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- And the Fandom Rejoiced:
- By the YouTube comments for the Siege trailers, the lack of humans and the gritty setting has drawn many cheers.
- But those cheers were drowned out when Kingdom was revealed as a Beast Wars comeback.
- Like Cyberverse before it, there wasn't one human among the characters.
- Author's Saving Throw: After simply being there in Siege, Starscream lives up to his trope in Earthrise and Kingdom.
- Character Derailment: A very generous way of describing the fandom's reaction to the series' take on Predacon!Megatron. Rather than a smooth-talking Magnificent Bastard who ultimately became the most dangerous Cybertronian to ever live, he's but an Ascended Fanboy for the original Megatron. Not helping matters, like at all, is that instead of David Kaye's Bond villain impersonation, he sounds like an overeager teenager.
- Cliché Storm: A common complaint about Siege. Jetfire was a Decepticon at first, the Autobots want to keep the AllSpark away from Megatron so he can't pervert it, while trying to launch the Ark.
- Continuity Lock Out: Not only is the show heavily serialized, a few professional reviewers have noted that it presumes a good deal of familiarity with the Transformers brand, never explaining anything in huge detail. For instance, while any Transformers fan would be able to understand everything when they hear the name "Alpha Trion", the show never fully fleshes him out and explains his reputation to new viewers.
- Critical Dissonance: Critics adored the show, liking the darker tones and how nothing stays the same for very long. Fan reception, while overall positive, proved more divisive and generally fell into "So Okay It's Average" territory, some not liking how some characters were changed while the voice cast controversy made it so that some went in with a negative perception.
- Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: A common complaint about the show's first two seasons. No matter what the Autobots did, things never got any better with many finding their Adaptational Jerkass portrayal to be off-putting. Thankfully averted in the third season.
- Family-Unfriendly Aesop: An Accidental Aesop that seems to run through the show is: if you have the chance to win using underhanded tactics and through betraying your morals, take it.
- Hype Backlash: A Netflix original Transformers show that received rave reviews from professional critics? Understandably, the fandom had high hopes for this show and unavoidably, it couldn't deliver to everyone's expectations.
- It's Short, So It Sucks: One of the biggest complaints about the series is that only six episodes per season leaves the show with very little time to explain anything or develop its concepts.
- Memetic Loser: After two major Sacrificial Lion moments, Cliffjumper's cameo in Siege left many a fan questioning if he's now dead. Though the show ultimately never answers if he did die then and there, he probably died by the time Kingdom rolled around.
- Narm:
- The character models are extremely toy accurate, even compared to the 2019 comic. Chromia notably has her 2019's toy gigantic back kibble.
- Kingdom seems to treat The Reveal Galvatron is Megatron's future self like it's some gigantic twist, even though they have the same voice and both sport an Arm Cannon. To any Transformers fan, it's a rather forced moment.
- Older Than They Think:
- Despite many fan complaints about the Maximals and Predacons being the size of the Autobots and Decepticons rather than human-sized as they were in Beast Wars, most other times that the Maximals and Predacons have appeared outside of their original continuity, such as Transformers Animated and IDW's Robots in Disguise, they've been the same size as the Autobots and Decepticons. To some fans, it's even an Author's Saving Throw.
- Predacon!Megatron's Character Derailment. The Japanese dub of Beast Wars had previously reimagined the Manipulative Bastard as a more comedic character. 2021 audiences should at least count themselves lucky that the Predacon remained a fighter and Not-So-Harmless Villain instead of a Sissy Villain.
- Snark Bait:
- The Transformers', Megatron's in particular, luscious lips.
- Many a joke has popped up about the series sharing a name with the 2010 video game while being more tonally similar to Fall of Cybertron.
- Like Transformers Energon, the Cybertronians seem to run a lot instead of using their perfectly good alternate modes.
- It does not help that their on-screen transformation sequences are very few, or just plain off-screen.
- They Copied It, So It Sucks: This seems the major complaint about Jake Foushee's portrayal of Optimus Prime. Compared to Transformers: Cyberverse, where Foushee merely sounded like Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime and was allowed to put his own spin on the character, here he seems to be trying to emulate Cullen's acting which just makes the portrayal seem rather Narmy.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- For his first non-comic appearance, Impactor has a very small role in the story.
- The toyline for Kingdom has many Maximal and Predacon figures alongside the Autobots and Decepticons. But one notably absent Predacon is the pyromaniac Inferno. To the ire of many, it seems this is the result of the fire engine Autobot who shares the name being among the line. This continues into the cartoon itself. Not only is Inferno absent from the Predacon ranks, but of their Beast Wars Season 1 ranks, Tarantulas, Terrorsaur and Waspinator are also missing.
- The robot mode of the Ark. Surely this titanic Autobot, strong enough to punch down the Nemesis, will appear for more than once and play a critical role in the final battle right? Right?
- Unicron. He's the Bigger Bad as always, and Starscream outright says that he's been manipulating the Cybertronian race from the beginning but he never shows up to harass the main characters.
- Deseeus. After trying to set themselves up as the Big Bad of Earthrise, they receive no mention or follow-up in Kingdom. The mention of the Quintesson Empire is also never expounded upon.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- The Earthrise toyline has a "Galactic Odyssey" collection which mapped out the Ark travelling to various Cybertronian colonies which the cartoon sadly did not reflect in its second season.
- The Maximals and Predacons come from a Bad Future very different from the utopian technocracy one that most Beast Wars media portrays them as hailing from. This is never really explained in huge detail and it's eventually Ret-Goned.
- Likewise, Rattrap flags that the Maximals and Predacons were born without the AllSpark. This too is never explained.
- The show never does actually explain what it is that turned Optimus into Nemesis Prime.
- Unexpected Character:
- Given that Siege was hyped as featuring the A-listers from The Eighties, Cog's appearance in the trailers was quite a surprise.
- But not quite as much a surprise as Soundblaster appearing in episode 5.
- Earthrise had Bug Bite as a character.
- Given that Hasbro has been eager to hold onto the sheer marketability of the "Megatron" name, having Galvatron show up at all was a massive surprise. And that was topped by having him form a Big Bad Duumvirate with Nemesis Prime.
- The Untwist: The Ark did not in fact blow up by going through the Space Bridge.
- The Woobie: Ultra Magnus. To protect his troops, he decides to try and bargain for peace. For his efforts, he gets brutally tortured, psychologically harassed and broken, and then shot point-blank by someone who was once a close friend. And to add insult to injury, his corpse is then defiled as part of Shockwave's evil plan that nearly dooms the Autobots.
- WTH? Casting Agency: Much like Transformers: Cyberverse, the new voice cast has been met with some skepticism, Soundwave and Shockwave's voices in particular.