Following Siege and Earthrise, Transformers: War For Cybertron: Kingdom is the last season of this latest continuity in the vast and confusing web of Transformers lore. After Hasbro’s partnership with Machinima resulted in the poorly recieved Prime Wars Trilogy prior, the toy company teamed up with Rooster Teeth for a higher-budget Netflix original series. The War For Cybertron Trilogy takes place in its own timeline, making it separate from the events of previous cartoons, movies or comics - but it’s a very familiar setup. The Autobot and Decepticon factions have torn apart their homeworld of Cybertron in a civil war. In a desperate and controversial move, Optimus Prime throws the life-giving Allspark through a spacebridge, taking the conflict to space and other worlds. After fairly formulaic and G1-adjacent two seasons, Kingdom has the potential to shake things up - not only is there new talent on the production team, but the third chapter of the series will introduce the Maximal and Predacon characters from Beast Wars. Turning into realistic (uh, mostly, there is a purple t-wrex in there!) animals instead of vehicles, these new characters don’t only bring a different aesthetic to bear, but have their own allegiances and motivations. Fans of the toyline this Netflix original series is promoting, as well as the previous chapters, will spot some easter eggs throughout the trailer - the Ark, the spaceship which brought the Autobots to Earth and served as their temporary base, is getting a robot mode of its own for the first time, based on the design of the Last Autobot from the G1 comics. Curiously, both Nemesis Prime and Ultra Magnus are making a reappearance too. Though we knew about the involvement of Beast Wars characters in Kingdom for a long while now due to the toyline, it is worth mentioning that the debut of Kingdom comes not long after a Paramount Studious press event which revealed the next live-action blockbuster Transformers film, also featuring beasts. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will be the seventh live action film in the franchise and the direct sequel to 2018’s Bumblebee. If your appetite for Beast Wars won’t quite be sated by Netflix’s animated show, the next movie will surely help in that regard. Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy: Kingdom debuts on Netflix internationally on the 29th of July.
