Predacons are a subspecies of technorganic insectoid Cybertronians from the planet Cybertron.
Biology[]
Anatomy[]
Predacons share a similar biology to other technorganic Cybertronians, except they transform into giant insects.
Ecology[]
Predacons feed on raw Energon siphoned from machines.
Powers and abilities[]
Predacons share many of the same abilities as other technorganic Cybertronians.
Arachnoid Predacons can generate organic webbing stronger than steel and possess "mech-venom" capable of paralyzing Cybertronians.
Wasp-based Predacons possess energy stingers that can paralyze other Cybertronians.
Precadons are immensely durable, as Waspinator has been shown to survive a transwarp-related explosion even after being blown to pieces.
Weaknesses[]
Predacons share many of the same weakness as other technorganic Cybertronians.
History[]
When the Autobot Elita-1 was attacked by alien spiders on the planet Archa Seven, she attempted to use her ability to download and replicate the abilities of other mechanoids on the creatures. However, the process wound up mutating her into a technorganic form with an alternate mode based on the spiders. Taking the name "Blackarachnia", Elita was initially revulsed by her unnatural new form, as were many around her. She also joined the Decepticons, on account of the Autobots beliving her to be dead.
When the AllSpark was found by a group of Autobots, Blackarachnia was aboard the Nemesis, expressing annoyance at Lugnut's emphatic, vocal loyalty to Megatron and getting into an argument with Blitzwing, who touched a sore point by insulting her organic mode. At Megatron's orders, she scanned the Autobot ship Orion and believed that their high-energy cargo was at least something as powerful as the AllSpark. When the Autobots escaped and it became clear the Nemesis was going to crash into an exploding space bridge, Blackarachnia fled in an escape pod.
Over the next 50 years, she would search space for any trace of the AllSpark in the hope that she could use its power to purge herself of her organic mode. 50 years later, Blackarachnia stumbled across Starscream, still operating out of the battered shell of the Nemesis. Realizing that Starscream was searching for the AllSpark as well, Blackarachnia proposed an alliance. However, Starscream proved uninterested in sharing power and promptly booted her out into space.
Before being ejected, Blackarachnia was able to plant a homing device on Starscream, which she eventually tracked to Earth's moon. While investigate the crashed hulk of the Nemesis, Blackarachnia ran afoul of the bounty hunter Lockdown, who had been hired by Blitzwing to hunt down the Autobots responsible for Megatron's seeming demise. Not willing to risk the bounty hunter finding the AllSpark before her, Blackarachnia attempted to dissuade him from investigating Earth.
When Lockdown did not take kindly to her interference, the pair wound up battling. During the fight, Blackarachnia used her download ability on Lockdown, knocking him out. However, she was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer number of powers and modifications she wound up taking from him and passed out herself. Blackarachnia was first to awake and hid herself aboard Lockdown's ship the Death's Head, so that when the bounty hunter finally came to and headed for Earth, she was able to hitch a free ride to the planet.
After arriving on Earth, Blackarachnia stalked Bumblebee, Bulkhead, and Sari on Halloween night. Once she took out the Autobots, she attempted to sweet-talk Sari into handing over her AllSpark Key, but Optimus Prime arrived to intervene. Using Bulkhead and Bumblebee's stolen powers to overcome Optimus, Blackarachnia captured Sari and web-swung her way to the top of a skyscraper, with Optimus in hot pursuit. In the ensuing fight, Optimus realized Blackarachnia was actually Elita-1.
Exploiting the opening, Blackarachnia bound Optimus in her web and seized the AllSpark Key, activating its power in hopes of become fully mechanical. However, the energies unleashed caused all organic life in range to shrivel and sicken. Due to her technorganic nature, it almost killed Blackarachnia until Optimus Prime pulled the AllSpark Key out, restoring the organics. Optimus tried to reason with "Elita", asking her to come with them in the hopes of curing her, but Blackarachnia stabbed him, saying that it would be a long time before she trusted him again. After she knocked out Optimus, she cried her four eyes out.
During the winter season, Blackrachnia again kidnapped Sari, who was running away after having the AllSpark Key taken away from her. When she heard about the Key and how Sari felt totally mistrusted by the Autobots, Blackarachnia played on the girl's sympathies by saying she knew how Sari felt. Blackarachnia noted how she was not a Decepticon until after the Autobots turned their backs on her, and how the AllSpark's power was the only thing that could cure her current form. However, Sari sensed that Blackrachnia had ulterior motives and led her around in circles over the frozen Lake Erie before finally admitting that the AllSpark was underwater.
Blackarachnia was outraged with Sari, commenting that her organic half cannot survive the icy water, and prepared to kill her before Ratchet brought the Orion up through the ice. During the commotion, Sari escaped Blackarachnia by biting her hand, allowing Ratchet to grab her and get in the Orion. As the vessel accelerated, Blackarachnia tried to force the door open until she was thrown off the ship.
Washing ashore on Dinobot Island, Blackarachnia was taken in by the Dinobots, who gave her Meltdown's former base as a home. Using her charms, Blackarachnia was able to manipulate the Dinobots into doing anything she wanted. Grimlock was particularly attached to her, and reminded Swoop and Snarl of this through violence. Finding another way of removing her organic half in Meltdown's notes, she sent the Dinobots to release him from prison. When the Autobots came to investigate, Blackarachnia poisoned Bumblebee and Prowl with her venom. Using the "promise" of an anti-venom, she blackmailed Optimus into helping Grimlock find the genetic modifier Meltdown needed for the experiment.
Unfortunately, Meltdown turned the tables on them when the modifier was his, planning on removing Blackarachnia's technological half and leaving him with an organic transformer. Though Optimus was able to stop Meltdown before he succeeded, the modifier was damaged and Meltdown himself turned into a puddle. Needing to escape, Blackarachnia tricked Grimlock into attacking Optimus. However, the fact that she left the anti-venom needed to save Bumblebee and Prowl beside them gave Optimus hope that beneath all of Blackarachnia's anger and manipulation, there was still something left of Elita-1 in there.
Blackrachnia eventually tolerated her transformation to an extent and sought to replicate it on other Cybertronians through experimentation with transwarp energy in hopes of successfully purging her own organic elements. Most of her early attempts proved fruitless until she successfully cross-mutated the fugitive Autobot Wasp with an actual Earth wasp to create "Waspinator".
When Sentinel Prime stumbled upon Blackrachnia's lab, he was disgusted with Blackrachnia herself yet was even more shocked when she revealed herself to be Elita-1. Disgusted by her mutation, Sentinel was willing to "put her out of her misery" and knocked Blackarachnia's helmet off, allowing him to see her true, partially organic face. After Waspinator's transformation was complete, Blackarachnia revealed her plans to Sentinel and Optimus. Unfortunately, Waspinator was within earshot when she revealed what little regard she had for his life.
Hurt by this betrayal, the now physically unstable Waspinator issued Blackarachnia an ultimatum: either fix him or be destroyed. She tried to escape when it was revealed that the transwarp energies responsible for Waspinator's creation were going critical and about to cause a huge explosion. Blackarachnia surrounded herself and Waspinator in her webbing, shielding the Autobots from the explosion and seemingly leading to their final demise. However, they were instead transwarped to a strange jungle, where a disassembled Waspinator began repairing himself while Blackrachnia awoke to find a group of organic creatures looking rather surprised to see their new guests.
Under undivulged circumstances, Blackarachnia rebranded herself as a Predacon and adopted a new paint job before making her way back to Cybertron, where she began raising an army of technorganic Predacons including Inferno and Antagony.
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- During the production of Transformers: Animated, it was originally planned for Blackarachnia to serve as the major villain for the show's ultimately unproduced fourth season. Having abandoned her search for a cure for her technorganic condition, she would have sought to transform the rest of the Cybertronian race into organic-machine hybrids called Predacons like herself.
- In the episode pitch "What a Tangled Web We Weave", Blackarachnia's first encounter with the Decepticons would have fleshed out from what was previously stated in the episode "Along Came a Spider".
- In the episode pitch "Bumble Prime", Bumblebee would have learned of an alternate future where the Autobots and Decepticons have formed an unholy alliance against the Predacons from a mysterious new charcter based on Hasbro employee Steve Drucker named the Time Trucker. It would be shown that the Predacons eventually become zombie-like as the result of an AllSpark-powered technorganic virus unleashed by Blackarachnia.
- In the episode pitch "Arachnus Prime", Optimus Prime (with help from the Time Trucker) would have traveled back in time to save Elita-1 from becoming Blackarachnia at the expense of becoming a technorganic spider-bot himself.
- In the two-part season finale pitch "Predacons Unite", Sentinel Prime would have agreed to ally with a captured Megatron to defeat Blackarachnia's Predacons as they attack Cybertron. However, Optimus realizes that the Decepticon leader is only playing the Autobots and Predacons off against each other so that the Decepticons can conquer the planet.
- When the season's story was reworked at Hasbro's request for the show to have parallels to the live-action film series, Predacons were given a smaller role as a rival faction to the Decepticons before eventually allying with the Autobots in a climatic final battle against Megatron in the two-part season finale pitch "Megatron Must Be Destroyed!".
- Series art director Derrick J. Wyatt has also spoken of an unproduced episode named "Trukk vs. Munky", in which Blackarachnia would have created Optimus Primal as a technorganic clone of Optimus Prime. While this episode was originally proposed for the show's second season before being cut, it did not make it in any official lists of proposed episodes for the fourth season.[1]
- Inferno and Antagony's designs, which are featured in Transformers Animated: The Complete AllSpark Almanac, were not necessarily made for the unproduced fourth season. Rather, they were invented as potential toy ideas for BotCon, explaining why their models are simply recolors of Animated Waspinator with new heads. If they had ever been in the show, they would have instead been original designs coincidentally based on their Beast Wars counterparts.