Episode Title:
The Immobilizers / The Perfect Decepticon
Episode Description:
The Autobots and Decepticons celebrate a peace treaty but are suddenly frozen. Arcee and Grimlock return from gathering Nexus Prime's artifacts, only to find everyone stuck. When they investigate the situation, Arcee is captured by a mercenary group consisting of Soundblaster, Nightbird, Bug Bite, Doublecrosser and Afterburner while Grimlock runs into a group of Dinobots (consisting of Sludge, Snarl, Swoop and Slug) who survived the destruction of their planet at the hands of the mercenaries and received his message. While trying to stop the mercenaries, the Dinobots use the Enigma of Combination, an artifact which allows robots to combine, and briefly form Volcanicus. Grimlock moves to training the Dinobots to fight as Volcanicus while Soundblaster exacts revenge on Soundwave for being rejected. Volcanicus engages and defeats the mercenaries, but their giant kaiju-like employer Trypticon arrives, fires his escaping crew and tries to recruit the Dinobots. Refusing the offer, Grimlock and the Dinobots engage Trypticon, combining into Volcanicus to freeze him with the mercenaries' discarded immobilizer gun. Afterwards, the Dinobots free Wheeljack who builds an invention to unfreeze all of Cybertron, allowing the Autobots and Decepticons to resume the festivities.
A mortally wounded Astrotrain arrives on Cybertron, warning the Autobots and Decepticons of an incoming threat. While the Autobots and Decepticons try to stop the threat, the Perfect Decepticon supersoldiers arrive fighting one another. One of them named Tarn explains that they were mindless slaves under the deceased Other One and all of them were fighting to see who is worthy to be their new leader and suggests finding and using the Cortex Helm, a legendary relic that can reprogram his kin. Optimus agrees to help and leads him and a team to find the relic, but Tarn betrays them all, dons the Helm to control his kin and captures Optimus, while the rest are forced to retreat. Tarn forces Optimus to fight his troops when all Autobots and Decepticons enter to save Optimus, stop Tarn and his forces, and reclaim the Helm. Amidst the ensuing battle, Soundwave seizes the helm and uses it to reprogram all of the Decepticon supersoldiers with free will, but Tarn strikes back hard and retakes the helm. However, before he can wear it again, Soundwave sacrifices himself to annihilate both Tarn and the helm. After the battle, a memorial is held for Soundwave as Cybertron enters a new age of peace. Later, Optimus expresses his belief that Cybertron no longer needs a Prime as everyone has demonstrated that they will be ready to rise against any crisis and then shares a group hug with Bumblebee, Windblade, Hot Rod, Shadow Striker and the Dinobots.
