Thoughts on Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime (Transformers 1986)

I've been into the Transformers franchise for maybe three months now, and I've found myself thinking about Hot Rod/Rodimus a lot lately.

He's such a tragic character to me, and I know part of his tragedy is due to Hasbro's influence and some misconception about their target audience at the time, but from a narrative standpoint (if you can really get that serious about the g1 cartoon/movie) it's like the universe decided to hate him specifically.

He started out so happy, too. A little brash and arrogant, maybe, but I feel like that makes it worse somehow. Almost like "putting him in his place" you know? Or "knocking him down a few pegs."

Either way, I think what I'm trying to say is that I think he's a really compelling character. He follows the whole "hero's journey" for the most part, but due to Optimus' return he never really gets to the "fulfillment" part of the journey. And that's just an incredibly sad situation to me.

Like, Optimus didn't ask to be revived, when he was found I can only assume he was in some kind of stasis/offlined state. And while Rodimus was the one to initiate having him revived I don't think handing the Matrix back was his true intention, he genuinely cared about Optimus and evidently felt a lot of guilt over his death. Maybe reviving him was his own way of atonement.

Speaking of returning the Matrix, Rodimus seemed happy enough, maybe even eager to hand the Matrix over, but I can't help but see it as confirmation of all his worst fears and doubts.

He wasn't good enough, he wasn't meant to be a leader, he wasn't a fraction of what Optimus was.

But it's not like Optimus could have refused, could he? Both Rodimus and Optimus had expectations and I think at that point it was expected that Optimus would step up as leader again.