Blackarachnia

Major Story Arcs

Beast Wars

Blackarachnia was originally a Maximal protoform that arrived on prehistoric Earth with Optimus Primal‘s crew, but the Predacons captured her and had Tarantulas reprogram her as a Predacon. In the beginning she worked as Tarantulas’ assistant in all his plans because of her clever intellect and scientific abilities, but she was more ambitious than any Predacon or Maximal, loyal to no one but herself. She masked herself with false loyalty, until the power from a Vok floating island caused her to betray everybody, all to destroy the Maximals and rule the Predacons. When the Maximal Silverbolt appeared, they slowly developed a secret love affair. When she realized that Megatron‘s newest plan would result in her death, she finally joined Silverbolt and the Maximals, and later gained a Transmetal form.

Her creator based her design on a Japanese exotic dancer.

Beast Machines

“Dark Poison of my heart!” – Silverbolt

Surviving the Beast Wars, Blackarachnia became a more passive character. Hunted to no end on a Megatron-controlled Cybertron, she joined with Optimus Primal, Rattrap, and Cheetor to overthrow the tyrant. She was reformatted, giving her a new body that no longer looked like a Black Widow, but instead more like a pink and purple Daddy Longlegs Spider. Her love interest is still with Silverbolt, whom of which is no where to be found in the beginning of this series, but is later found to be teamed up with Megatron as a Vehicon. She later in the season manages to trap him in a green liquid material turning him back into Silverbolt.

Transformers: The Animated Series

Blackarachnia is one of the five main Decepticons. She has a different origin than she did in Beast Wars. Her new design though is almost the same as her original Beast Wars CGI model.

Blackarachnia is considered a freak among Decepticons. Some time ago she was an Autobot Academy student known as Elita One and friends with Optimus Prime and Sentinel Prime. However, during an excursion on a spider-like planet, Archa Seven, she wound up being overrun by the native spider creatures and was thought to have perished. She instead was forced to take on an alternate mode from the spiders, becoming a techno-organic spider-like being as a result. She despises this new form, especially on Earth, where her giant spider mode doesn’t exactly allow her to “blend in.” She will do anything to find a cure for her condition and doesn’t care how she does it, joining the Decepticons to find such a way while getting revenge on the Autobots she blames for her ordeal.

Powers & Abilities

In her mutant technorganic form, Blackarachnia uses her new-found power of ‘cyber venom’ to paralyze her enemies, and combines it with her natural ability to download and mimic character traits of other Transformers along with weaponry for a short amount of time with a simple touch.

Transformers: Prime

Due to trademark reasons, Blackarachnia’s name had to be changed to Airachnid. She is now a combination of a spider and a helicopter.