Tarantulas

Tarantulas is the Predacon nobody controls, including the Predacons. Alec Willows voices him with a cackle that the show never asks the audience to find charming, and he is written as a genuine sadist rather than a comic mad scientist: he vivisects, he experiments on the unwilling, he keeps a private lair, and he works for Megatron only for as long as it is convenient. In "The Web" he intercepts a Maximal protoform and rewrites it into Blackarachnia, then maintains a psychic hold over her that she spends two seasons trying to break.

His technical work drives more of the plot than anyone's. He builds the mind-control drones, the cyber-raptors, the bi-polar disruptor cannon in "Go with the Flow", the spider drones that drag the Axalon into the lake, and, in the single largest reveal about him, he quietly locates and restores the Decepticon warship Nemesis. He also reprograms Rhinox into a Predacon in "Dark Designs", which is the closest the Predacons ever come to actually winning.

The reveal in "The Agenda (Part II)" reframes him entirely: he is a mole for the Predacon Secret Police, reporting to the Tripredacus Council, and he has never been on Megatron's side at all. His own plan, laid out to a captive Tigerhawk in "Other Victories", is to use the emissary's power to erase Autobots, Decepticons, Maximals and Predacons alike from the timeline, on the grounds that he and the Council have "other origins" and would survive it.

That line is the show's most famous unexplained sentence, and Tarantulas dies before answering it, killed by his own detonating energon crystal while trying to exorcise the Vok.

Tarantula beast mode with wall-crawling, webbing, and a paralysing venom; later a Transmetal upgrade with a wheeled vehicle configuration. Robot mode carries a hand cannon and web-lines. His real weapon is his laboratory: mind-control drones, cloning apparatus, psychic linkage, the bi-polar disruptor cannon and the restoration of the Nemesis are all his work. Limits: physically weak in a straight fight, repeatedly and comically crushed by falling rocks during his feud with Dinobot, and his refusal to cooperate with anyone means he has no reliable backup.

• Blackarachnia: his creation, victim and psychic puppet, and the character who works hardest to destroy him.
• Megatron: a nominal commander he betrays continuously and who never entirely trusts him.
• Dinobot: a running feud in which Dinobot keeps dropping rocks on him, and which he ends by landing the wound that kills Dinobot in "Code of Hero".
• The Tripredacus Council: his real employers, and the source of the unexplained "other origins" claim.

IDW's Beast Wars: The Gathering and The Ascending revive Tarantulas and expand the Tripredacus Council and his hidden loyalties considerably, treating him as a major recurring antagonist. Fun Publications material also brings him back. He is one of the most frequently resurrected Beast Wars characters outside the show.

Killed in "Other Victories", detonating an energon crystal while attempting to exorcise the Vok from Tigerhawk, destroying himself and the aliens. His restored Nemesis is discovered afterward and becomes Megatron's final weapon.

• Voiced by Alec Willows, who from season two also voiced Cheetor, meaning the same actor played the show's youngest hero and its cruellest villain simultaneously.
• In Japan, Tarantulas was sold both individually and in a "Vs" two-pack with Dinobot, and Takara's January 1997 redecos gave several first-wave Beast Wars figures more show-accurate colours.
• Blackarachnia's toy is a repaint of the Tarantulas mold, and the show turned that cost-saving reuse into the plot point that he built her.
• The "other origins" line in "Other Victories" is widely read by fans as an allusion to Unicron, but the series never confirms it and Tarantulas dies in the same scene.
• He was killed twice in the series, apparently destroyed with Ravage's ship in "The Agenda (Part III)" before returning; his final death in "Other Victories" is self-inflicted.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• The "other origins" claim about himself and the Tripredacus Council is never explained on screen. Fan consensus points to Unicron; IDW's later comics develop the idea, but the cartoon leaves it open.