Transformers One (2024): Cast, Plot, Ending and Sequel Status

The group's trail ends in a hidden cave, where Alpha Trion sits beside the bodies of the other Primes. He tells them Sentinel Prime murdered the real Primes to take the Matrix, and that Sentinel has been sending Energon to the alien Quintessons in return for power. Sentinel also took away cogs to build the hierarchy that keeps the miners down. Alpha Trion hands over the Primes' cogs, which let the group transform, along with a chip holding proof of Sentinel's crimes.

Airachnid, Sentinel's lieutenant, ambushes them and captures Alpha Trion, and Sentinel executes him. The friends are then taken by the High Guard, the Primes' old army, who are rebelling against Sentinel. D-16 beats their leader Starscream and takes charge, and Orion grows uneasy about how aggressive his friend has become.

Sentinel's forces strike next, the evidence chip is destroyed, and D-16, B-127 and Starscream are captured. D-16 learns that Sentinel stole the cog of his hero Megatronus Prime, and that Sentinel is branding him with Megatronus's face. Encouraged by Elita-1, Orion rallies the remaining High Guard and the miners and returns to free them. Orion, Elita-1 and B-127 capture Airachnid and broadcast her memory recordings across the city, which turns the people against Sentinel.

D-16 defeats Sentinel, but he and Orion fight over whether to kill him. D-16 accidentally shoots Orion, who falls to his apparent death, and D-16 then kills Sentinel, takes Megatronus's cog and names himself Megatron. The Primes and Primus revive Orion as Optimus Prime and give him the Matrix, and he defeats Megatron and exiles him and his followers.

The ending of Transformers One turns a friendship into the franchise's founding war: Optimus Prime restores the cogs and Energon on one side, and Megatron raises the Decepticons on the other. Optimus uses the Matrix to give the miners their cogs back and make the Energon flow again. He becomes the leader of Iacon, calls his followers the Autobots, and sends a warning telling the Quintessons to stay away. Megatron turns the exiled High Guard into the Decepticons, uses Megatronus's face as their symbol, and declares war on the Autobots.

In my opinion, the smartest choice is the accidental shot. D-16 does not set out to kill Orion. He hits him in the middle of an argument over whether to kill Sentinel, and then does the killing anyway. It could be argued that this makes Megatron's turn a tragedy rather than a heel turn, and that is a very different engine from Transformers 2007, where Megatron is already a villain who crashed on Earth and was frozen in the Arctic.

The cog is the other beat worth tracing. The film opens on a society where a cog decides who counts, and Optimus ends it by handing cogs back, so the Autobot cause begins as a repair of a caste system rather than a war aim. Paradoxically, the Decepticon symbol is Megatronus's face, the same face Sentinel was branding onto D-16 after stealing Megatronus's cog, so both sides are built from one injustice.

For continuity, this film sits first in chronological order, ahead of Bumblebee (2018), where Optimus sends the scout B-127 to Earth while the Autobots are losing the war. In The Transformers: The Movie (1986), Optimus defeats Megatron but is mortally wounded, and Transformers One shows how those two rivals got there. Our Transformers timeline lays the eras out in order.

As for a part 2, TheWrap reported on October 6, 2026 that Paramount said Michael Bay is in early talks to direct an untitled live action Transformers film set in modern day, with Steven Spielberg overseeing the franchise and Shia LaBeouf not returning. That next film has no title, date or cast, so its status is in development. A direct follow up to Transformers One is speculation for now, and the new Transformers movie page tracks what is confirmed.