Is Optimus Prime the last Prime? Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots in the seemingly eternal fight against the Decepticons. With his red and blue truck form, he’s very much the face of the Transformers and always will be.
Optimus Prime has led the Transformers animated series, animated movies, and the newer live-action Transformers movies too. Throughout that, he’s had a complicated backstory and history, and in the best Transformers movie from 1986, he was even killed by Megatron and replaced as leader of the Autobots by Hot Rod, who became Rodimus Prime.
Transformers 7, Rise of the Beasts, will see the introduction of the Beast Wars story arc, and audiences will get to see Optimus Prime’s beastly counterpart: Optimus Primal. But within the Transformers movie, is Optimus Prime the last Prime?
Is Optimus Prime the last Prime?
Optimus Prime was created by Primus along with 12 other Primes, in order to combat the threat posed by the world-munching planet-sized Transformer Unicron. He was the 13th and last Prime created by Primus, and so in that sense, he is the last Prime.
In the new live-action Transformers movie series, Optimus Prime is also the last Prime in another sense. Here, he took on the title of ‘Prime’ when his mentor Sentinel Prime was no longer the leader of the Autobots. In these movies, there have been no other Primes after him, so he is the current and last Prime as it stands.
However, the story hasn’t always unfolded like that. In the Transformers animated movie, Optimus Prime was killed, and the Matrix eventually passed onto Hot Rod through Ultra Magnus. When Hot Rod finally unlocked the Matrix, he became Rodimus Prime and the next leader of the Autobots, as well as the last Prime. So, as you can see, the answer to the question depends on what continuity you’re referring to.
For more on the Autobot leader, find out if Optimus Prime is in Transformers 6. Or, learn more about the evil Terrorcons.