ATTENTION EVERYONE GALVATRON IS BACK GALVATRON IS BACK!!!!! He got a whopping 1 second this episode but it was SO IMPACTFUL and now we are going to discuss that one second
First off, he has vampire fangs. Those weren’t there before. Guess what’s going into every single fanart I make of him ever for the rest of time. VAMPIRE DRAGON COWBOY GALVATRON IS TRULY CANON I love you Ali Lightfoot and co
Second of all, his one second of screen time appears right at the end after OP and team wins some energon in the uhh, 6 7 basketball minigame, but we’re not here for that. The energon particle effects seemed to pass through the minigame, out through the jungle, then head up some cables presumably into Galvatron, or some sort of console in front of him (because the effect didn’t envelop his body). So he’s underground now, survived Scorponok, and has some sort of base of operations judging by the weird light strips around him.
I considered maybe that the light strips were from Scorponok because they vaguely look like headlights/you can kind of see some sort of sillouhette around the dark shape around them, but it’s doubtful because I don’t think that’s a Scorponok shape. Actually, it seems like he’s standing on some sort of platform. Maybe it could be Scorponok. Or some kind of center console of sorts under all of Cyberworld?
Wait. WAIT. Unless it wasn’t energon at all?
This effect has cubes and a lot more pink sparkles in it. We saw these effects before with Wheeljack, right as the world glitched.
And the energon effect looks like this, with more blue flamey bits and not really any pink at all:
I haven't seen/remember seeing these pink-blue particles anywhere else in the show, but if anyone remembers seeing these effects, let me know so I can address them.
Anyways, other things we know: these orbs have world-editing properties, we know this from episode 26 when one of these was put in an underground pedestal which changed a nearby rock into a block of ice (and spat team OP out into an ice tile). And the orb Wheeljack had did some weird crap and spewed particles right as the entire world glitched (see above)
We also know that these orbs can be used as power-ups, which gave OP a boost, and then Galvatron, after he kicked OP's ass and took the powerup for himself, draining it and then crushing the drained orb into scrap:
But a few things, first off Galvatron is the only one we see ever destroying one of these orbs/draining it of all of its power. Which might be related to the way he can siphon energon from other bots from his hand. But also, the remaining scrap that he drops after he destroys the orb doesn't really look orb-shaped, it looks rusty and used like it'd been in the desert for multiple years, like him.
IN ADDITION, Galvatron himself is a bit of an enigma. Because if you remember his first appearance, he was grey and rusted, taking the form of a junk collector, "Ron". It's only after he's siphoned all of Team Prime that he returns to his dragon form. I originally thought that maybe it was because when you lose all your energon/go to zero levels, you do that Fortnite thing where you're prone and not dead, but need to be revived or whatever. But this doesn't add up, because in episode 25, all of Team Prime, including Snarl, seem concerned about Grimlock overexerting himself in a minigame and losing his energon, implying something worse might happen? Why would they be so worried about him losing his energon, if him and Snarl's team could just win the game which would give him energon back? We know people can die: Megatron died. Were they worried he would die instead of doing what Galvatron did, and going all grey?
So here's a theory. Galvatron's clearly got some sort of stake in this world, more than we know. He might be a hacker, he might be in kahoots with the sim creators themselves. He says Cyberworld's name out loud in ep 12, and instead of proclaiming of looking for some way to escape, like most of the others seem to be looking for, he seems intent on conquering the world instead. Which could mean that either he likes it here, or he has some deeper connection to the world than we know.
He also might be some sort of orb console in of himself. He could have edited that orb to look like/become scrap so that it couldn't be used again. He's the only bot shown to have powers to siphon energon from other bots and seems to have some sort of pull on the world with those pink sparkles things.
I think he's an exception to a possible world rule of "no energon = you die". Because he's the only bot we see having a sort of "downed" form, and his current form: when he was in the desert, maybe he edited himself to look rusted, hid his tail, etc., so that he could hide from everyone because they were onto him/jumping him and he needed to escape. Then, when he'd picked up enough energon from Team Prime, he edited himself again to return to his original form. Because see this picture:
One twitter user pointed out that if you look at the shadow right behind him, it's not the shadow of 'Ron' at all, but has the horns and stacks of Galvatron. Which is excellent foreshadowing. Not just to what happens later in the episode, but maybe of properties of powers we don't know of yet from him related to world-editing?
His behavior in episode 24 is also mysterious. He could have easily taken that crate they were fighting over for himself, but didn't. Power-ups mysteriously appeared in the area. And he also proclaims that he knew "keeping [Team Prime] alive was a good idea". He knows something, he's up to something... He also finds Megatron's axe (the one that hurt him when it hit him) "archaic", which is interesting; how long has he been here, or has he even been part of the outside world at all? No other weapon could hurt him but this one...
But we also know that he survives till season 2, because a teaser clip of s2 shows him fighting a cosmically-powered energon-surged Bumblebee. So he may be setting up to be the overarching big bad of the entire series after all.
Hell, when the world glitched out and we saw those pink particles fly around, at the end of the episode, some of them flew into him/wherever the hell he was. Maybe he's not just siphoning bots, but the energy of the simulation itself! Maybe he's going to threaten to literally consume the world and all of its inhabitants, Unicron-style, which would probably kill everyone, and then return to reality and take over?
It's all a stretch, but he IS a vampire. We can't rule him out literally siphoning the entire world. But hey, that's just a theory. A Galvatron theory. And personally I'm very excited to see where it all goes.