Shockwave stands out among the many thrilling and memorable Decepticons that have appeared in the Transformers films over the years. He also goes by the name Laserwave in Japan.
He is a Decepticon distinguished by two traits: physiologically, he has no nose or mouth, and the only facial structure he has is an eye across the front of his face. Cognitively, he uses the strict logic that can be expected of a machine devoid of feelings and articulates all of his strategies through calculations. Shockwave transforms into a Cybertronian cannon rather than an Earth Machine.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon – the true evil of Shockwave unraveled
One of the three minor antagonists in Transformers: Dark of the Moon was the brilliant Decepticon scientist Shockwave. He had a chilly devotion to reason. He was also one of Megatron’s most formidable Decepticon assassins. Some said that he was the only Decepticon with the strength to outmatch Megatron in combat. The Decepticons adore Shockwave because he is a battle machine unlike any other and one of the few who can match Megatron in strength. While some respect him just enough to cooperate with him, others go so far as to seek retribution for his passing.
When the Autobots were summoned to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant by Alexi Voskhod, the general counsel for the Ukraine Department of Energy, they were ambushed by Shockwave and his buddy Driller. This was a ruse to prevent the Autobots from discovering that the Decepticons wanted them to locate the fuel cell of the Ark inside Chornobyl. Before Optimus and his companion Driller descended below, he took the fuel cell from the Driller and released Shockwave.
Shockwave later participated in the Decepticon attack on Chicago. As Optimus Prime and the other Autobots entered the Decepticon-occupied city, Shockwave and his Driller materialized from beneath the caravan of Autobots. The Driller separated Optimus from his trailer.
Shockwave got off the Driller and started looking for the Autobots. He was to be distracted by the Wreckers, a group of Autobots that can transform into battle vehicles, by having machine guns fired at his armour. He fired at them, using the car as a shield, and as they fled, he menacingly continued to pursue them along the street, missing Wheelie and Brains, two little Autobots who had sped away by that point.
Following his discovery of individuals inside the building as a result of a desk that nearly struck him falling, Shockwave then gave the order to his Driller to destroy the structure and kill Sam, our protagonist, Epps, a Chief Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force, and their entire group. However, Optimus Prime used his flight apparatus to kill the Driller, and Shockwave, furious at the loss of his companion, opened fire on him, momentarily crippling him and rendering him inactive.
He then went on to team up with Barricade and Soundwave, two other Decepticons, to gather the surviving Autobots. Brains and Wheelie stopped the Decepticons from killing more of their victims by seizing a Decepticon gunship and sending fighters onto the battlefield.
Barricade, Shockwave, and other Decepticons retreated away. However, the human troops had prepared a trap for Shockwave, and while shooting at them, one of the parachutes crashed on him. His vision was then blasted out, dangling by its cords. Optimus Prime immediately charged back into the fight, and as Shockwave shot at him, the Autobot commander evaded the shot and hit Shockwave in the abdomen, smashing it.
Even this did not stop Shockwave, but Prime would not relent, punching him again, pinning the Decepticon down, and ripping his hanging wires out from his throat, killing Shockwave. Optimus then utilized Shockwave’s gun to destroy the city’s control pillar, eventually culminating in an Autobot win.
Shockwave in other Transformers movies
Before the events that occurred in the Dark of the Moon movie, Shockwave was captured on film in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen sometime during 2009, and the occurrence was written up for a newspaper story. A newspaper sheet with the heading “Mysterious Robot Spotted” was thrown away in Egypt and swallowed up by a rampaging Devastator.
Shockwave was designated as dead by the CIA task group Cemetery Wind five years after the Events of Chicago in Transformers: Age of Extinction. In this latest installment, we can also see that its design was discovered in Chicago and was used by KSI to produce the Two Head prototype, as evident from the name, with two heads instead of one. He had also obtained a new alt mode, a Chevrolet Trax.
This was duplicated three times by KSI. Galvatron later employs it, a resurrection of Megatron, to combat the Autobots. The first is murdered by the Hound, the next by Optimus Prime, who used the Lockdown explosive in Hong Kong, and the location of the third is unknown. He is said to have fled and gone into hiding.
In Transformers: The Last Knight, it is revealed that Shockwave participated in a war in the 1560s, and his adventures were documented in a painting. He later fought in World War I, in about 1917, and his silhouette was featured on a war banner. The Order of the Witwiccans kept both of these incidents hidden. Shockwave presumably did not know of Megatron’s entry on Earth in 1883, or that Megatron had discovered the whereabouts of the AllSpark, or that Megatron had fallen into the snow and frozen there while searching for the AllSpark.
As a result, following World War I, Shockwave opted to stay on Earth and not look for Megatron and Allspark at all until he received any new instructions. When Hot Rod, also known as Rodimus Prime, abducted Viviane Wembly, she said that her kidnapper would be better off as a renowned Transformer, such as Shockwave or Soundwave, presumably ignorant of how both Decepticons had died. Hot Rod responded by claiming he was more remarkable than all of them.
Although Shockwave was presumed dead, a twin of him emerges as Nitro Zeus, a fighter jet in the TRF’s captivity along with many other Decepticons, until Megatron frees him to look for Cade Yeager and the Autobots. They tracked them down to an empty city, where they received some unanticipated opposition from the Autobots Bumblebee, Drift, and Crosshairs. Cade had also pepped up the town with bombs that harmed only the Decepticons, unbeknownst to them.
While most other Decepticons were killed in the ensuing violence, Nitro Zeus was one of the survivors, but Cade still managed to flee. Nitro Zeus followed Cade to England, accompanied by Megatron and Barricade. Megatron soon betrayed TRF and began collaborating with Quintessa to destroy the Earth and restore Cybertron, completing what Sentinel Prime had started.
Nitro Zeus was on Megatron’s team when he assumed control over Prime’s crew after a twisted Optimus Prime broke loose from Quintessa’s grip. Rather than avenging Shockwave, Nitro teased the frail Autobot with his gun for squandering his opportunity to defeat Unicron. He then followed their captain to Stonehenge and joined his colleagues in observing as the celestial bodies collided but fled when they were attacked. He subsequently accompanied Megatron to Cybertron to see Quintessa and fight with the Autobots in the ultimate battle.
Shockwave reappeared in the Bumblebee spin-off with a look that was much more reminiscent of the G1.
The character was criminally underused in the movies
Shockwave was utilized sparingly in the Transformers film, appearing in only a few sequences and speaking only three lines. Shockwave’s role in the story is either as a contrast to Starscream or as Megatron’s truly capable lieutenant, whether he follows Megatron’s precise commands or seeks to replace him.
This would probably not be the case if the movies had the time to reveal the internal workings of the Decepticon military structure, and he would serve as a terrific main character then. But unfortunately, a film lacks the time and space that a series has to allow characters like Shockwave to develop, unless they are the main protagonist and not one of the villain’s lieutenants. So, what makes Shockwave tick probably just doesn’t qualify as something interesting enough to warrant extra time in a movie.
Shockwave was initially intended to play a more significant part and also have some lines, as shown in the Dark of the Moon comic book adaptation, which is based on an early draft, but this was later modified. This might be because actor David Warner, who’d been asked to play the role, declined it. Shockwave’s original voice actor, Corey Burton, modeled the character’s voice after David Warner. On the other hand, Burton refused the job because he did not want to be in a big-budget film.
Shockwave in the animated universe
Shockwave belongs to the Animated continuity family of Decepticons. He is an undercover operative working for Megatron. His alias, Longarm Prime, is the chief of Cybertron Intelligence and reports directly to Ultra Magnus. The covert Decepticon is the ideal agent for this job since he can change his voice, looks, and also his energy signature.
This places Shockwave in a perfect position to weaken and deceive the Autobots while providing strategic intelligence to his actual master. Longarm went to Autobot boot camp with Bumblebee and Bulkhead to demonstrate his trustworthiness. He rose through the ranks of the Autobot hierarchy over the years, eventually becoming the leader of the Intelligence Division himself.
Shockwave is exceedingly covert and frightened of being discovered, as befits a double agent. As befits a cartoonish villain, he will boldly reveal secrets if he believes he is winning. When he believes his cover is being exposed, he resorts to desperate measures. He is mainly voiced by Corey Burton and Jon Bailey in BotCon 2015.
Megatron enlisted Shockwave because his mass-shifting powers allowed him to imitate a broad range of forms and dimensions, finding it challenging for Autobots to follow him during infiltration and sabotage operations. These characteristics led Megatron to send him to join the Autobot military forces in order to ascend the hierarchy and eventually bring the unit down from within.
Shockwave was aided by Blackarachnia, another Decepticon, in creating an Autobot identity and form for himself from old historical documents. He enlisted in Autobot boot camp, where his drill instructor Sentinel Minor nicknamed him “Longarm” for his ability to extend his limbs to incredible lengths, which was actually a limited use of his ability to alter shape and size. However, in the initial days of training, he made a mistake and was observed communicating with Megatron by Bumblebee, who was actually recruited as a black sheep.
Although Shockwave escaped detection straight away, Bumblebee was alerted to the existence of a spy in the facility and assumed it was another recruit named Wasp, who he saw exiting the facility shortly after. Bumblebee sought assistance from the espionage-savvy Longarm, and Shockwave took advantage of the chance to draw all eyes away from himself. He advised Bumblebee not to inform their leader, Sentinel Minor, because then the young Autobot could claim full responsibility.
Unfortunately, Bumblebee’s efforts just led him into further difficulty, and his other recruits began to mistreat him, with Longarm standing up for him. After multiple failures by Bumblebee, Shockwave decided that something had to be done, and so during a training session, he converted the training equipment to live bullets in a bid to take Bumblebee offline and keep the entire traitor thing a secret. Bulkhead, fortunately for Bumblebee, derailed this plot.
Shockwave eventually discovered that Sentinel Minor planned to perform a full inspection, and he devised a plan for Wasp to take the blame onto himself. Shockwave, as Longarm, alerted Bumblebee about the approaching inspection, warning him that it was his final opportunity to locate the proof he needed after installing a Decepticon communication device in Wasp’s locker. Shockwave tripped Wasp, allowing Bumblebee to pocket Wasp’s storage key as Bumblebee assisted him up, enabling him to discover the communicator and present it to Sentinel. Wasp was eventually carried away to jail, and Longarm praised Bumblebee for his analytical work.
Shockwave afterward graduated from boot camp and rose to become the leader of Cybertron Intelligence. He stayed in this role, now known as “Longarm Prime,” lurking in plain sight for the fifty galactic cycles in which Megatron was stranded on Earth. To get the position, he assassinated Intel Director Highbrow. Longarm urged Sentinel to pursue the hunt for the crew of the ship, the AllSpark, and Megatron, when Optimus Prime’s spacecraft was lost. His appeals were ignored.
After regenerating himself and then the Decepticons on Earth, Megatron re-established communication with Shockwave at Cybertron and launched a plot to build a space link that would enable the Decepticons to take the world from inside. Wasp, now criminally mad, escaped from prison, and Megatron began receiving communications from his Cybertronian double agent. Bumblebee suspected Wasp again when Megatron’s hostage, Isaac Sumdac, sought to notify the Autobots of the whereabouts of the double operative by relaying a signal to their headquarters. He sent the information to Longarm Prime at Cybertron, but it had little effect.
When the finished space bridge struggled to operate, Megatron called Shockwave and told him to seek Cybertron’s finest space bridge specialist to assist in resolving the issue. Shockwave was taken aback when he discovered that the specialist had already arrived upon Earth; it was an Autobot named Bulkhead. Megatron later abducted Bulkhead and forced him to complete the space bridge.
The other Autobots took too long to stop him. They were then beaten by all the Decepticons and hung up to watch the bridge open. Shockwave exposed Longarm Prime, his alter identity, to the Autobots, revealing that he had previously provided Megatron an adequate access code and forced Bumblebee to suffer the humiliation of imprisoning an innocent Wasp. When Megatron attempted to put the space bridge to the test by transporting Optimus Prime over it, Shockwave promised his master that the “test subject” would be waiting on the other side.
Unfortunately, Megatron’s attempt to increase power led the space link to overcharge, erasing the access token and resetting the space link to arbitrary coordinates. Shockwave, now Longarm, told Ultra Magnus that now the Decepticons will not be capable of reaching the Cybertron Space Link nexus.
Shockwave then called Team Chaar, a team that had effectively gained control of a space link and was preparing to utilize it to enter Cybertron. Strika, Megatron’s General of Destruction, requested authorization to launch the assault, but Shockwave denied her request. She was supposed to stay with her crew and wait for Megatron, even if it would be megacycles, until he would reappear.
Not long after that, the whole Space Bridge Nexus went dark. Longarm inquired about the Cybertron Command, and it is then that Cliffjumper, an Autobot, told him that Ultra Magnus had commanded the shutdown to stop the Decepticons from gaining access to Cybertron. Agent Blurr, an Autobot of action, came just then and very swiftly notified Longarm that he had detected a communication between Megatron and the double operative on Cybertron, Shockwave, while on Earth.
Furthermore, Blurr noticed that Shockwave’s intonation did not match that of the accused Wasp, but a fast scan of the Cybertron Intel Archive could reveal the traitor’s actual identity. Longarm, taken aback, inquired whether Blurr had communicated this knowledge with anybody else. When Blurr answered that he hadn’t, Shockwave decided it was time to put a stop to him—for good.
Blurr evaded his first efforts and fled into the passageways surrounding the Nexus command center. Rather than pursue, Shockwave had the security hatches in the passageways crash close and lock in on Blurr, confining and crushing him. Longarm presented Blurr’s remnants to Cliffjumper at the Metroplex, referring to the little cube as “sensitive materials.”
In his private office, he got an incoming signal from Lord Megatron. They exchanged details of their separate setbacks, but Megatron informed Shockwave that he knew of a plan to keep the Earth Autobots from revealing Shockwave’s cover.
Longarm Prime then went to an Autobot High Council gathering, which is where Ultra Magnus determined that the Decepticon attacks were too well-planned to be spontaneous acts of sabotage. Instead, indicators pointed at a double operative among the Autobots.
Longarm cautiously noted that the Decepticon protests began following Wasp’s escape, revealing the source. Ultra Magnus approved and sent Jazz with Sentinel Prime to form an Elite Guard Unit to track down the fugitive. He then asked that the Autobots on Earth be contacted. Longarm, more concerned, announced that all communications, without exception, shall be routed via him first, for the purpose of security and Cybertron’s safety, of course.
Unfortunately, Longarm’s fixation on blaming Wasp was his undoing. When Wasp was on his way to Earth, Ultra Magnus chose not to tell him till the Elite Guard’s spacecraft was within sight of the planet. Shockwave attempted to call Megatron, knowing he was about to be revealed but received no answer.
Shockwave decided to do something about the situation because he had no other directions on how to proceed. He attacked and gravely injured Ultra Magnus, seizing his Magnus hammer in the process, in an attempt to inflict one last blow on the Autobots. Shockwave seemed to invade and assault Earth when the Autobots were locked in Soundwave’s virtual world. However, he didn’t really seem to accomplish anything other than set fire to an apartment building.
Shockwave lurked in an underground passage after fleeing, undetected, until Megatron called. The Decepticon commander, who was locked within Omega Supreme alongside Starscream and Lugnut, called Shockwave, who disclosed a technique to get Omega Supreme’s entry credentials.
Shockwave, on the other hand, was quickly found by Ratchet as well as Captain Fanzone. He quickly overpowered them and proceeded in search of Arcee, a female intelligence operative. To do so, he asked Rattletrap, an informant-bot, for directions. He evidently got lost and had to hide and wait for Fanzone as well as Ratchet to locate her. He fought Ratchet and seriously injured the aging Autobot.
During the combat, he discovered Ultra Magnus, who was still injured. Ratchet fired his EMP device across Shockwave as well as Ultra Magnus’ hammers, thereby killing him. Ratchet was then sidetracked by the temporary presence of Magnus Sentinel Prime. Shockwave abducted Arcee and fled to Omega Supreme, utilizing the access passcodes to travel into Earth’s atmosphere. He then embraced his freedom to publicly serve Megatron by switching into more appropriate colors, while Lugnut muttered angrily at Megatron’s designation of him as his most devoted follower.
Shockwave began working on the captive Arcee using an old datatrax from her days as a teacher prior to the Great War. Megatron informed his ever-loyal Shockwave that if any robot could gain access to the correct datatrax, it was only him. This, along with Starscream’s teasing, threw Lugnut into a furious rage, and he flung Shockwave out across the room as he pleaded Megatron’s favor.
In turn, Shockwave remarked that when Lugnut was fawning at Megatron’s feet, he’d put spark and servo in danger as a double agent. This did not go well, and the two purple Decepticons were fighting pretty shortly. Later, with both assigned to turn material from the shattered Decepticon flagship into Omega Supreme clones, Shockwave could be observed pointing and laughing at his rival’s plight.
Shockwave resumed working on Arcee and effectively repaired her to the point where her memory was erased. He did all this after dumping a piece of broken ship material and almost crushing a spying Bumblebee. Returning briefly to his alias Longarm state, he checked that she contained the activation credentials, so he removed the cables that kept her alive from her brain, forcing her back into hibernation.
He restarted Arcee outdoors, with the replicas ready for activation. Despite Longarm’s persuasion, she declined to give Megatron the activation codes freely. Instead, Shockwave had to put her back into hibernation and manually remove the codes, making no remark when they wound up in Lugnut, and Megatron declared Lugnut his most faithful lieutenant.
However, the codes Shockwave had taken from Arcee had lost a critical security upgrade patch, forcing him to build together a clumsy bypass involving Lugnut physically controlling the clones until he could collect the remainder of the code from Arcee.
As Shockwave searched for the fix in Arcee’s circuitry, Megatron became frustrated with Lugnut’s lengthy lecture on the grandeur of his Beloved Leader before doing anything with the replicas and furiously enquired of Shockwave whether he was finished yet. Shockwave said, laughing, that he was still thinking about it and that Megatron would have to transmit any commands via Lugnut for the present.
He apparently gave up on removing the patch. Instead, he set Arcee’s datatrax back to her instructional days on the surface of the moon as a trap, whilst he awaited to attack any Autobot who went for her as well as the Omega Supreme. Ratchet led the gang that transwarped there straight into the bait, forcing Ratchet to leave with Arcee as well as Sari Sumdac, as Bumblebee and Bulkhead faced their old classmate.
While Shockwave originally had little trouble attacking from a distance, he couldn’t cope with Bulkhead’s power Bot-to-Con and was left splayed on the moon’s surface. His cannon flung out of reach. He turned to Longarm mode in a desperate bid to gain time, neglecting to activate his synthetic coat of paint, but the duo of Autobots just weren’t pleased, and Bulkhead destroyed the cannon.
He was displayed before a vast crowd on Cybertron as an Autobot prisoner. Shockwave would be imprisoned in Trypticon Prison beside his overlord, the Stunti-Con Job, while his Kremzeek virus wreaked havoc on Cybertron. Shockwave humbly revealed that the goal was for Kremzeek to be released while the Decepticons were not on Cybertron.
Shockwave as observed in the comic books
In the comic book series by IDW publishing, Cybertron plunged into a dark age when the Empire of Primes was defeated. The AllSpark had been lost and discarded as a myth deep within Cybertron, and the planet desperately needed a star to orbit.
As energy grew increasingly limited, Cybertronians divided into tribes. Shockwave opted to support Sentinel Prime, who proclaimed to be a descendant of Primus himself. However, he was met with resistance from the non-believing Thetacons, and Shockwave assisted Megatron, Optimus, and others in thwarting their onslaught. Sentinel Prime ultimately triumphed, as he, along with Wheeljack, were victorious in recovering the missing AllSpark and finding a new star to orbit. This, unfortunately, did not sit well with Shockwave.
He was unsatisfied now that the conflict was passed, and he had lost sight of his mission. This surprised his old buddy Megatron, so Shockwave remarked to him that it was the adventure, not the goal, that he liked. Plus, the new sun was very brilliant. The following day, Megatron told Shockwave about listening in on a meeting between Sentinel and Optimus, during which Sentinel attempted to cede control to Optimus. He rejected him, unwilling to acknowledge he was also a Prime.
They stumbled across a Driller, a subsurface lifeform pushed to the planet’s exterior by the brand new energy pouring through it, who was battling a bunch of Hatchlings and the guardian Starscream. Shockwave was astounded by the species and described it as “magnificent.” After defeating it, he entered the Cybertronian Defense Force, which Sentinel put under Megatron’s leadership, to hunt down and eliminate dissenting Transformers.
After the Autobots launched the All Spark in the cosmos, Starscream entrusted Shockwave with command of the remaining Decepticons on Cybertron while he went in quest of his prize. Shockwave heard the AllSpark’s cry when it was discovered by Sector Seven during a confrontation with a group of Autobots. Shockwave sailed away in an extraordinarily fast spacecraft, pledging not to return alone without AllSpark, leaving Dreadwing in control of the remaining Decepticons on Cybertron.
Near 1908, he landed in Tunguska, Siberia. He was buried in a stasis lock for five years, mending until Soviet Russia discovered him. The Russians reverse-engineered Megatron’s technology to create nuclear power reactors using stolen knowledge from the United States, which had found Megatron in the same way. There were no digital traces of Shockwave’s presence, and his physical paperwork was lost, destroyed, shredded, or stolen in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s demise. The Siberian site was closed down, and Shockwave was forgotten.
Soundwave uncovered the satirical piece and its accompanying photos and concluded that it was founded on stolen Soviet papers. Chapter 4 of Convergence Megatron liberated Shockwave in 2010 and took him to his haven in Namibia, as he was anxious to resume slaughtering Autobots as early as possible. Shockwave and Astrotrain appeared on Earth at Dalian, China, at which point they promptly dispatched the two Autobots – Longarm and Salvage, and took materials for an unidentified construction project.
Shockwave began observing the actions of Earth’s trapped Transformers from a distance, and after witnessing a conflict in California, he mocked its warriors as stupid. He traced Divebomb’s radioactive trail leading to Starscream’s current center of the action, in a wasteland on the borders of Mexico City, after phoning Astrotrain for a status on their project.
Shockwave informed the deceitful air command that Megatron had asked for his assistance while blazing his way through all the Decepticons foolish enough to try to defend Starscream. Before they could continue, Astrotrain contacted Shockwave with terrible news: the brain unit junk drone containing the software that controlled the contraption he was building had fled. Shockwave assigned the task of retrieving the drone to Starscream and his crew.
Shockwave phoned an enraged Starscream, who had been told that the Autobots would have been preoccupied. Shockwave answered that they were distracted, but with Starscream, which enabled Shockwave to convey a message to Optimus Prime, who was at the NEST Command center in Diego Garcia. Shockwave met the frightened humans left to defend themselves after murdering Knock Out, Dune Runner, as well as other Autobots that stood in his path. When Shockwave inquired as to who was in charge, Theodore Galloway said that he was. Shockwave destroyed Galloway as well as the other humans but one, and he repeated his inquiry.
After murdering Jolt, an Autobot, he and Fearswoop, a Decepticon army member, fled to Philadelphia, where he killed Elita-One and gunned down both Wheeljack and Mirage, but both ultimately survived the encounter. Enraged by the other Autobots who had been injured or destroyed by Shockwave, soon Optimus Prime confronted him, swiftly defeating him and severely pummeling the evil Decepticon. Prime was ready to murder Shockwave when his “pet” appeared to save his leader. Along with Starscream and Soundwave, the gravely injured Shockwave returned to Namibia.
When Optimus Prime, Ratchet, and Lennox arrived in the abandoned city of Chernobyl in 2012, they examined a dig site in which construction personnel wearing special suits had discovered a Cybertronian artifact that looked like a fuel cell. They were suddenly assaulted by the massive Decepticon Driller controlled by Shockwave. The Decepticons made an effort to recover the fuel cell.
As Optimus told Ratchet, as well as the humans, to evacuate while he confronted the Decepticons, several of the construction personnel were slain. Shockwave injured Optimus, but he succeeded in collecting the Pillar. The Decepticons retreated, leaving the cell behind.
Later, Shockwave took part in the Battle for Chicago, attempting to destroy the Autobots with his pet Driller; however, Optimus destroyed Driller and was able to exact revenge on Shockwave for the deaths of Elita-1 and Jolt, as well as the rest of the dying Autobots in Diego Garcia. The last utterances that Shockwave was told were “It’s over, Shockwave.” Prime then thrust the blade into his chest.
What makes him so powerful?
Shockwave is a brilliant engineer whose advancements and research have resulted in formidable weaponry and technology for the Decepticon cause, as well as indirectly for the Autobots as well as Cybertron itself. Project Predacon, the Synthetic Energon Equation, the Cortical Psychic Patch, the invention of cyber matter, and the repair of the Omega Lock are among them.
Though his primary role is as Megatron’s Chief Commander in Scientific Projects, Shockwave can hold his own in combat. His left arm has a formidable energy cannon from the forearm down, and his vehicular form is a Cybertronian battleship. He has been shown to stand up against Bulkhead and Wheeljack, as well as Ultra Magnus. When it came to hand-to-hand battle, Ultra Magnus appeared to be a match for Shockwave.
Shockwave’s steadfast dedication to rationality is one of his flaws. Shockwave will accede to a reasoning that is sufficiently rational, notwithstanding whatever emotional reservations he may have. And that is how Starscream avoided Shockwave’s fury twice. When confronted with a scenario or an adversary that throws his calculations off, Shockwave is severely disadvantaged. Damage to his one visual sensor can fully blind him. He finds it challenging to participate in close combat because he only has one hand as a consequence of a war injury. It also impairs his ability to accomplish jobs requiring a high level of manual dexterity.
Conclusion
Shockwave was an exciting but very much underutilized Transformer in Michael Bay’s universe. While the avid Transformers fans must be extremely well versed with this character, it is unfortunate that he was turned into a secondary, unimportant character in the films, and his role was not given the rightful justice that it deserved.
Shockwave is very complex, and his backstory, origins, and history definitely require a deep dive that we hope the future movies will be able to justly give him. Nevertheless, anyone interested in this character can always enjoy him through the animations and comic books and hopefully wait for a larger than life version of him on the big screen. Just like the rest of Shockwave’s fans, we are hoping to see Shockwave develop into a fully fleshed out character in the future films.