Arcee

Origin

Arcee is an alien and a member of the robot species of residents of Cybertron. She is the result of an experiment by Nova Prime’s chief scientist Jhiaxus to introduce gender to the group of aliens (though the robots have no defined gender they are generally regarded and referred to as males.) Arcee was the first test subject and her CNA was altered, making her into a female. She was however still regarded as less than what was desired and the project was soon abandoned.

Creation

The Transformers were a popular toy series that were crossed over into the medium of comics, having first appeared under the Marvel imprint in a miniseries in 1984. This soon led to a regular monthly series, but the Marvel storylines held that natives of Cybertron had no genders were genderless and thus having a female Transformer would contradict this (though this was not the case with the British version of the comic book characters.) Thus Arcee’s first appearance was with the film adaptation of the animated film version in 1986.

Character Evolution

Despite being one of the few female Transformers, Arcee generally avoids the stereotypical behavior associated with female comic book characters as she is shown to be more warrior and robotic than truly female.

Major Story Arcs

IDW Publishing

The ordeal proved to be extremely traumatizing for Arcee. Her mind struggled to process the changes that had been inflicted on her. She was now strangely different from other Cybertronians, and they could subconsciously sense it. Rather than refer to her with the usual pronoun of “he”, her fellow Cybertronians and Autobots consistently referred to her as “she” without even considering what that meant. Arcee’s inability to cope gave way to an endless violent rage towards Jhiaxus, and she began hunting him and all of his experiments through the universe.

Arcee’s quest for vengeance on Jhiaxus tore a swath of violence and destruction through the universe so fierce that her fellow Autobots could no longer condone her actions. Ultra Magnus came after her to bring her to justice for the crimes she had committed. The two Autobots met in a stellar cartography facility Jhiaxus was secretly using as one of his many labs, and Arcee refused to surrender peacefully. Though stunned by how powerfully she fought, Ultra Magnus succeeded in bringing her down with a shock grenade.

Arcee was brought to an Autobot penitentiary on Garrus-9 called the Last Resort, where she was stripped down to her spark and locked away. She found some measure of peace and harmony during her incarceration, floating in a simple stasis field.

When a Decepticon strike team hit the Last Resort to retrieve the Monstructor gestalts, the Autobot defenders were outgunned. Fortress Maximus felt he had no option but to release Arcee, who was the Autobot with the highest threat level being held in the penitentiary. At first, Arcee asked why she should care about the Decepticon attack. Fort Max informed her that the gestalts were another one of Jhiaxus’ experiments, and that proved to be all she needed to know. She went into battle against the Combaticons who were overrunning the prison. She turned the tide against their assault, but they were still able to teleport out with the Monstructor gestalts. In the aftermath, she convinced Fort Max and Jetfire that she was their best agent to track down the gestalts, because like Jhiaxus and all of his experiments, they gave off a feeling she could track.

Arcee began tracking down Banzaitron, the Decepticon who took the Monstructor gestalts, by catching up to the freelance Decepticon operatives he used for the attack. One by one, she tortured information on Banzaitron’s whereabouts from them until it all led her to a cavern where Banzaitron, Axer and Gutcruncher had been left damaged in an attack. At her mercy, Banzaitron tried to make a deal with her to help locate the missing gestalts and possibly Jhiaxus. She eagerly accepted.

However, Banzaitron’s help was not as necessary as she thought. As a looming crisis progressed, the Autobots discovered Jhiaxus’ location and needed someone they could spare to teleport in and deal with him. Arcee was the clear choice. Skram was sent by Fort Max to retrieve her, and she was sent in to ambush Jhiaxus. Jhiaxus tried to flee from her through the pool that leads back to the Dead Universe, but the Autobot Hardhead rose from the Dead Universe and blocked him. This was long enough for Arcee to run her sword through Jhiaxus from behind and hack his head off. Hardhead informed her that Jhiaxus was effectively immortal, but this was fine with Arcee. It meant she could kill him again and again, which was exactly what she did.

Powers and Abilities

Arcee has similar abilities to the remainder of the Autobots. She can transform into a specific vehicle in which she has heightened speed and in robot form has heightened durability, strength and is effectively immortal. She also employs energy weapons.

In Other Media

Television

Transformers: Prime

Darkness Rising

On Earth, Arcee and Cliffjumper are driving around scouting a large desert area for any Decepticons when Cliffjumper runs into them and finds he needs back up. Arcee and the other Autobots arrive only to find it’s too late and then Ratchet finds that Cliffjumper’s life signal went offline indicating that he had died. The Autobots then mourn Cliffjumper’s loss and then Arcee drives off only to get pursued by two Decepticon drones. Soon, she loses them and parks in front of a fast food restaurant where Jack Darby works. As Jack’s shift ends, he sees Arcee’s motorcycle form and marvels at it but then Arcee sees the two Decepticon drones from before and is forced to retreat with Jack. She tries to hide him in an alley and tells him to keep her a secret but one of the drones goes after him and she is forced to take him with her. Eventually she is forced to battle the drones but was overpowered until Bumblebee came but even then they had trouble with the drones. Luckily, Bulkhead eventually showed up and the drones retreated. The next day, Arcee shows up at Jack’s school to tell him that he’s one of the few who know of the Autobots existence and at that point she is noticed by Miko and is forced to take both of them to the Autobot base where they meet the other Autobots. Shortly afterwards, Agent Fowler, one of the few humans who know of the Autobots appears and has a short discussion with them before leaving. Then Ratchet notices that Cliffjumper’s life signal came back online and they use the ground bridge to teleport themselves to where the signal is coming from hoping to rescue him. They find themselves in an energon mine and as they battle the Decepticons there, Arcee spots Cliffjumper and approaches him only to find that he’s not who he was and that he was covered in dark energon. Soon, Starscream appears and he blows up the mine hoping the destroy the Autobots but they retreat in time. As they get back to based, Arcee says that something was strange with Cliffjumper and then she feels faint and Ratchet examines her. He finds a small trace of dark energon on her and she says that Cliffjumper was covered with it. As she decontaminates herself, she is then ordered to take Jack back home. The next day, she wakes up Jack and takes him back to the Autobot base. When they get there, Optimus and Ratchet take their leave and tell Arcee she’s in charge and she simply goes on patrol, takes Bumblebee with her, and tells Bulkhead he’s in charge.

Later on when Bulkhead invades the Decepticon ship in an attempt to rescue Agent Fowler, Arcee and Bumblebee show up and assist. They fight their way through the ship and make it to where Fowler is being held captive. Starscream threatens to shoot him if the Autobots don’t back down, but Arcee manages to sneak up on Starscream and threatens to shoot him if he attempts to shoot the human. They manage to free Fowler and escape. Later, Jack decides he no longer wants any part of the Autobots and as he leaves Arcee tells him not to tell anyone of their presence or she’ll hunt him down and as he leaves, she sighs and has a sad look on her face. She later visits Jack when he’s going to work and says she came of her own free will and tells him that part of her misses him for some reason. Jack then decides to go back to the Autobots and she returns to the Autobot base with him. She then goes on a mission with the other Autobots (excluding Ratchet) to stop the Decepticons from using a space bridge to send a massive amount of dark energon to Cybertron and revive all the undead there. The Autobots decide that they ultimately have to destroy the space bridge to stop Megatron and Ratchet uses a schematic to discover how to destroy it. With Ratchet’s direction, Arcee reverses the current of the bridge causing it to start collapsing but as they attempt to escape Megatron attacks and Arcee is badly injured and nearly dies. Bumblebee brings her back through the ground bridge to the Autobot base where the Autobots hope she won’t die like Cliffjumper but she manages to survive.

Transformers: Animated

She was a school teacher before the war. She was originally meant to command Omega Supreme. When the Decepticons were about to take crucial information of secret weapon, Omega Supreme she gave the command to Rachet to wipe all her memories. This put her in a comatose state for long time. Sari and Ratchet were able to revive her completely. she was able to reactivate Omega Supreme in order to defeat Decepticon clones.

Films

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Arcee finally appeared in the sequel but as 3 motorcycles that share the same mind, and transform into humanoid robots. They originally were going to let her three bodies combine to form a bigger version of herself but was omitted from the movie. In the toy line for the movie they gave her other two bodies names. The blue one was called Chromia, and the dark purple body was called Moonracer.

Video Games

Transformers: Forged to Fight (2017)

Arcee is a Warrior class playable character and enemy & is a 1-4 star rank character.

Game Bio: She may be slight of frame, but she’s stout on loyalty and devotion to protecting her fellow Autobots and their human allies. Mess with her dear friends and you might get a blast between the eyes, courtesy of her extraordinary sharpshooting skills.

Released on April 5th, 2017.