After a slew of devastating failures, Optimus Primal just gave an order to his fellow Transformers that would make Megatron proud in the latest issue of Beast Wars.
Throughout the Beast Wars TV show, Optimus Primal's Maximals always reacted to Predacon attacks and rarely, if ever, took initiative by leading a preemptive strike against their foes. But the rebooted comic is hinting that Optimus Primal might adopt a completely different strategy as revealed in Transformers: Beast Wars #8 by writer Erik Burnham and artist Winston Chan.
Optimus Primal's change of heart comes after Blackarachnia's successful infiltration of Optimus' Maximal ship, where she not only caused all of the Maximal stasis pods in orbit to descend prematurely into the planet's atmosphere but uploaded the most extremist Predacon views into the pods to ensure the Maximals would emerge as Predacons. Upon hearing the unfortunate news, something changes in Optimus Primal that compels him to change their tactics, from biding their time until they can find a way to "deal with the Predacons more decisively," to a strategy where they will strike at the heart of their enemies once they have devised a perfect plan of attack. The order is so unlike him that the defected Predacon Dinobot says, "I approve, but... well, Maximals aren't exactly known for launching preemptive strikes," to which Optimus Primal responds with, "Things change."
This sudden adoption of more aggressive tactics could be found in Megatron's own book of strategies if he had one. Megatron has already led several attack missions against his foes within the comic's short run. In the debut issue before the events of the TV show, Megatron orchestrates an assault against the Science Ministry on Cybertron to steal the coveted Golden Disk artifact and later commandeers one of the Ministry's vessels to escape. After crash-landing on a mysterious planet where the majority of the series transpires, Megatron seeks the Maximals' downed vessel once his prisoner Nyx escapes with help from the traitorous Dinobot.
While Optimus Primal pivots because of Blackarachnia's successful covert operation, what he says leading up to his shocking order betrays his true intentions. He first reveals that he had only adopted a more defensive stance after Nyx's abduction. In other words, this rendition of Optimus Primal was always capable of being more like Megatron than his Beast Wars TV counterpart. By this explanation, it can be surmised that he might have never focused his attention on hiding behind their shields, fixing their downed vessel or studying the planet instead of attacking if the Predacons had never captured Nyx. It makes sense, especially when put into context with his earlier comments during the first Transformers issue. While sparring with Rhinox, Optimus Primal admits that when he was recently promoted to captain, he had hoped to be assigned where the action was. He didn't want to serve on a ship whose main mission was delivering science experiments. As he says, he received this assignment from high command to help him fall in line, but, in his own words, he doesn't like to fall. This Optimus Primal isn't being forced to be like Megatron. He just finally has an excuse to show his true colors.
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September 26, 2021 at 11:54PM
