I finally read Spotlight: Megatron, and, far from making his MtMtE development seem too abrupt, it sealed the deal on its believability for me.
What we come to understand from this little interlude is that Megatron has literally no close or healthy relationships. We know why, due to later revelations in MtMtE: his loss of Terminus taught him ‘not to get attached’. He even resents Soundwave, who is his most genuinely loyal lieutenant. The closest thing he has to a ‘normal’ relationship with anyone is Starscream, and it’s an abusive one. In which Megatron is the unequivocal abuser and holds all the power. (Here is some excellent meta on Megatron’s relationship with Starscream, with which I agree completely.)
And the thing is, Megatron’s not a psychopath. (That is, a person with shallow emotions who is literally incapable of forming meaningful bonds or feeling any kind of shame/remorse.) Not like Overlord is. Not like Shockwave became after being subjected to Shadowplay. Megatron has certainly acquired a taste for sadism over the course of the war, but he didn’t start in that place. He genuinely cared for others at one point in his life. (In a way that didn’t cause him to resent the objects of his affection, like he does with Starscream.) Indeed, he’s chosen to isolate himself precisely because he doesn’t want to deal with the pain of loss again. And it’s made him completely miserable. For all his pretty rhetoric, his war is ultimately a temper tantrum. A ‘riot’, as Starscream says in MtMtE. And Megatron has convinced himself that happiness waits for him on the other side.
But once victory is in his grasp, he finally begins to understand that he’s been lying to himself. Because he doesn’t know how to be happy. His clumsy, last-ditch efforts to reignite the war in Robots in Disguise show just how right Starscream was in All Hail Megatron: Megatron has no clue what to do once the war is over. What he described to Optimus in Chaos Theory is one big empty platitude. It’s very likely that he’s been subconsciously sabotaging himself for eons, just to keep the war going longer.
This is why I think Megatron’s arc in Dark Cybertron is really just him being tired. The well of hatred that he’s been using to sustain himself for 4 million years has finally run dry. At this point in his life, with his legacy revealed to be a sham, hating somebody like Bumblebee – and constantly lying to himself – takes emotional energy that he just doesn’t have anymore.
This is the state he’s in when he joins the Lost Light: only bothering to put up a token effort to postpone his inevitable execution in order to spite Starscream. And joining the Autobots because he lacks the energy to even attempt to walk an unbeaten path.
Then, while on the Lost Light – for the first time since his days as a miner – he has actual relationships again. And, at this point, I think it’s still largely due to sheer exhaustion. Because Megatron is not a psychopath. For him, ‘not getting attached’ takes effort. So, for the first time in his life, Megatron basically falls headfirst into a support network. (I don’t count Terminus, since that relationship was manipulative and toxic in its own right.) And he finds, to his immense shock, that it actually makes him happy.
Which only serves to reinforce his regrets. Because he realizes that he’s wasted 4 million years doing nothing but perpetuating his own misery, while doing everything in his power to spread that misery around.
Sometimes, it takes a drastic shift in environment to get one to see the toxic and self-destructive patterns in one’s life. Had Megatron not been sent out on the Lost Light, I think there’s a very good chance that he would have returned to his old ways. He couldn’t have possibly realized just how miserable he’d been until he had a point of reference to compare it to. And once he’d found that sense of peace at last, there was no going back for him. Because his motives were never selfless, no matter how much he convinced his followers that they were. If they had been, the Decepticon cause would’ve never devolved so far into sadistic depravity. From the very start, his ‘cause’ was ultimately about his own self-actualization.
So when he found that actualization on the Lost Light instead, his change of heart was irreversible.
In short: by showing just how toxic Megatron’s relationships with his inner circle were, Spotlight: Megatron brought into stark relief precisely why the Lost Light had such a profound impact on Megatron as a character.
Hey so not to butt in but if you answered “medieval torture rack,” you should look into inversion tables. The idea is that they hang you upside down like a bat and stretch out your back using your own gravity. My dad had chronic back pain for years and swears by his.
They’re not exactly cheap, but you can get a basic one for like $100-200.
Plus, it’s really fun to yell “PULL THE LEVERRRR” as you swing backwards like you’re about to slide through a tunnel into a secret underground lair.
