On a day trip to Philadelphia, the Maltos discover an underground Cybertronian fighting ring, the way a lot of humans feel about Cybertronians and where Bumblebee’s been.

This is, initially, the first episode this season that really feels unsteady. We’re two stories deep on Bumblebee being off the grid because he’s been exposed so the show’s opening, with the Maltobots arriving in Philadelphia undisguised, feels a little odd. Likewise the fact that they run into Bumblebee at all, given that they haven’t been looking for him. Nothing here doesn’t make sense but if I’m struggling to put together that it isn’t safe for them to go looking for ’Bee, the show’s kid audience probably is too.

Getting past that moment pretty quickly though, ‘Home’ turns into a surprisingly personal and deeply optimistic season finale. There are three strands here: the fight club, the Cybertronians discovering the concept of prejudice and Mandroid. As I’m sometimes wont to do, we’ll work backwards.

Mandroid returns! with two cybertronian arms this time and Diedrich Bader is doing really strong work here. The character isn’t a cackling maniacal science villain, he’s a man clearly extremely broken by his experiences who has decided he’d like to be broken more. Bader delivers his lines matter of factly and precisely, and that gives Mandroid way more threat than the pieces of Cybertronian he’s attached to himself. The finale, where Agent Croft brings him into GHOST and he looks with glee at all his captive Decepticon test subjects is especially unsettling. Also the mind control badges at the core of this story, which make anyone a real threat. Stephanie Lemelin does great work this episode and the show cleverly steers into the fact Hashtag is physically the largest of the Terrans to make them deeply intimidating. The sight of Hashtag remote piloting cars at her siblings is impressive. The sight of them generating some form of mass force field to protect themselves and then her, doubly so. Yes the episode finishes with them joining hands and winning through love. Yes that matters. Yes it works.

The prejudice plot works better. Here the show smartly splits the kids up, and has Nightshade get a moment of quiet personal revelation. As I suspect, Nightshade is going full superhero and when they rescue Sam, voiced very well by Alisha Mullaly, the two get talking. The show does such gentle, kind work here and Nightshade’s joy at learning the term non-binary, especially as a mechanical lifeform, is really genuine and sweet. The show’s handling of Nightshade, and their identity, is one of the best approaches to the issue I’ve ever seen and in a season already strong, this is a real highlight.

The flip side to that plot is also impressive as Robbie meets up with an old friend and he and the other Maltobots discover that the world they’ve grown up in is one that doesn’t exactly welcome them. This is one of those spots where Earthspark feels thematically very close to something the Bay movies paid lip service to: consequences. Earth is different now, and always will be, and the question of what to do about that is key to this plot. The final beat, with a piece of graffiti changing from TRANSFORMERS GO HOME to TRANSFORMERS ARE HOME is again open and sweet and kind and I hope the show continues being a gently relentless champion of these ideas in season 2.

Now, let’s talk about fight club. The Bot Brawl is such a fun idea, brings back two of the most fun villains we’ve had so far and is one of the most entertainingly designed sets we’ve seen in a while. The arena being built of subway cars is such a cool idea and the episode has tremendous fun with every aspect of this plot. There’s some hard hitting, crunchy fight scenes that feel desperate in a way this show often doesn’t. There’s a lovely ‘pro wrestling match’ between Jawbreaker and ’Bee that will make wrestling fans giggle and the action beats are constantly smart and inventive. Plus GRIMLOCK! The king of the Dinobots makes his Earthspark debut and he is the biggest of fun. Also he’s just plain BIG and the game of keepaway the kids play with him as they try to get Mandroid’s badge off him is really fun and again, just a little scary. Best of all, Jawbreaker gets some great lines here and Cyrus Arnold continues to find the balance between likable goof and large cybertronian brickhouse. There’s even a nice physical throwback to an early episode, with Jawbreaker scaling an obstacle in a very similar to when he trained with Elita-1.

Verdict: ‘Home’ is an expansive, ambitious finale that disguises itself as a personal story. By the end of the season we’ve got some answers on where ’Bee is, a major new player introduced, a major new plot arc in motion and the Maltos clearly gaining some new abilities that Dot in particular isn’t sure about. This entire season has been great but this, aside from the early wobble, is one of its best episodes. Earthspark really is fantastic and I’m very excited for what season 2 has to offer. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart