The Terrans and the Malto kids sneak away for a road trip to Philly. Meanwhile, Bumblebee infiltrates an underground fighting ring for Cybertronians to investigate the disappearance of fellow Autobot Grimlock.
Tropes
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Grimlock. He originally participated in Bot Brawl to investigate undercover, just like Bumblebee. But when Mandroid found him out, he placed a chip on Grimlock that forced the Dinobot to fight as Bot Brawl's new champion.
- Call-Back: Frenzy and Laserbeak reappear, working for Mandroid as the commentators of Bot Brawl. They seem to enjoy their new job, too.
- Commonality Connection: Sam starts to open up to Nightshade, after Nightshade reveals to her that they, too, identify as non-binary.
- Fantastic Racism: Turns out a lot of humans resent and hate Transformers in general due to the Transformers War. Twitch experiences a microaggression roughly a minute into the episode and Bot Brawl is centered around exploiting this mindset, forcing Cybertronians to tear each other apart in front of a cheering human audience.
- Foreshadowing: Sam and the man who tries to mug them later on are both seen watching a street drummer at the beginning of the episode. Notably, the mugger appears to be watching Sam and leaves when she leaves.
- Gladiator Games: Bot Brawl is basically this. Two or more Cybertronians are thrown into a ring and forced to beat each other to the ground for energon. The loser, according to Frenzy, is dragged off and scrapped for parts.
- Innocent Bigot: Robbie's old friend Stevie is a rather friendly, laid-back kid who's nice to Twitch and Hashtag. But he doesn't realize how Innocently Insensitive he's being when he says to Robbie that the Terrans are "not like [them]", since they're not human. And doesn't see how hurtful a graffiti spelling "Transformers Go Home" is to all Transformers, not just Decepticons. The last straw to Robbie is when Stevie says his dad told him that Transformers "invaded" the planet, which is far from the truth.
- Terrifying Rescuer: Nightshade interferes in a mugging, but ends up scaring both the mugger and his victim due to their sinister appearance.
