Tigerhawk

Tigerhawk is the answer to a question the series had been avoiding for two seasons: what the Vok actually intend to do about the Transformers wrecking their timeline. Introduced in "Other Victories", he is the fused bodies of Tigatron and Airazor, de-sparked and rebuilt by the aliens into an emissary, a Transmetal II Fuzor with power far beyond anything either side has fielded. He announces himself, states his purpose, and starts dismantling the Predacons.

He is barely a character in that state, which is the point; the Vok have made a weapon out of two people. What redeems the concept is what happens next. Tarantulas captures him and attempts to hijack that power for his own plan to erase Autobots, Decepticons, Maximals and Predacons alike, and in the process accidentally exorcises the two Vok inhabiting the body and kills himself. Meanwhile Cheetor, unconscious, meets the disembodied sparks of Tigatron and Airazor, which fuse. That fused spark takes Tigerhawk's body, and the being that stands up is neither of them and both, speaking with Blu Mankuma's voice and choosing, freely, to join the Maximals.

He has one episode of that before the end. In "Nemesis (Part 2)" the Decepticon warship rises and Tigerhawk flies straight at it alone to buy the Maximals time to reach the Ark. He is annihilated. It is a deliberately unglamorous death for the most powerful character in the series, and the show does not linger on it.

The entry is short because the character is short. Tigerhawk exists for three episodes and functions mostly as the closing note on Tigatron and Airazor's story.

Transmetal II Fuzor tiger-hawk body with flight, immense strength and durability, twin heavy cannons, and Vok-derived energy manipulation including the ability to summon lightning and generate destructive energy fields. He is comfortably the single most powerful combatant in the series. Limits: he is still vulnerable to ambush, as Tarantulas demonstrates immediately, and no amount of individual power is a match for the Nemesis's main batteries.

• Tigatron and Airazor: he is literally made of them, and their fused spark is what makes him a person rather than a weapon.
• Cheetor: the Maximal who communes with the fused spark and effectively midwifes Tigerhawk's return to himself.
• Tarantulas: his captor, who tries to hijack his power and is killed by the attempt.
• Optimus Primal: accepts him into the Maximals with no hesitation, and loses him almost immediately.

3H Enterprises' Primeval Dawn separates Tigatron and Airazor back into individuals, which effectively unmakes Tigerhawk; the cartoon offers no such possibility. Otherwise the character is barely used outside the show.

Destroyed by the Nemesis in "Nemesis (Part 2)" while attacking the warship alone to buy the Maximals time. The fused spark of Tigatron and Airazor is presumed lost with him.

• Voiced by Blu Mankuma, who also voiced Tigatron, giving the fusion audible continuity with one of its halves but not the other.
• The Transmetal II Fuzor toy was a large and elaborate figure released near the end of the Beast Wars line, and its size reflects the character's in-fiction power level.
• Tigerhawk is the only character in the series created directly by the Vok, who otherwise act only through machines and abductions.
• The name is a straightforward compound of his two source characters' beast modes, unlike most Beast Wars names which are G1 reuses or original coinages.
• He holds the shortest active run of any major Beast Wars character, appearing in three episodes.

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.

• Whether Tigerhawk is a third individual or simply Tigatron and Airazor in one body is never settled; the show has him speak of himself in the singular, but the convention comics treat the fusion as reversible.