As the new Terrans settle into their new lives, Bumblebee directs Twitch and Thrash to teach their young siblings. In Thrash’s case, that leads to a surprising, and sweet, moment with Nightshade. Twitch and Hashtag have a much more stressful day.

The show’s decision to really explore what it means to be a unique personality in a species which is as mutable as Cybertronians pays off straight away. Z Infante’s Nightshade, the first nonbinary character in the history of the franchise, is charming and different without that difference being their sole personality. Their interactions with Robinson’s Thrash, making what’s revealed to be a secret underground level to the barn so the Terrans can all live peacefully, is especially smart. It’s a sweet moment and it also establishes Nightshade’s perspective as very different, but complimentary, to the others. Very smartly done.

The core plot, unfortunately, isn’t quite as impressive. Khavari and Stephanie Lemelin as Twitch and Hashtag are great and their chemistry leads to some really fun moments including Hashtag inadvertently choosing a GHOST van as her disguise. The comedy of errors that ensues is great and cleverly highlights how the other characters are already changing. Twitch doesn’t panic and calls Bumblebee when things go wrong. ’Bee doesn’t panic and call Prime. They just deal with the issue, something that would have been impossible three episodes ago.

The issue they deal with is the problem. Twitch inadvertently causes a Decepticon jailbreak and ’Bee and Twitch rescue her in the chaos. But crucially, that’s all they do. The nature of the show’s premise is such that the Autobots can’t reveal themselves yet. That’s understandable, but seeing ’Bee, Twitch and Hashtag for the most part sneak around the Decepticons and leave GHOST to it feels if not cowardly then certainly deeply weird. The situation is, by and large, under control by the end but it’s an uncomfortable moment in a show like this that I hope gets explored.

That aside, there’s a ton to enjoy here, not the least of which is GHOST becoming a team rather than a uniform. Agent Schloder is back, as is Agent Croft, voiced by Kari Wahlgren. Hashtag has a brief, fun hacking war with Agent Beghari voiced also by Kathreen Khavari and Hashtag’s inadvertent passengers are agents name for storyboard directors Alex Kwan, J.J. Conway, and Jordan Rosato. There’s a great modem gag too and Hashtag leaves the episode fully formed and interesting. It’s just a little odd that this is the route that got us there. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart