Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy - Siege successfully revitalized and reimagined the classic robots in disguise, turning their battle on their home planet into the Autobot's darkest hour. Based on an accompanying toyline from Hasbro, the show will continue with its upcoming next season: Earthrise.

Featuring the fallout of Optimus Prime's spiriting away the Cybertronian artifact known as the Allspark, the recently released teaser trailer has the Autobot leader's team facing off against a whole new band of foes. Called the Mercenaries, these Transformers are neither Autobot nor Decepticon, though their ranks include several familiar Decepticons.

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There have been several factions outside of the Autobots and Decepticons in the franchise already, namely the diminutive Mini-Cons of the Unicron Trilogy. There was also the Cybertronian faction of the Transformers: Generation 2 comic book, who refused to classify themselves as Autobots and Decepticons. Though somewhat similar to the Generation 2 faction, the Mercenaries are a fairly recent addition to the mythos, In fact, it seems that the Netflix take on the concept will be mostly original. First introduced in 2019's Transformers: War for Cybertron trading card game, the Mercenaries are a legion of Cybertronians who have cast off faction loyalties, though not for any moral reason. Instead, their only loyalty is to cold hard cash, and they'll serve the highest bidder to get it.

The name also recalls the team led of soldiers led by the bounty hunter Lockdown in 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction. Perhaps to reference this, the trading card game version of the Mercenaries included Lockdown, though his design hued closer to his original Transformers: Animated counterpart. Other members included Deadlock, who eventually becomes the Autobot samurai Drift, as well as Mudflap, Nightbird and Octane (billed as Octone for legal reasons). As mentioned, the show's version of the team is completely different, having essentially none of the characters who were Mercenaries in the trading card game.

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Judging from the images in the trailer, the lineup of Mercenaries in the show are characters from the recent toyline, including Conehead Seekers Ramjet, Dirge, Thrust, Exhaust, Bug Bite and Doubledealer, though not all of them were marketed as Mercenaries. Rather conveniently, these characters almost all use preexisting designs from the show, being simply recolors/retools of the Starscream, Wheeljack and Bumblebee models.

Doubledealer appears to be their leader, which is backed up by his toy being released as a large Leader Class figure. Doubledealer beforehand has been a relatively minor character in the franchise, with his original toy's biggest claim to fame being its release in Japan as the unrelated Doubleclouder. This continues the show's use of more minor characters in the series to tell exciting new stories, such as what it did with Impactor.

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The Mercenaries were actually introduced in the first season, though their faction wasn't explicitly spelled out. Toward the season finale, Bumblebee and a few other Autobots encounter the moneygrubbing Soundblaster. Though he physically resembled Soundwave in all but color scheme, his personality was entirely different, and he only entertained the time of those who could pad his pockets. The character wasn't seen after Bumblebee's squad escaped his lair, so it's likely that he could return in the second season.

The premise, as showcased in the teaser trailer, seems to hint that the Mercenaries are on a deserted planet that the Autobots find themselves on after taking the Allspark off of Cybertron. Whether they're hired by Megatron to capture Prime's group or not remains to be seen, but they certainly give the Autobots a whole new group to wage their battle against.

Developed by Rooster Teeth Studios, Transformers: War for Cybertron - Siege features the voice talents of Jake Foushee as Optimus Prime, Jason Marnocha as Megatron, Linsay Rousseau as Elita-1, Joe Zieja as Bumblebee, Frank Todaro as Starscream, Rafael Goldstein as Ratchet, Keith Silverstein as Jetfire, Todd Haberkorn as Shockwave & Red Alert, Edward Bosco as Ultra Magnus & Soundwave, Bill Rogers as Wheeljack, Sophia Isabella as Arcee, Brook Chalmers as Impactor, Shawn Hawkins as Mirage, Kaiser Johnson as Ironhide, Miles Luna as Teletraan I & Cliffjumper and Mark Whitten as Sideswipe & Skywarp. The series is now streaming on Netflix.

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