Blackarachnia (Animated)
From Transformers Wiki
| This subject of this article goes by multiple names that apply to other articles as well. See Blackarachnia (disambiguation), Elita One (disambiguation). |
- Blackarachnia is a Decepticon and later Predacon from the Animated continuity family.
Welcome to Goth Talk!
In another life, she was Elita-1, an energetic, spunky Autobot Academy cadet. That was until a fateful trip to Archa Seven, where her teammates abandoned her to a horde of alien spiders. Now calling herself Blackarachnia, she hates her new body with a passion. Her loathing of her organic parts is slowly driving her insane, and she will do anything to get rid of them, no matter whom she has to crush in her path. Her mutation fueled a newfound hatred of the Autobot cause and a quest for revenge that led her to join Megatron in his war against them. However, she does not appear overly loyal to her leader.
In her mutant technorganic form, she makes use of her newfound 'cyber venom' to paralyze her enemies, and combines this with her natural ability to download and mimic other Transformers' traits and weaponry for a limited amount of time with a simple touch. Hope nobody told Lockdown.
Contents |
Fiction
Animated cartoon continuity
- Voice actor: Cree Summer (English), Ryōka Yuzuki (Japanese), Christin Marquitan (German), Marcella Silvestri (Italian), Raquel Marinho (Portuguese, as Elita-1), Adriana Pissardini (Portuguese, as Blackarachnia), Rosario Zamora (Latin American Spanish, seasons 1 and 2), Catherina Martínez (Castilian Spanish, regular voice), Antía Jiménez Álvarez (Castilian Spanish, substitute voice), Elise Langenoja (Finnish), Anne Plumet (French)
A thousand stellar cycles ago or so, a young cadet received the name "Elita-1" from her instructor, Kup Minor. The AllSpark Almanac II Elita-1 and Sentinel were both there to witness Optimus go through a simulated combat against Megatron. Though Elita-1 worried about Optimus's well-being throughout the exercise, Sentinel assured her that Optimus had little to fear from a simulation. Survival Skills
Elita-1 and her teammates found their way to Archa Seven, looking for a Decepticon ship filled with energon when they accidentally fell into a series of caves. They were ambushed by giant spiders and, when escaping the massive energon explosion caused by the battle, Elita ended up being left behind. When she tried using her ability to borrow powers from other beings, she was injected by the spiders' venom, reformatting her into a hideous freak. Because of her new, semi-organic nature, her signal did not appear on Optimus's radar, leading him and Sentinel to believe that she had perished in the explosion. Along Came a Spider
Now calling herself Blackarachnia, Elita-1 joined the Decepticons, Transform and Roll Out and performed experimentations on Blitzwing, rebuilding him into a Triple Changer and giving him an unstable personality. She also aided Shockwave in creating a false identity to infiltrate the Autobot ranks. The AllSpark Almanac
When the AllSpark was found by a group of Autobots, Blackarachnia was aboard the Nemesis with the other Decepticons, annoyed at Lugnut's emphatic, vocal loyalty to Megatron. She even suggested that Lugnut's speech of praise was hardwired into his mind. She also had conflict with Blitzwing, who touched a sore point by insulting her organic mode. Her retort to "blow it out your actuator, three-face" angered Blitzwing to the point that he... began to express his feelings in song. Later, at Megatron's orders, she scanned the Autobots' ship to determine the nature of their high-energy cargo. She confirmed the Autobots were carrying the AllSpark, or at least something just as powerful. When the Autobots escaped and it became clear the Nemesis was going to crash into an exploding space bridge, Blackarachnia fled in an escape pod. Transform and Roll Out
Fifty stellar cycles later, while searching space for any trace of the AllSpark in the hope that she could use its power to purge herself of her organic mode, Blackarachnia stumbled across Starscream, still operating out of the battered shell of the Nemesis. Realizing that Starscream was searching for the AllSpark as well, Blackarachnia proposed an alliance, but Starscream proved uninterested in sharing power and promptly booted her out into space. Before being ejected, however, Blackarachnia was able to plant a homing device on Starscream, Dispatches and eventually tracked the beacon to Earth. At first setting down on the Moon to investigate the crashed hulk of the Nemesis, Blackarachnia ran afoul of the bounty hunter Lockdown, who had been hired by Blitzwing to hunt down Optimus Prime. Not willing to risk the bounty hunter finding the AllSpark before her, Blackarachnia attempted to dissuade him from investigating Earth, but Lockdown didn't take kindly to her interference, and the pair wound up battling. During the fight, Blackarachnia used her download ability on Lockdown, knocking him out, but she was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer number of powers and modifications she wound up taking from him, and passed out herself. Blackarachnia was first to awake, however, and hid herself aboard Lockdown's ship, so that when the bounty hunter finally came to and headed for Earth, she was able to hitch a free ride to the planet. A Few Loose Strands
After arriving on Earth, Blackarachnia stalked Bumblebee, Bulkhead, and Sari on Halloween night. Once she took out the boys, she attempted to sweet-talk Sari into handing over her AllSpark Key, but Optimus Prime arrived to intervene. Using Bulkhead and Bumblebee's stolen powers to overcome Optimus, Blackarachnia captured Sari and web-swung her way to the top of a skyscraper, with Prime in hot pursuit. In the ensuing fight, Prime finally realized who Blackarachnia truly was. Exploiting the opening, Blackarachnia bound Prime in her web and seized Sari's key, activating its power in hopes of become fully mechanical. However, the energies unleashed caused any organic life in range, including Sari (and presumably any other fleshy), to shrivel and sicken. It almost killed Blackarachnia, but Optimus Prime pulled the Key out, restoring the organics. Prime tried to reason with "Elita", asking her to come with them in the hopes of curing her, but Blackarachnia stabbed him, saying that it would be a long time before she trusted him again. After she knocked out Prime, she cried her four eyes out. Along Came a Spider
Later, she again kidnapped Sari, who was running away after having the AllSpark Key taken away from her. When she heard about the Key and how Sari felt totally mistrusted by the Autobots, Blackarachnia played on the girl's sympathies by saying she knew how Sari felt. Blackarachnia noted how she was not a Decepticon until after the Autobots turned their backs on her, and how the AllSpark's power was the only thing that could cure her current form. Despite being kidnapped again and nearly being killed by Blackarachnia's previous use of the Key, Sari appeared to start seeing eye to eye with her captor. Megatron Rising - Part 1
At least, that was what she wanted Blackarachnia to believe. Leading her around in circles over the frozen Lake Erie, Sari was finally forced to admit that the Autobots' ship, which contained the AllSpark, was underwater. Blackarachnia's organic half couldn't survive the icy water; incensed, she prepared to kill Sari. Ratchet brought the ship up through the ice, and Sari bit Blackarachnia's hand, showing that her organic half couldn't withstand teeth, causing her to drop Sari and allow Ratchet to grab her and get in the ship. As Blackarachnia tried to force the door open, the vessel accelerated, and Blackarachnia was thrown off the ship. Megatron Rising - Part 2
Washing ashore on Dinobot Island, Blackarachnia was taken in by the Dinobots, who gave her Meltdown's former base as a home. Using her charms, Blackarachnia was able to manipulate the Dinobots into doing anything she wanted. Grimlock was particularly attached to her, and reminded the other Dinobots of this through violence. Going over Meltdown's notes, she realized that he would be able to remove the organic half from her body. She sent the Dinobots to release him from prison, causing the Autobots to come investigating. Blackarachnia then poisoned Bumblebee and Prowl with her venom, and used the "promise" of an anti-venom to blackmail Optimus into helping Grimlock find the genetic modifier Meltdown needed for the experiment. Unfortunately, Meltdown turned the tables on them when the modifier was his, planning on removing Blackarachnia's technological half and leaving him with an organic transformer. Optimus was able to stop Meltdown before he succeeded, but the modifier was damaged and Meltdown presumed killed. Needing to escape, Blackarachnia urged Optimus to hold her, causing Grimlock to attack in jealousy, and Blackarachnia fled. However, it appears that Blackarachnia left the anti-venom needed to save Bumblebee and Prowl beside them. This gave Optimus hope that beneath all of Blackarachnia's anger and manipulation, there was still something left of Elita-1 in there. Black Friday
Still taking refuge in Meltdown's abandoned laboratory, Blackarachnia began experimenting with transwarp energy to create new techno-organic beings to experiment on in an attempt to purge her organic elements, the idea being if she could turn another techno-organic purely robotic, she could do the same to herself. Most of her early attempts proved fruitless, until Swoop was able to capture the perfect test subject: the renegade Autobot Wasp. Tempting him with both her feminine wiles and promises of power great enough to achieve revenge on the bots who betrayed him, she coaxed him into being experimented on, fittingly merging him with the DNA of a wasp.
While Wasp was being turned techno-organic, her old friend Sentinel Prime stumbled upon the lab and was disgusted to find a robot with an organic mode. He was even more shocked when she revealed that they had a past: she was his old friend Elita-1. Disgusted by her mutation, Sentinel was willing to "put her out of her misery", and during a scuffle knocked Blackarachnia's helmet off, allowing him to see her true, partially organic face. After Wasp's transformation into Waspinator was complete, Blackarachnia revealed her plans to Sentinel and Optimus.
Unfortunately, Waspinator was within earshot when she revealed what little regard she had for his life. Hurt by this betrayal, the now physically unstable Waspinator issued Blackarachnia an ultimatum: either fix him or be destroyed. She tried to escape, but once it was revealed that the transwarp energies responsible for his creation were going critical and about to cause a huge explosion, Blackarachnia surrounded herself and Waspinator in her webbing, shielding the Autobots from the explosion and seemingly leading to her final demise. However, when she awoke, she was in a strange jungle, in front of a group of organic creatures that looked rather surprised to see their new guests. Predacons Rising
At some unknown point in the future, Blackarachnia was interviewed by the trans-dimensional magazine Venus and recounted her encounter with Lockdown on the Nemesis for the publication's readers. The AllSpark Almanac
At some point, Blackarachnia got herself a new paint job, rebranded herself a "Predacon", made her way back to Cybertron and begun to raise a Predacon army. The order in which she accomplished these things is unknown. In any case, she now had Inferno and Antagony working under her as fellow techno-organics. The Complete AllSpark Almanac
Animated shorts
As Starscream heckled Megatron during a rousing speech, Blackarachnia looked on in utter horror until Megatron eventually dispatched Starscream straight through a wall. The sight of such brutality caused Blackarachnia to wince. Starscream Heckles Megatron
After the defeat of the Autobots, Blackarachnia found herself chained to new Decepticon leader Starscream. She relished her new role, offering to bring him refreshments and giving him massages...or, at least, the imagined version in Starscream's dream did. The real Blackarachnia was none too pleased about Starscream falling asleep in the middle of the Decepticons' staff meeting. Starscream's Fantasy
Titan Animated comic
Realising that the Autobots also win due to the power of teamwork, Blackarachnia decided to isolate one of them from the rest of the team. She stuck a tracer on Bumblebee so she could listen in on the crew and find out the best opportunity, while she roped Blitzwing and Lugnut into helping her. By the next day, when Bumblebee and Prowl were having a race at Crazy Coyote Canyon, the Decepticons had set up a trap and were able to capture Prowl. To Blackarachnia's annoyance though, Bumblebee turned up and somehow her comrades failed to pursue him even with the tracer.
She commanded Lugnut to fire on the Autobots as they sped across the cave roof, realising too late this would cause a cave-in. To add insult to injury, she found the tracer couldn't track Bumblebee any more because it was stuck on Lugnut's butt... The Race
Legends comic
In one of Tigatron's dreams, Blackarachnia was among the evil female Transformers who, seeking to kidnap him, fought with the heroic female Transformers guarding him. Bonus Edition Vol. 11
Be the Hero books
Web of Deception
Blackarachnia hired Lockdown in an attempt to get her revenge on Optimus, paying the bounty hunter to abduct the Autobot and tie him to a bomb next to one of the arachnids whose organic material had contaminated her. She believed that detonating the bomb would fuse Optimus and the spider into a similar techno-organic form. Luckily she didn't get the chance to test her theory, as before she could set off the bomb, the rest of the Autobots and a couple of small humans caught up with her.
In one possible outcome, Lockdown got a better offer from a safari hunter, and captured Blackarachnia to be taken to the Kvi Cluster. Web of Deception
The Cool comic
Blackarachnia was part of Megatron's band of Decepticons, chasing down the Autobots who had rediscovered the long-lost Allspark. She was visibly frustrated when Megatron along with the Autobots disappeared through a Space Bridge gate. The Cool Extra issue 3
Upon arriving on Earth, Blackarachnia joined Starscream and Lockdown in attacking Detroit. Transforming from spider to robot mode, she came swinging down from the sky to attack Ratchet in an attempt to seize the AllSpark. The Cool Episode 1
Later, she finally caught up with her old flame, Optimus Prime for a long-overdue conversation. She announced her plans to use the key to cure her body, but Optimus refused to let her, calling her "Elita-1" in the process. Incensed at being called that, she demanded Optimus explain why he abandoned her to die years ago. Optimus told her that he and Sentinel immediately formed a rescue party but were unable to find her. Breaking free from her webbing, Optimus then vowed to help her find a cure for her condition no matter what.
Blackarachnia was moved by Optimus's words until Blackout arrived and interrupted their tender moment. Before she could consider the offer, Lugnut seized her and ordered a retreat. As she flew off with the Decepticon, Optimus repeated his offer to "Elita-1". Blackarachnia reminded him never to call her by that name again, shedding a tear in the process. The Cool Episode 4
Precursor World
A Warrior of the Seven Lights resembling Elita-1 was a member of the Yellow Order. She was defeated alongside her commander Yellow Splendid Convoy when the dimension hopping pirate Scylla arrived at the Yellow Planet to plunder the Yellow Matrix. God Neptune comic 1
Games
Transformers Animated: Action Packs
Toys
Animated
- Blackarachnia (Deluxe Class, 2008 / 2010)
- Takara ID number: TA-09
- Accessories: Grapnel-hook
- Known designers: Eric Siebenaler (Hasbro), Alex Kubalsky (TakaraTomy), Derrick J. Wyatt (concept artist)
- Part of the second wave of Hasbro's Animated Deluxes, Blackarachnia transforms into a mechanical spider with some organic aesthetic. Many of her pointier parts are molded in softer plastic to keep unfortunate children from putting their eyes out. She comes with a grapnel hook accessory with a jointed claw at the end of it; pulling out the string then pressing a button o the base's top quickly pulls the string back in. It may be mounted under her abdomen in spider mode or on her back in robot mode, via two different sets of pegs. There is also a peg hole in each wrist, for web-slinging action.
- The spider's head is mis-transformed in the package, making the first step of her instructions initially confusing. Furthermore, the pedipalps will easily come off if manipulated too much, and her transformation requires that they be turned around completely. Because of this, they will often fall off over, and over, and over....
- Blackarachnia was released in the first wave of Takara's Animated line in 2010. Oddly, despite the sheer amount of metallic paint applied to virtually every other toy in the first few waves, Takara Blackarachnia is basically identical to the Hasbro version, down to the gold Decepticon symbol on her collar.
- This toy was later repurposed as the IDW incarnation of Blackarachnia, and was remolded and given a Beast Wars cartoon-accurate deco for Legends Blackarachnia.
- The Revenge of Blackarachnia (2-pack, 2008)
- Accessories: Grapnel-hook
- The Blackarachnia toy was released again in a Walmart exclusive two-pack with the "Battle Damaged" Optimus Prime from the DVD 2-pack with Megatron. Both toys are identical to their original releases.
Merchandise
Microbots Collection
- Blackarachnia (Capsule, 2010)
- Takara Tomy A.R.T.S. released Blackarachnia and 5 other Animated characters as small PVC figures in the Microbots Collection, a series of capsule toys.
Notes
- In the original bible, the Elita-1 backstory does not exist, with Blackarachnia instead presented as Catwoman to Optimus Prime's Batman. The original character arc was that Optimus would get Blackarachnia to accept herself instead of considering herself a freak, but it would subvert audience expectations with her deciding she was superior to other Transformers, thus plotting to kill and replace them all with technorganics.[1] Shades of this alternate characterization can be seen in the original press kit for the cartoon, which explains that Blackarachnia's techno-organic state was caused by "an encounter with the ALLSPARK" in the past.
- A non-final character model for Blackarachnia (see below) is included in the initial Transformers Animated press kit from Cartoon Network, is used briefly (in silhouette) for her first appearance in "Transform and Roll Out", and appears on the Deluxe figure's packaging. Though the toy shares the non-final model's spider-leg placement in robot mode, black belly, dark purple skin, and yellow Decepticon symbol, the rest of the toy adheres much more closely to the finished model.
- Blackarachnia is the only major Animated character not to have a detailed on-screen transformation.
- As Elita-1, her head is based on the pony-tailed Ariel, the younger form of Elita One, while her body's ornamentation homages Elita One herself.
- According to Derrick J. Wyatt, Elita-1's alternate mode is a "Cybertronian car".[2]
- Blackarachnia has a faceplate, seen in The Arrival issues #1 and #4, but never in the show itself.
- The credits for "Megatron Rising" Parts 1 and 2 spell her name as "Black Arachnia".
- In the Japanese dub, Blackarachnia is played by Ryōka Yuzuki, who also voiced Beast Wars Blackarachnia. She plays this incarnation much the same, importing her unique verbal tic: a hissing chā (チャー) noise to end all sentences.
Foreign names
- Japanese: Blackarachnia (ブラックアラクニア Burakkuarakunia), Elita One (エリータワン Erīta Wan)
- Russian: Chërnaya Vdova (Чёрная Вдова, "Black Widow"), Elita-1 (Элита-1), Elita Odin (Элита Один, "Elita One")
Gallery
Near-final Blackarachnia robot mode design
Elita-1 robot mode design
