#I dont think hes TOTALLY irredeemable in Aligned but like. The dynamic...was perhaps not that healthy even in their friendship days

[classychassiss]

The Orion Pax episodes in TFP are interesting because they make good angst fodder on the surface level, but they've become more unsettling to me with time and a rewatch.

The first time I had missed entirely that Optimus was on Nemesis for months and not days like I thought. It sounds really good on paper to think of it as Megatron getting his old friend back but like...theres a two-fold wish fufillment thing going on here and thats: Orion Pax being his loyal and subservient Decepticon (as opposed to the Orion Pax who would argue with him and attempt to declaw his more extreme ideas) and having the pleasure of humiliating Optimus Prime by undermining him in front of the Autobots. And all of this happens with no memory and no sense of autonomy on OPs part, just the creeping sense of something being wrong.

And I think there is something sad about this in the sense that Orion Pax was never a Decepticon in name, but if things had been different he ultimately would have been. It isn't just about Megatron and their relationship to me, but its also the death of the cause and trying to come to terms with that. There is an immense guilt foisted upon Optimus that the revolution turned into a war. He knows he has to do what he has to do to keep the Autobots safe, but he also never 100% closes off the possibility that he could try to end this war diplomatically with Megatron if it means potentially stopping more carnage, nor does he 100% close the channel off for Decepticons to potentially work with them/defect to them. I wouldn't be surprised if a facet of his insistence on these morals is partly because of the guilt stemming from the party split and wanting to affirm that the Autobots are not the enemy, he is not an enemy, and that he does still believe in the core premise of the movement.

But then you see Orion Pax on screen threatened by Megatron, get beat up by Megatron's soldiers, and then eventually by Megatron himself, all while sporting a Decepticon badge. And you have to kind of sit there and think about the idea that Optimus might be his obsession, but that Orion Pax's worth is...questionable. It is a shame that Optimus doesn't retain the memories once he gets the Matrix back because like, I have to imagine this would have been another shattering epiphany that perhaps this perception of their fallout and the fallout of the revolution is still colored by that guilt, but that things were interpersonally broken long before then when it comes to Megatron.

Which is to say that its unclear if his treatment on the Nemesis as Orion Pax was a consequence of their war and the hatred Megatron has specifically for Prime and the Autobots or if this was always going to be the reality of how things would have played out regardless, the idea that Megatron has always had the ability to potentially hurt and discard Orion Pax down the line if he had pushed too far, even during the height of their friendship. One that Orion Pax vehemently defended even in the wake of some terrible things because he trusted Megatron at his core. One where Orion Pax did actively see the red flags but was led to believe that many of them were planted in bad faith by those who would undermine his friend and his movement for simply being a Gladiator. Only to then have all of that come back and bite him all over again.

Now you really have to question if the Megatron you thought you knew ever existed.