Topspin

The second named Wrecker we see in Transformers: Dark of the Moon is Topspin, the blue one. He has no line of dialogue throughout the entire movie, and he only appears in the final act first to help Leadfoot pack things and leave Earth and then during the battle of Chicago, but he leaves quite an impression by dismembering a Decepticon alive. He resurfaces in The Last Knight as one of the Autobots who asked and obtained asylum in Cuba: he’s the one, this time voiced by Steven Barr, who insists to play volleyball with Agent Simmons. As you can imagine, the original isn’t too interested in volleyball: let’s take a look.

Topspin and his brother Twin Twist were born on Cybertron, and as all their peers they had been enrolled in the Great War since their birth, but they immediately found a way to distinguish themselves from the others. They were in fact the first Jumpstarters, a mutation that had the ability to transform between modes in a matter of instants, thus making them extremely valuable in battle and a walking (or flying, depending on the mode) tactical advantage. Having turned the tides in battle more than once, both brothers eventually ended up in the Wreckers, an elite task force specialized in impossible, nearly suicide missions… and even amidst warriors who more often than not literally courted death, Topspin was regarded as the most impulsive and over-achieving one, even being called a “glory-hog” by the team’s leader, Impactor. Even during the training for Operation: Volcano, that aimed at taking out the Decepticons’ Ten Deadliest Killers, an elite assassination squad, Topspin distinguished himself for taking on too many foes at once, impeding also the others’ actions. Despite being warned, he did as usual, and he successfully destroyed the replicas of Bombshell and Blitzwing at the same time… but when he tried to replicate the number on Dirge and Ramjet, he had to be saved by his brother Twin Twist. Seeing how the training was going, Impactor decided that without Ultra Magnus the mission would have been suicidal, and gave up on it… and Topspin actually agreed with him, despite being one of the reasons for which the studied tactics didn’t work. Eventually the operation was attempted all the same, and it was a failure as expected, with Impactor even dying on the battlefield and being replaced by Spinner as the leader of the Wreckers.

After that, Topspin kept serving among the Wreckers, but it didn’t feel the same, as the botched operation had left a mark on him. Things changed when the long-lost leader of the Autobots resurfaced: Optimus Prime didn’t die four million years before as everyone thought, but he had been stranded on a primitive planet, Earth, where he had continued to fight the good fight, as also his nemesis and leader of the Decepticons Megatron was in the same situation. With Earth and Cybertron suddenly connected via a temporary space bridge, Optimus could come back home and lead his people, and his presence was exactly what Topspin’s morale needed to raise again. Topspin volunteered to be part of Prime’s team on the planet, and he followed him in raiding an Energon facility to weaken the Decepticons: finally the Autobots weren’t an underground resistance group anymore, but a full-fledged army ready to take the fight to the tyranny. The raid reignited some battle spirit into Topspin, who came back to his old self and distinguished himself during the fight, if only for the number of rounds he shot compared to the others. This was the first in a series of raids that were meant to act as a distraction: while Topspin and the others attacked more objectives simultaneously, the Decepticons thinned their forces and broke their lines to answer the attacks, thus leaving Megatron open for Optimus Prime’s frontal attack. The two leaders met, but things didn’t turn out as they were expected to, as they both were transported back to Earth. On Cybertron, the situation came back to normal, and Topspin returned to the Wreckers… but the brief presence of Optimus had reinvigorated his spirit, and he was now ready to hit the Decepticons harder than ever before: the war could be won, he knew it now.

Topspin is an over-enthusiastic and impulsive soldier, always eager to put himself to the test and embarking in situations much bigger than himself. As one of the Wreckers, he’s designed to pack up quite a punch, and his trigger-happy attitude makes the best use of his many, many weapons, starting from his trademark particle beam rifle; he’s a Jumpstarter, and that allows him to turn into his alt mode, a Cybertronian air-skiff, at the speed of thought, granting him the ability to fly in the blink of an eye. With more enthusiasm than brains to back it up, Topspin is one of the (several) wild cards in the Wreckers, but when it comes to deal with Decepticons hard and fast few are this effective.