One of, like, five situations that immediately sprang to mind after LL#6...
(Context: Megatron and a number of his new companions pop back into the primary universe in order to do some stuff and there's a brief teamup w/ Optimus Prime.)
Megatron, introducing everyone one by one: And this is Orion Pax...
Optimus Prime: I, uh, recognize him.
Megatron: ...my conjux.
Orion Pax: Hi!
Optimus Prime: .......
Megatron: ........... *awkward muffled cough*
Optimus Prime: Hey, Megatron, excuse me but I have a quick question whAT THE FUCK-
gUYS I JUST REALIZED THAT NAUTICA TOOK OUT HER OWN OPTICS TO PUT SKIDS' BRAIN IN THERE. She had two perfectly working optics in LL6. Then, in LL7, she had an eye patch. The first time around I thought she always had it from her wounds in Dying of the Light, and I missed it, but no. She literally picked out her eyeball to stick someone's brain in there. Nautica is so fucking metal.
It took me a long time to figure out exactly how I felt about the ending of this issue, and my feelings about it are still really complicated.
I’ve seen some debate about this, but I think it’s pretty clear that Terminus lied to Megatron about the second location. Instead of passing along Roller’s actual message, Terminus pretends that Roller said they were preparing to leave.
Roller is one of the only characters in the Rod Squad who doesn’t have any actual experience with Megatron, since he missed the entire war and probably hasn’t even been fully filled-in about what he missed yet. He only knows of Megatron as “the guy whose work Orion told him to read” and since then has only met him briefly. Why would he lie to trick Megatron into staying behind? I just don’t see it. Out of the two of them, Terminus is the only one of the two gets something he wants by lying.
And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of behavior from Terminus, even in the extremely limited page time he’s gotten in the comic thus far. In MTMTE 34, Terminus knows that if Megatron knew how he was smuggling his work to Cybertron, he’d tell him to stop. He doesn’t mind doing things Megatron wouldn’t approve of and wouldn’t want. He doesn’t mind keeping those things a secret if he feels Megatron doesn’t have to know.
And Terminus has always been more concerned with Megatron’s cause - or more accurately, his own interpretation of what that cause ought to be - than he has with Megatron as a person. Terminus absolutely has his own interpretation of what Megatron’s cause should be, and it’s absolutely different than Megatron’s.
In my opinion, Megatron in Chaos Theory starts out as both an anarchist and a pacifist. He believes in the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action, doesn’t think violence can enact meaningful social change, and he wants to tear down the power hierarchies that exist in his society and build a free, non-hierarchical society.
By the end of Chaos Theory, Megatron is no longer a pacifist, but in my opinion he absolutely remains an anarchist. At the beginning of issue 34, the excerpt from his work in progress advocates individual freedom and the elimination of social hierarchies. “And your ‘betters’? You have none. We are all equal. And we have a right to decide how to live our lives.” This is pretty much the opposite of the authoritarian views he has during the war. Megatron at this point may have abandoned nonviolent direct action, but his ideal society remains very similar to what it was when he was a pacifist, and very different to the one he describes to Optimus while imprisoned.
Terminus spends the next couple pages trying to convince Megatron to build a new hierarchy, with himself as the leader. Megatron may still be an anarchist here but Terminus absolutely isn’t. Megatron still wants to tear down the hierarchy he sees around him and replace it with a society where all people are equal, but Terminus wants to tear down that hierarchy and replace it with a new one that has different people on the top. I think this is part of why he’s always so thrilled to see Megatron “taking charge” or “giving orders” - he sees it as Megatron enacting the kind of power hierarchy Terminus always wanted him to, with Megatron himself at the top of it.
Megatron stopped being a pacifist after almost being beaten to death in Chaos Theory. But he didn’t abandon anarchism until he lost Terminus in MTMTE 34.
In LL6, Terminus knows that Megatron doesn’t want to stay behind. He asks Megatron repeatedly and Megatron repeatedly says no. As soon as Terminus gets a chance, he tricks Megatron into staying anyway, against Megatron’s repeated stated wishes.
This is not surprising behavior from him, at least in my opinion. He’s an “ends justify the means” kind of guy, and has always been depicted as such. He wants what he wants, and he’s willing to do ugly things in order to get there. You can even see this reflected in his responses to the war. Some of his response might be because he didn’t have to see it himself, and didn’t have to live through it, but the way Terminus justifies and excuses the violence and atrocities says something about his character and his views.
Megatron has been slowly making his way back towards not just his pacifism but his anarchism too. When he talks to Clicker, he says “The opposite of Functionism isn’t lack of Functionism. The opposite of Functionism is choice.” His focus on individual freedom is a sharp contrast from his recent authoritarian views. And in the end of LL6, when Megatron speaks to the small group, he isn’t standing on a pedestal looking down on them. He’s seated among them - a striking visual difference from how he’s been shown in the past. And instead of emphasizing strong leadership or forced unity of viewpoints, he emphasizes the value of small, scattered, individual and equal groups. Instead of focusing on forcing others to change, he focuses on individual, internal change. And at the end of his talk, he “utters the new word” he was discussing with Impactor in Chaos Theory. He’s slowly moving back towards the anarcho-pacifist he used to be. I have to wonder how Terminus will feel about that, and what he’ll do.
It’s good to see Megatron being better than he was, but the circumstances by which he gets there are complicated and uncomfortable, and the fact that he’s not aware of them makes it even more so. I don’t like seeing his autonomy taken away. It’s uncomfortable, just like it was uncomfortable when Optimus forced him to read that speech early in season 2 of MTMTE. Here again, Megatron is making yet another decision in another confined space.
Also, I’m really sad to lose Megatron in the cast. He’s been one of my favorites for a long time, and his storyline has touched on a lot of things that really matter to me. I will miss him a lot.
I do have a feeling that Megatron will return at some point, somehow. He gave Rodimus his word, and I do think he still intends to keep it. I hope if we see him again, he’ll have fully embraced his old anarcho-pacifism.
#project hail mary
