There may be a Transformers: Beast Wars reboot on its way to Netflix judging by a recent tease from the company. The Transformers franchise kicked off in 1984 with a toy-line of vehicles that could transform into robots and a cartoon series developed primarily to sell said toys. In the decades since, Transformers has grown into a worldwide brand that includes not just toys and cartoons, but comic books, novels, video games, and billion dollar-earning, live-action blockbusters. On the big screen, the most recent movies have been the latest in Michael Bay's series, Transformers: The Last Knight, and a Bumblebee spinoff; while the small screen has hosted several new cartoons and will again with Netflix's upcoming Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy.
Transformers: War for Cybertron: Siege is the first installment of the trilogy and is set to release July 30 on Netflix. It will chronicle the beginning of the Autobot and Decepticon conflict while they're still on their home planet, Cybertron. The outcome of this war will lead the Autobots and Decepticon, led by Optimus Prime and Megatron, to land on Earth to begin the trilogy's second installment, Earthrise. This is the series that is sure to be most familiar to longtime Transformers fans as its premise is basically identical to the original 1984 cartoon. The final trilogy chapter is titled Kingdom, and that name alone has many speculating the show will introduce the Autobots and Decepticon's descendents: the Maximals and Predacons. These Transformers utilize animal shapes instead of vehicles and were first introduced in the 1997 cartoon, Transformers: Beast Wars. Now, Netflix has added fuel to that fire with a recent tweet possibly confirm Kingdom as a Beast Wars reboot.
In a tweet from Netflix's @NXOnNetflix account, the title for Transformers: War for Cybertron: Kingdom was confirmed and the likely introduction of the Beast Wars characters was all but. In the tweet (below), Netflix included ape and dinosaur emojis as well as phrases like "go ape" and "get your claws out" - all which appears to point to the animalistic Maximals and Predacons appearing on Kingdom and even directly references their leaders, Optimus Primal and Megatron, whose animal forms are that of a gorilla and a Tyrannosaurus rex, respectively.
While the Generation 1 Transformers have appeared in countless reboots since debuting in the 1980s (not to mention those live-action blockbusters), the Beast Wars characters haven't been seen much outside of books and comics since their original series and its sequel, Beast Machines. Still, though the Maximals and Predacons may not have the same widespread name recognition as their vehicular predecessors, the cartoons were very popular and remain so today. And similar to how The Tranformers franchise had its resurgence when the original fans (the children who watched the first cartoon in the 1980s) became adults, now is a perfect time for a Beast Wars reboot to capitalize on the nostalgia of former kids from the 1990s.
Interestingly, as the final installment of the whole Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy, it may be that in this telling the Maximals and Predacons won't simply succeed their Autobot and Decepticon ancestors, continuing the war for another generation, but fight alongside them. Beyond the title, Kingdom, no other details are known about the third series, but as it's the conclusion of a trilogy, there's a good chance that characters from the first two series would return. As such, the Maximals and Predacons may not necessarily be descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, but off-shoot factions that appear around the same time. Either that or there's time travel is involved, which isn't really out of the realm of possibility for a show where robots disguise themselves as animals and cars. In any case, if a Beast Wars reboot is truly on its way, fans hopefully won't have to wait much longer for confirmation.
Source: Netflix