Depth Charge

Depth Charge is a revenge story wearing a manta ray. He arrives in "Deep Metal", pulled through a transwarp portal in the present day while hunting Protoform X, Transmetalised in transit and dumped on prehistoric Earth. He scans a manta ray, tells Cheetor his name, and leaves him stranded on an island. He has no interest in the Beast Wars, no interest in the Maximal chain of command, and no interest in the fact that the fate of history is being decided around him.

The backstory does the work. Depth Charge was the security officer at Colony Omicron when Protoform X escaped, and he was the only survivor of the massacre. He spent years hunting X down, caught him, and then watched the Maximal Elders refuse to execute him, because X's spark, an artificial replication of Starscream's immortal one, cannot be destroyed by ordinary means. The Axalon's secret mission was to dump the pod in deep space. Depth Charge holds Optimus Primal personally responsible for a compromise he regards as cowardice.

David Sobolov voices him as permanently controlled anger, and the show does not soften him. He costs the Maximals the Sentinel defence system in "Changing of the Guard" by breaking off mid-mission. He joins the team grudgingly and never really joins it. Rattrap, of all people, is the character who gets closest to him, in "Go with the Flow", protecting a human child.

He gets what he wants exactly once. In "Nemesis (Part 1)", ambushed on the ocean floor, he drives an energon crystal into Rampage's spark and detonates it, killing them both. It is the only way to kill Rampage and he almost certainly knows it. The show gives him no last words and no funeral.

Transmetal manta ray beast mode with high-speed underwater manoeuvrability and a hovering flight mode; physically one of the largest and most durable Maximals, a match for Rampage in raw strength, which almost nobody else is. Armed with tail-mounted blades and heavy energy weapons. Limits: he is not a team fighter, his refusal to coordinate actively harms Maximal operations, and his obsession with Rampage makes him trivially easy to bait, which is exactly how Dinobot II captures him in "Feral Scream Part 1".

• Rampage: the entire character, a hunter and a monster locked together, ended only by mutual destruction.
• Optimus Primal: open contempt over the Elders' refusal to execute Protoform X, and the Axalon's disposal mission.
• Rattrap: an unlikely working partnership, the only Maximal Depth Charge appears to actually like.
• Cheetor: he saves Cheetor's life on arrival and then abandons him on an island, which sets the tone for everything after.

IDW's Beast Wars Sourcebook and related material keep his history as the show gives it. Fun Publications and IDW have both used the Colony Omicron massacre as backstory for other characters. No significant divergence.

Killed in "Nemesis (Part 1)", detonating an energon crystal inside Rampage's spark on the ocean floor and destroying them both. His body is never recovered.

• Voiced by David Sobolov, who has since become a franchise regular, voicing Grimlock in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Depth Charge again in later material.
• His toy was a large Transmetal manta ray released in 1998; because the character debuted in season three, he never received a first-wave organic beast-mode figure, only Transmetal versions.
• He was revived as a toy under the Transformers Universe line years after the show, alongside Optimus Primal and Rhinox.
• The name is a reuse from G1's Pretender Depth Charge but the character has no relation to him.
• His arc was written specifically to give Rampage an ending, since Rampage's spark had been established as effectively indestructible and the show needed a character willing to die to solve it.