Transformers One: The Quintessons’ Franchise History Explained

Transformers One is the new prequel film that chronicles a pivotal point in the history of the Transformers: the fight for their home planet Cybertron, which ultimately created two opposing factions – the Autobots and Decepticons – led by two monumental leaders, Optimus Prime and Megatron (respectively). However, Transformers One takes things back to the time when Optimus was just “Orion Pax” (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron was his best friend, “D-16” (Brian Tyree Henry). Both future leaders are working as miners while missing the key component that would let them access their full transformative abilities. However, when Orion pushes to go searching for the long-lost Matrix of Leadership, he and D-16 make a startling discovery about Cybertron’s entire social order. 

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

It’s been teased in Transformers One trailers that there is another alien race in the film – and that is definitely the case, as the race known as Quintessons are eventually revealed to be the real rulers of Cybertron. Miners like Orion Pax and D-16 are kept working (and kept from transforming) so that Cybertron’s leaders can supply the Quintessons with Energon, in exchange for retaining their positions of authority. 

The Quintessons are depicted as a frightening techno-organic race with squid-like tentacles – but how loyal is Transformer One being to the franchise canon? 

Transformers: The Quintessons’ Franchise History Explained

Like so many things in Transformers canon, there have been several revisions of the Quintessons’ backstory and history. They were first introduced in the Transformers G1 era, appearing in Transformers: The Movie (1986), as a multi-faced mechanical race living on the nightmarish mechanical world of Quintessa. The Quintessons held mock trials and executed their prisoners by feeding them to the Sharkticons. They only appeared in a small sequence of the movie, but their story in Transformers lore would only grow from there. 

In different retcons of the story the Quintessons have been revealed to be the creators of Cybertron and the Transformers (with the Decepticons having been their weapons of war) – or as a different mechanical race who saw the Cybertronians as a less-evolved race, and conquered them. Either way, the framework of the story is the same: The Quintessons use deception and trickery to keep the Cybertonians under their control, working or fighting for sport until the Transformers master the art of transformation and drive the Quintessons off of Cybertron. From there the mythos gets much more intricate, with the Quintessons launching schemes like hiding on their world, Quintessa, and influencing Optimus Prime through the Matrix of Leadership to serve their ends.  

In short: Transformers One is putting its own spin on the franchise lore about the Quintessons and Cybertronians, as well as giving the Quintessons a re-design to make them look more like an alien race mixing the organic and technological. When Transformers One ends, there’s still a war for Cybertron arc to play out, with the Cybertronians vs. the Quintessons – and then the more familiar Cybertronian Civil War between the Autobots and Decepticons for control of the planet. Sounds like a great trilogy arc to us. 

Transformers One is now playing in theaters.