The Transformers live action film series has featured several elements from the deeper lore of the franchise, from the Fallen to the Space Bridge. However, there’s one crucial aspect of the Transformers mythos that the film series has never really given a straight answer on — namely, the origin of the Cybertronian species itself.
There are two main accounts of Cybertron’s creation that have been prominently used throughout the franchise. But curiously, the live action films have settled on neither of them. Here’s a brief rundown of every way the Transformers franchise has answered the mystery of who created the Cybertronians.
Primus is the God of Cybertron in the Comics
At this point in the series’ history, the most popular route for the Cybertronians’ creation originated in a 1988 issue of Marvel’s Transformers comic book, written by franchise icon Simon Furman. In that story, Unicron — the planet-sized, world-devouring big bad of 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie — recounts his ancient defeat at the hands of Primus, his equal and opposite force in the cosmos. Rather than being robotic beings by nature, this legend depicts Primus and Unicron as godlike beings: cosmic embodiments of light and darkness, creation and destruction, who have waged war since the dawn of time.
After defeating Unicron, Primus seals both Unicron and himself into asteroids, which would later be shaped by their spirits into metallic planets. For Unicron, this naturally meant his famous planet form from the animated movie. And as for Primus, his body became the planet Cybertron. Yes, Cybertron itself is a Transformer, with its robot mode being the physical body of Primus himself. With his spirit now residing in Cyberton’s core, Primus used his power to seed the planet with new life, creating champions who could protect the universe from Unicron should he ever return. And thus, the Thirteen Primes, the very first Cybertronians, were born.
While Primus’ introductory comic was published after the original The Transformers cartoon concluded, he was mentioned in animation as early as 1998, in episodes of Beast Wars. Primus himself made his television debut in the 2004 Transformers: Energon anime. And in its sequel series, Transformers: Cybertron, Cybertron itself transformed back into Primus for the first time in the franchise’s history, in order to save the universe from a black hole created by Unicron. In 2011, the Transformers: Prime cartoon further expanded on the story of Primus, and solidified his connection with the Thirteen Primes.
However, the boldest take on Primus to date came in the medium he originated in. The 2012-2018 comic series More than Meets the Eye by James Roberts reimagines Primus as the leader of an entire pantheon of Cybertronian gods, the Guiding Hand. But at the climax of the story, it’s revealed that the Guiding Hand were never gods at all — merely the first Cybertronians to come into being. And in a further revelation, an amnesiac Primus had been part of the story’s cast all along, in the form of the humble psychiatrist Rung.
The Quintessons Menaced Their Creations in the Cartoon
But while the legend of Primus has become the go-to creation story for the Transformers franchise, it wasn’t the first. As previously mentioned, Primus wasn’t introduced until after the original The Transformers cartoon ended. As such, that series had its own interpretation of Cybertron’s origin, featured in the show’s third season. In the animated canon, Cybertron and its people were created by the species of vicious interstellar arms dealers known as the Quintessons.
The Cybertronians were initially built to be products, not people — the Autobots were created as slave laborers, while the Decepticons were intended to be living weapons of war. Even Cybertron itself was nothing more than a planet-sized factory. However, the Quintessons’ cruelty to their creations sowed resentment among the people of Cybertron. Eventually, a worldwide revolution broke out, led by Alpha Trion: the Autobot who would later become the creator and mentor of Optimus Prime. The Quintessons were driven off of Cybertron, and the Cybertronians were liberated at last.
Later works in the original cartoon continuity would attempt to reconcile the original Quintesson creation story with the more popular Primus account. Various comics and manga have depicted the Quintessons as colonizers who discovered Cybertron rather than creating it, and used Primus’ life force to fuel their production of the Cybertronians. Meanwhile, the trippy, Jack Kirby-inspired Transformers vs. G.I. Joe comic by John Barber and Tom Scioli took things a step further, reinventing the Quintessons as eldritch, extra-dimensional entities with godlike power. These Quintessons created the living world Daiakuron, which in turn created both Cybertron and Unicron.
The Movies Created More Questions than Answers
Finally, there’s the Michael Bay-directed live action movies. The original 2007 film opens with the famous narration by Peter Cullen’s Optimus Prime, explaining the nature of the AllSpark. This mysterious cube-shaped artifact “holds the power to create worlds and fill them with life,” Optimus explains. “That is how our race was born.” Throughout the first three films, this claim is never brought into doubt. Cybertron and its people were created by the power of the AllSpark — a nice, simple explanation, with no unnecessary wrinkles. Until, that is, the release of Age of Extinction in 2014.
The opening sequence of the film features the first glimpse of the alien creators of the Cybertronian race — seemingly inspired by the Quintessons, but never referred to as such — who later hire the bounty hunter Lockdown to capture Optimus Prime. The notion that the Cybertronians were intentionally created by an outside party, rather than simply being born from the AllSpark, clearly disturbs Optimus. And so, the film ends with him leaving into space in order to discover the truth behind Cybertron’s origins for himself. However, what he finds in 2017’s The Last Knight only raises more questions.
When Optimus returns to the ruined Cybertron, he finds neither Primus nor the Quintessons, but rather a new character: Quintessa, the self-proclaimed “Prime of Life”, who states that she is the creator-goddess of Cybertron. While her name clearly evokes the Quintessons, her mechanical appearance and description of herself as a Prime indicate that she herself is Cybertronian. However, her exact nature is never explored in the film, and it’s not explained how exactly she created Cybertron. If she is indeed the world’s creator, then it’s unknown how that revelation can be reconciled with AllSpark — or with the alien creators shown in Age of Extinction.
Of course, it’s possible that Quintessa may just be lying about being Cybertron’s creator. One of the Guardian Knights even calls her “the Great Deceiver”, indicating that she may be an unreliable narrator. But even if that’s the case, her actual history is still never elaborated upon. Transformers lore is tricky to keep track of even at its best, as any diehard fan can attest. However, the Michael Bay films routinely exhibit a lack of commitment to a unified mythos, with massive inconsistencies in continuity between films. If the movies had just stuck with the AllSpark explanation or even properly introduced the Quintessons after Age of Extinction, things could have stayed simple. But instead, The Last Knight transforms the whole thing into a great jumbled mess.