Main Voice Cast for Transformers Earthspark Revealed with Alan Tudyk as Optimus Prime
Friday, July 22nd, 2022 5:45pm CDT
Category: Cartoon NewsPosted by: william-james88 Views: 57,017
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The news was revealed during an exclusive panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2022 featuring voice cast members Danny Pudi (Bumblebee), Kathreen Khavari (Twitch), Zeno Robinson (Thrash), and co-executive producer Dale Malinowski and executive producer Ant Ward. Mike Cecchini (Editor-in-Chief, Den of Geek) moderated the panel, which also revealed a first look at the series.
The new voice cast and their Transformers: EarthSpark characters are:
Sydney Mikayla (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts) as “Robby Malto,” a smart 13-year-old boy with an abundance of moxie and charisma. Robby is frustrated by his family’s recent move to a small town until he discovers Transformers bots and is now living the ultimate dream.
Zion Broadnax (Day Shift) as “Morgan ‘Mo’ Malto,” Robby’s 9-year-old younger sister. Though she’s emotionally mature for her age, she’s able to look at everything with a wide-eyed sense of optimism and hope. For her, family comes first no matter who you are or where you’re from.
Benny Latham as “Dot Malto,” the mother to Robby and Mo, surrogate mother to the Malto-bots, and wife to Alex. She’s a loving mother and ex-soldier, so she can flip that switch when she’s pushed.
Jon Jon Briones (Ratched) as “Alex Malto,” the father to Robby and Mo, surrogate father to the Malto-bots, and husband to Dot. He’s a college professor with a Ph.D. in Transformers History who loves sharing his Filipino heritage and wealth of Transformers knowledge with his human and bot kids. He can also rattle off dad jokes like a pro.
Kathreen Khavari (Dead End: Paranormal Park) as “Twitch Malto,” an Earth-born Terran born out of primordial sludge in the cave waters of Witwicky, Pennsylvania, like her brother Thrash. She’s a keen observer of everything around her.
Zeno Robinson (Big City Greens) as “Thrash Malto,” an Earth-born male Terran and a cheeky wild child. Like his sister, Twitch, he was born out of primordial sludge in the caves of Witwicky, Pennsylvania. He’s a bringer of fun and good times with a happy-go-lucky attitude.
Danny Pudi (Community) as “Bumblebee,” a fun-loving veteran Autobot who serves as a mentor to the Terrans as they learn what it takes to be Transformers robots. Bumblebee has a lot to learn about being a big brother and role model. He’s suddenly in a position of authority, which makes him nervous and afraid to show any cracks.
Alan Tudyk (Resident Alien) as “Optimus Prime,” a courageous Autobot leader who has forged a new alliance with humans. The birth of the Terrans has given him renewed hope for the future.
Rory McCann (Game of Thrones) as “Megatron,” the father of the Decepticon faticon who believes in making any sacrifice necessary for the survival of Cybertronian civilization. He’s a headstrong idealist but isn’t unwilling to adjust his strategy when victory hangs in the balance.
Cissy Jones (The Owl House) as “Elita-1,” the physically gifted and confident second-in command of the Autobots. Elita-1 is fair and never overbearing to the team. She listens to everyone and is a bot the Terrans look up to.
Diedrich Bader (Better Things) as “Mandroid,” the villain. He was a scientist-soldier in the war, jaded and ultimately, very anti-Cybertronian. With this new anti-Transformer ideology, he believes Earth and its humans need his protection and surmises that the annihilation of all Cybertronians is the best for the planet.
Transformers: EarthSpark Release Date
Transformers: EarthSpark will debut exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. in November, and on Paramount+ and select Nickelodeon channels internationally.
This article was last modified on Friday, July 22nd, 2022 5:46pm CDT
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Posted by MaximalNui on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:23pm CDT
Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark details revealed.
Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look. On the plus side Megatron is going to be a tiltrotor, but that aside...oof.
You do realise this is just the main cast, right? Still plenty of opportunity for good and bad representation on both sides. Heck, as far as I can recall we never knew Fowler or Silas even existed when they first announced Prime, and they were pretty significant characters.
So, is the preview clip region-locked? Because I can't see it.
Also, minor pet peeve, but why do we get the name of every human character - even the Terran Transformers get a human last name - and the human villain only gets a "code name"?
Posted by First-Aid on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:31pm CDT
Posted by o.supreme on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:36pm CDT
Posted by Sabrblade on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:42pm CDT
Masterforce?First-Aid wrote:More humans than bots. Gee...where has that happened before?

Posted by DeathReviews on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:45pm CDT
Starscream: "A good Transformers cartoon?"
Megatron: "A.... a GOOD Transformers cartoon!? Something decently written with a well-paced plot and an interesting cast of characters, broadcast on a non-exclusive platform entirely from within your KITCHEN?"
Starscream: "Yes?"
Megatron: "May I SEE it?"
Starscream: "...No."
Posted by Sabrblade on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:54pm CDT
So, Optimus and Bumblebee look based their evergreen designs, Megatron's got a copter altmode like Animated, Elita-1 is a tough-looking offroad truck, Wheeljack looks a LOT like his Studio Series Bumblebee movie toy, Swindle seems to have a mostly original design, and Bombshell looks based on his Combiner Wars Legends class toy.
Posted by -Kanrabat- on July 22nd, 2022 @ 6:57pm CDT
Why it's still a thing?

Posted by Sabrblade on July 22nd, 2022 @ 7:01pm CDT
There was another one on YouTube a bit ago, but Paramount flagged it immediately.-Kanrabat- wrote:Region locked video.
Why it's still a thing?

Posted by MaximalNui on July 22nd, 2022 @ 7:25pm CDT
...now I want to hear Optimus say "I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar".
Posted by Deadput on July 22nd, 2022 @ 7:53pm CDT
The only thing that actually bothers me about this show from what we know about it is literally the entire head design of the female-child, it's literally an uncanny hell-spawn of Unicron with the size of the eyes and the head and well everything compared to the other human designs in the show which look fine.
Ah and it being behind Paramount + so I'll never watch this show legitimately since I'm in Canada and we don't have that service here.
Posted by Sabrblade on July 22nd, 2022 @ 11:22pm CDT

Posted by william-james88 on July 23rd, 2022 @ 1:49am CDT
First-Aid wrote:More humans than bots. Gee...where has that happened before?
Please count again and tell me how many humans vs how many bots there are.
Posted by blackeyedprime on July 23rd, 2022 @ 2:49am CDT
Posted by Evil Eye on July 23rd, 2022 @ 7:58am CDT
MaximalNui wrote:Evil Eye wrote:Earthspark details revealed.
Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look. On the plus side Megatron is going to be a tiltrotor, but that aside...oof.
You do realise this is just the main cast, right?
Yeah, hence why I said "major" character.
Posted by Dr. Caelus on July 23rd, 2022 @ 8:01am CDT
Evil Eye wrote:Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look.
Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. But then, I guess most of us aren't.
I am disappointed that the main villain is human though. On first read I thought he was a Transformer that hated Transformers, which sounded really interesting. Kind of like IDW Sandstorm.
I'm really interested to see what Megatron's role is going to be.
As far as humans' involvement in war as passive observers versus active participants, one thing the Bay movies did get right was the weapons. Budiansky's bios back in the day mixed sxifi tech with conventional weaponry, calling out machine guns, missiles, and bombs, especially for the Decepticons. They used high-end versions of weapons that are standard fare for Earth military vehicles. Their armor, when called out as exceptional, was still made of familiar materials, and it wasn't usually called out as exceptional.
The cartoon bent more scifi, though no more so than G.I. Joe - Transformers had laser guns and scifi shenanigans, but so did humans - who were frequently inventing things advanced enough that the Decepticons needed to steal. Bots could also be repaired oe outright built on Earth using resources available here, and your average Autobot could be roughed up a bit even with a traffic-speed collision, so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.
Posted by AllNewSuperRobot on July 23rd, 2022 @ 8:18am CDT
Dr. Caelus wrote:so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.
One was...


Anyway, region-locked video. Did we get a release date? As long as it isn't as sleep inducing as Siege, I'll at least give the pilot episode the benefit of the doubt.
Posted by Evil Eye on July 23rd, 2022 @ 8:24am CDT
Dr. Caelus wrote:Evil Eye wrote:Oh dear. The character designs still look hideous, and making your only major white human character a villain is not a good look.
Sometimes I almost miss the days when we were so smugly secure in our privilege that we weren't wringing our hands over representation in media and expecting every cartoon family to have a token white man in it. But then, I guess most of us aren't.
Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways; if you're claiming to be diverse, you need to be, well, diverse. And "Everyone is one race except the villain" is not that, regardless of what those races are. It could be that everyone was from Venezuela except the villain who was Mongolian and it would be equally ridiculous.
Prime, for all the things I found subpar about it, did it right. You had a white kid, a Japanese kid, a Latino kid, a black agent (also the best character incidentally) and it never felt forced. Likewise, Animated has the main human character be of Indian descent, and she's one of my favourite humans in Transformers. This? It just feels very much like pandering. Not even to black fans or even black kids- rather, to people who literally just want to see THEIR worldview given credit, THEIR egos stroked (even if they aren't black themselves) at the expense of everybody else, even though they can literally go to any other property for that already.
A mainstream cartoon having representation of other people in it? That's cool, no problem. A show aimed at a black audience? Why not? But mixing the two together seems incompatible- you're going for a show that's supposed to have as broad an appeal as possible specifically targeting a relatively niche audience.
Honestly I would have thought the classic Japanese approach of "Mukokuseki" would have been a better one- making race beyond basic skin colour pretty indeterminate and honestly utterly unimportant to the story or character's personality. To children- you know, the actual audience for these shows- even assuming they care about being "represented" beyond basic skin colour and sex, their main draw to a character will be "They're cool/cute/funny!".
Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.
Posted by Dr. Caelus on July 23rd, 2022 @ 9:12am CDT
AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Dr. Caelus wrote:so they weren't usually supposed to be invincible.
One was...
Yes! Literally the exception that proves the rule! THE big bad, resurrected by an evil god of destruvlction to be his ultimate warrior SHOULD be nigh unstoppable, and that loses a lot if everyone down to Bumblebee is essentially made of immortal playdoh that just soaks damage like a sponge.
Evil Eye wrote:Look at it this way- if it were the other way around and the only revealed main character who WASN'T white was the mad scientist villain, there'd be complaints. It works both ways...
It doesn't actually work both ways.
Posted by PFCMoon10 on July 23rd, 2022 @ 9:16am CDT
Like dude, it's not woke or an agenda. We just want a chance to be represented and to join in the story. Why do some of you get so upset for that? And you complain about the only villains being white bothers me even more. Transformers isn't suddenly about to demonize all white people by making them villains. And NO. This show isn't just aimed at black people. If I can enjoy Generation 1 even though the main cast is white there's no reason you can't look past the main characters here being black. Let us have a chance to be the lead without making us feel terrible for it. We're not a political device, we are human beings and when we read other fans saying stuff like this it hurts us and makes us feel like we'll never be truly accepted by the Fandom. I've always wanted to draw transformers comics and be involved with the brand but comments like Evil Eyes make me think that might never happen. You can not like the designs, that's fine, but the whole Black comment and White villains comment was unnecessary.
Posted by PerfectVision on July 23rd, 2022 @ 9:16am CDT
Evil Eye wrote:Plus, quite aside from anything else, the character designs are objectively hideous.
I found some photos of the trailer.Talking about design:Mandroid is the best looking one to me.Between humans?Nono!He reminds me vaguely of the professer Mortum.
No one will be surprised if the two terrans "pets of death" get buffed at some point.