Whirl is so special to me.
His life actually starts pretty well, and then the system catches up to him and crushes him like everyone else. He turns rancid. He does terrible things because they make him feel powerful when he doesn't even have bodily autonomy, because it makes him feel in control. Since his life is going down, he might as well be the one crashing the plane.
He gets the consequences of his actions, time and time and time again, yet it doesn't feel like he's moving. He's stewed in violence for a long time already when Optimus Prime comes in and gives him an outlet : "forgiveness as a weapon of war". Whirl is the weapon of war - he's back to square one, just a tool for another agenda he doesn't believe in, yet another cog in the machine. He witnesses and commits atrocity after atrocity, and the judgement never really catches up to him, because the Autobots can't afford to.
Then the war ends and like everyone else, he struggles to adjust - but it runs deeper than that. He's lost, because his identity has been built on violence for much longer than the war. Then he meets people people who have never known violence, people who have done war and still renounced it, people who are not like him and are patient enough to show him that there's another way. The circumstances push him to change, but at the end of the day it's Whirl who chooses the pace, who decides how to become someone else. He doesn't destroy himself to build himself all over again, no, he finds peace in knowing that this is who he is, this is who he was, this is what happened. He accepts everything that he is, but instead of embracing it like a forfeiture, he uses it as a foundation to build a better future for himself, one where he chooses the good that happens for him.
So yeah. He's my crazy helicopter fave.