the Sacred Ring from Void Rivals, and the name reads like a nod to “Till All Are One,” as if it’s some kind of sentient hive mind.

Optimus wants to go back and help his friends. The One tells him he will, eventually, and that he’ll die many more times. It shows him the proof: G1 Optimus, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Animated, even the Bayformers version. To The One, it’s a death cycle that changes nothing. (Clearly The One isn’t Hasbro, who would beg to differ in a more monetary way.)

Optimus won’t give up, so The One sends him on a vision quest. The astral plane becomes a moon, the ACTUAL Sacred Ring glowing behind it, and Optimus is immediately under attack: Soundwave, a pair of Insecticons, then Starscream. He shakes them off until Soundwave blasts him into a crater.

Then he hears Bumblebee. Something’s very wrong. This Bumblebee is a Decepticon, logo and all, with Galvatron-style horns and his own Megatron-style fusion cannon. Optimus tries to reason with him, but Bumblebee is furious: “Everyone who follows you dies.” He merges with the rest of the Decepticons into a giant Bumblebee and tries to crush Optimus.

Optimus wakes back on the astral plane. The One calls it a warning. Stop fighting and leave things be. Optimus refuses, so The One shows him another vision: Earth, with Unicron overhead tearing it apart. Optimus begs to go back and stop the Decepticons. The One tells him to “break the cycle,” then splits him into three Primes to make the point that if the Decepticons fall, another villain will replace them. One of the other Primes is green. The other is purple and looks an awful lot like the Shattered Glass version, the mirror universe where the Autobots are the villains.

The One pulls Optimus back together and flings him back to Cybertron, where Megatron is about to finish off Bumblebee. It’s like the 1986 fight never ended. Optimus and Megatron go at it again, Bumblebee crawling toward Optimus’s dropped gun to help. Megatron has the upper hand until Bumblebee grabs the gun as a distraction. Optimus draws his axe, takes off Megatron’s arm and stands over him for the kill. “There’s the killer, pretending to be a hero.”

Bumblebee screams at him to finish it. Then The One: “This is not victory. Have you learned nothing?” Optimus sees it all again, the earlier visions, himself dropping the Matrix in 1986, and Megatron on a throne with dead Transformers at his feet.

Optimus gets it. “To save them… I must leave everything behind.” He opens his chest, pulls out the Matrix and throws it into the lava below. He tells Bumblebee he’s going to “light our darkest hour,” straight out of the 1986 film, and walks into a doorway of light.

And because Marvel set the bar for post-credits scenes, there’s one more shot: Megatron, clutching the stump of his arm, crawling toward the Matrix, which didn’t quite make it into the lava.

What I thought

I enjoyed it, and it was the main reason I was willing to see the 1986 film in a theater again. I wasn’t alone. The re-release made over $4 million in its first four days and topped $5 million worldwide within a week, enough for Fathom to extend it past the original September 17 to 21 dates into early October at select theaters.

Going in, I figured Awakening would bridge the gap between the movie and the third season, when fan outcry got Optimus brought back (just so he could die a couple more times). It turned out to be something else: a trip through a multiverse of Optimuses. It starts at the exact moment he dies in 1986, digs up the versions of him that came after, takes a detour through a possible future with an evil Bumblebee running the Decepticons, and teases Shattered Glass on the way out.

None of that feels accidental. The Bumblebee that’s featured already has a figure, a $29.99 Studio Series Optimus Prime: Awakening Bumblebee that’s up for pre-order now and due in November. And leaked listings for a 2027 toy line reportedly called Megatron Rising describe a timeline where the Autobots won the war and Optimus became the tyrant, with a resistance recruiting Megatrons from across the multiverse to stop him. That’s a leak, not an announcement, but it lines up with what Awakening spends twelve minutes showing us: Optimus’s endless cycle, other versions of the Autobots and Decepticons, and a hero who might not stay one.

It seems like Hasbro is taking a page from pretty much every comic book, TV show and movie leaning on the multiverse lately. (Looking at you again, Marvel.) Don’t get me wrong, the idea isn’t new. DC did it back in 1961 in The Flash, introducing a second Earth mainly so fans didn’t have to choose between Barry Allen and Jay Garrick. They could have the best of both worlds. Transformers has its own version too: Shattered Glass, the mirror universe co-created in 2008 for the official Collectors’ Club by a group that included Benson Yee of BWTF. (I admittedly missed it the first time and am eager to read it when time allows.)

And it fits the current model of franchise storytelling, where everything connects somehow (yes, Marvel, and DC TV’s Arrowverse before it). There could be a Shattered Glass series somewhere alongside a Robert Kirkman-produced Energon Universe. I’m hoping for the latter, so we finally get the G.I. Joe crossover and don’t have to sit through another Bayformers movie or three before Michael Bay loses interest again and we get better movies like Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts or Transformers One.

So Awakening does three things at once. It’s the apology Hasbro has been promising all year. It’s a farewell to the voice that defined the character for four decades. And it keeps hinting at something bigger, which is where things get complicated.

Peter Cullen

It’s impossible to watch this without knowing what happened in August. Peter Cullen died on August 27 at 85, a few weeks before Awakening reached theaters. Hasbro had billed the short as a love letter to the fans and to Cullen, Optimus’s “one final adventure.” It was meant as a tribute. It became a goodbye.

The voices that weren’t there

Hasbro brought back Cullen and Welker. It didn’t bring back the rest of the G1 cast, and the most noticeable absence is Bumblebee.

Dan Gilvezan voiced Bumblebee in the original series, and he isn’t in Awakening. According to TFormers, he auditioned for the part and wasn’t chosen. In a Facebook post, he said that according to reliable sources the short is a teaser for a Hasbro Transformers series on YouTube next year, and that whoever voiced Bumblebee in it will likely carry the role into the series. “Am I happy about this? No,” he wrote, before asking the fans who’ve supported him for forty years whether there was anything they could do to get Hasbro to go with the remaining original voices. He followed up with a Facebook video (collected here). His agent told him Hasbro had done “the very same thing” with a My Little Pony reboot made for YouTube. Tara Strong, one of the main ponies and another of his agent’s clients, wasn’t called, and the producers insisted it was a “completely different thing.” “Well, to quote Nata, my agent, they lied,” Gilvezan said. “It was exactly the same. Only they used different talent. They used Canadian talent. Why? Because Canadian unions don’t require residuals.” His verdict: “It’s not about what the fans want. It’s not about what’s right. It’s all about the money.”

Fans answered with a Change.org petition asking Hasbro to use the original G1 voice actors on all future G1 projects.

Hasbro has done this before. The War for Cybertron trilogy on Netflix went with a cast of mostly unknown voice actors instead of any of the G1 or Beast Wars voices, carrying over a few from Machinima’s Prime Wars trilogy, like Jason Marnocha as Megatron and Frank Todaro as Starscream.

Prime Wars went the opposite direction. Its first season, Combiner Wars, used working voice actors with Jon Bailey (yes, the Honest Trailers guy) as Optimus. Then for Titans Return, it brought in heavy hitters: Peter Cullen took over as Optimus, Judd Nelson came back as Rodimus, and Wil Wheaton, Nolan North, Michael Dorn and Mark Hamill joined in. Power of the Primes kept most of them and added Ron Perlman as Optimus Primal (a role he’d reprise in Rise of the Beasts) and Samoa Joe as Predaking.

So Hasbro knows the legacy voices bring people in. It proved that on a YouTube-era streaming show. On Netflix, with a much bigger platform behind it, War for Cybertron went cheap and it showed. Awakening feels like the same instinct.

It feels familiar in another way too. When Tom Root told us Robot Chicken was “budgetarily strained” by Warner Bros. Discovery, the problem was the same one: the people who made something matter are the first line item to get trimmed.

And it matters more here because of what Awakening seems to be setting up. If that YouTube series happens, the question the petition is asking is a fair one: a G1 project built on G1 nostalgia, without the G1 voices that are still with us.

For me it’s personal. Dan Gilvezan was my Bumblebee and my Spider-Man, from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. I signed the petition.

Where it’s all heading

Awakening doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Hasbro has several Transformers and G.I. Joe projects moving at once:

• The rumored G1 series on YouTube that Gilvezan described, reportedly aimed at 2027, and the leaked Megatron Rising toy line for the same year.
• The Energon Universe, the shared Transformers, G.I. Joe and Void Rivals comics line from Robert Kirkman’s Skybound, which has been shopped since last fall as an adult animated series in the vein of Kirkman’s Invincible, with Joe Henderson (Lucifer) as showrunner. No buyer has been announced as of this writing, but Invincible already runs on Prime Video, so Amazon would seem like the obvious first call. We may hear more this weekend. Skybound’s “What’s Next for the Energon Universe?” panel is Saturday morning at New York Comic Con, the same NYCC weekend where I interviewed Kirkman and the Energon Universe writers in 2024. Given The One’s resemblance to the Sacred Ring, Awakening may be closer to that world than it looks.
• G.I. Joe at Paramount, where Bradley Cooper was just cast as Duke in Danny McBride’s reboot, replacing Chris Hemsworth. McBride is writing and directing. Paramount also confirmed G.I. Joe has been “uncoupled” from the Transformers franchise, ending the crossover teased at the end of Rise of the Beasts. They’ve been trying to make that crossover happen for the longest time, and the next bit of news explains, at least partially, why it’s been rolled back.
• Transformers 8, written by Jason Fuchs (It: Welcome to Derry), with Steven Spielberg back as the primary creative producer, the same hands-on role he had on the 2007 film and Revenge of the Fallen. It was announced as Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery closed their merger into Skydance on October 6. Michael Bay is reportedly in early talks to direct after reading Fuchs’ script and meeting with Spielberg, though he hasn’t signed. If he does, the uncoupling makes more sense. Bay never wanted the G.I. Joe tease at the end of Rise of the Beasts in the first place. Then-Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins told Variety, “I called him 50 times. I would not let him off the hook. And when he finally stopped dodging my calls, we got him to sign off.” So, pending an official announcement, Bayformers are back. Ugh.

I have a number of reasons for not wanting Bay back in the director’s chair. His run should have ended well before it did. Revenge of the Fallen made a fortune, but money isn’t the same as good. Rotten Tomatoes ranks it seventh of nine, ahead of only Age of Extinction and The Last Knight, and fans still beg podcasts to tear it apart. Dark of the Moon was the first real sign he needed to stop, and instead of leaving it at a trilogy, he pushed on with Age of Extinction, which tried to course-correct and didn’t. Then came a franchise writers’ room that briefly included Robert Kirkman (he reportedly attended for a single day, years before Skybound got the Transformers comics), and out of it came the absolutely bonkers The Last Knight. All I took away from that one is that Mr. Carson from Downton Abbey plays a crazy robot butler for Sir Anthony Hopkins.

The Last Knight is what finally moved Bay to a producer credit, and the three movies made under that arrangement, Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts and Transformers One, were significantly better, with the live-action two quietly retconning a lot of his noise. The same goes for the two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies he produced, which turned out better than I expected with him behind the scenes instead of behind the camera. He has other things going, like the OutRun movie at Universal with Sydney Sweeney, plus some involvement in a Skibidi Toilet film, which honestly sounds more his speed.

I don’t need him using the live-action franchise as his own military-assisted Fast & Furious, and I doubt he’d bother untangling the retcons. It’ll be massive explosions, a loose plot and some celebrity he’s chummy with. My money’s on Sweeney, since they’re already working together. Super ugh.

The one hopeful sign is Spielberg taking the wheel again. Then again, he was hands-on for Revenge of the Fallen too. Best case, Bay keeps a producer credit and some creative input, and someone else gets the camera. That’s my 50 cents, which is 48 cents too much.

Passing the torch

Not everyone loved Awakening. Gizmodo called it “inorganic,” and the open ending plays as much like a sequel hook as a goodbye. I get why some longtime fans walked out feeling like they’d sat through a very pretty trailer. I went in expecting the missing chapter between the 1986 movie and season three, and that’s not what this is. The Optimus who walks away at the end doesn’t feel like the one who gets dragged back in “Dark Awakening” or “The Return of Optimus Prime.” When The One talks about all those other Primes, this one reads like ours, the original-timeline Optimus, finally choosing to let the fight go and hand it to whoever comes next. That could be another Optimus with a new voice, which we’re getting no matter what. It could be Rodimus, a brand-new Prime, or one we’ve only heard about.

That’s fine by me. I liked the short, and like I said back in July, I’m geeking out on what comes next. With NYCC in town, we might not have to wait long.

If you missed it in theaters, Shout! Studios releases The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary Edition on November 17 as a 4K Ultra HD SteelBook with Blu-ray, and on DVD. Optimus Prime: Awakening is included as an “animated companion piece,” along with a new Dolby Atmos mix, a reformatted “The Touch” music video from Stan Bush and the 40th anniversary trailer. The legacy extras are back too, including the ‘Til All Are One documentary, which, fittingly, features Dan Gilvezan. Pre-order it from GRUV or Amazon.

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