#I mean it did have the Thirteen which were introduced in Aligned and used TFP's theme as their motif

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Honestly I really do have to wonder why Airachnid of all characters was made to be Sentinel's loyal second in command in TF One. Like why did the writers choose her?

Not that her being here is a bad thing, she's great, I'm just genuinely curious because I don't see much of an obvious answer

Like all the other generally important characters of the movie make sense, either being well established characters within the franchise and/or typically in a role relevant to the movie's story. I'm not sure that latter part made sense, I mean like how Sentinel is usually a "predecessor" to Optimus' position as Prime, as well as flawed ruler of Cybertron, so him being the ruler of Cybertron/Iacon makes sense in the movie. Or to an extent Elita-1, who's prominence in the series has only been increasing in more recent years, but she's also supposed to be like Optimus' female counterpart in her original role, and she shares a backstory with him in g1, which is where the name Orion Pax originated, so like she fits here in relevance too I think. Does that make sense? I think I overexplained

But like, Airachnid isn't nearly on the level of relevance as any other major character in the story, being a character who first debuted in Transformers Prime, and as far as I'm aware has never had particularly strong ties with pre-war Cybertronian government/Sentinel. She feels like such a strange addition in comparison to everyone else

I mean there's some stuff I can maybe see as reasoning for her there. Like how TFA Sentinel had a strong connection to Blackarachnia, who's a character very similar to Airachnid and I feel like is meant to basically be her replacement, and they chose Airachnid instead because of BA's whole techno-organic thing and turning into a spider, while Airachnid just looks like a spider in robot form and turns into a helicopter

And also while Airachnid is a Decepticon, I'm pretty sure in Prime she tended to be more self-serving than devoted to any cause (though she'd never join the Autobots), eventually being more like a third party after Megatron decided to get rid of her. Similar with Blackarachnia honestly, in Beast Wars she doesn't seem particularly loyal to the Predacons, and she basically didn't interact with the Decepticons past the TFA pilot, she was pretty much a separate party. And seeing as how Airachnid was part of a group from before the war that both sides hate in One, it makes sense to have Sentinel's second-in-command be someone who's not too staunch on their faction loyalty. Though I'm also given to understand in earlier drafts of the movie, she was meant to join the Decepticons in the end, so I'm not so sure on this logic. Also, it is ironic when you compare her previous incarnations' self-serving nature to her being seemingly 100% loyal to Sentinel

And also also, maybe they just wanted a cool, more unique-looking character, maybe particularly one that's female since there's only one other major female character in the movie. And the other most prominent female Decepticon, Slipstream, is a Seeker, and so is inherently tied to Starscream and the other Seekers (who also seem to make up the majority of the High Guard we see?), so spider lady it is

I don't know, I'm just genuinely curious, because there doesn't seem to be any clear-cut answer as to why Airachnid specifically is here as Sentinel's loyal second-in-command