YMMV / Ben 10: Omniverse

A - C

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Ben himself can be interpreted in three different ways:
    • Some fans assume that Ben's return to immaturity might be caused by him accentuating his act on pretending to be a jerk as a way to prevent himself from getting too serious and as such prevent him from going Knight Templar like he almost did at the end of Ultimate Alien.
    • Ben could be considered a Workaholic, if you take his hero work as a job of sorts. He's willing to put everything aside just to fight aliens, becomes bored and antsy after only two weeks of inactivity, and becomes excited at the mere mention of an intergalactic threat. His entire life is devoted to doing his job, to the point where he doesn't seem to have anything beyond it. The previous iterations presented he had a life outside his hero work. In this iteration, it seems like it's all he has.
    • Alternatively, Ben could be seen as a Nightmare Fetishist. Throughout the franchise, and even before he received the Omnitrix, he has been far more interested in monsters and aliens that want to kill him than it is normal for a kid his age. This is pretty evident in Omniverse as instead of cringing or getting serious at the idea of an intergalactic time war or an intergalactic hunter who tries to kill him and his loved ones, Ben gets visibly excited, expressing how "cool" and "awesome" the danger is. Even when things are peaceful and everyone is safe from any possible threat, he still wishes for someone to come back and make a mess of things to put lives in danger. And it's not a matter of him being a Jerkass or not getting that these are serious threats that shouldn't be taken lightly; over the course of the series, Ben is shown to truly care about the people around him and knows from personal experience as to what will happen if even one of the villains win: planets will be destroyed, people will die, and it will be all his fault. And he gets excited anyway. He looks forward to it.
  • Due to the Tetrax from Dimension 23 being introduced realistically rampaging in a human city, a lot of fans assume he is still evil, or at least less moral than his mainstream counterpart, and just happened to have been hired by Azmuth at this point. This theory is further supported by the fact that mainstream Azmuth has been shown hiring villains before (he did recruit Sunder in Ultimate Alien to get the Unitrix back). Also lending credence to this theory is that Sevenseven is also on 23!Azmuth's payroll and performs similar actions.
  • Has Phil's mind been completely consumed by his Terroranchula mind, or was he just Evil All Along? The episode presents it as the former, but then Phil reappears as a member of the Rooters who has apparently been with them for some time, which presents a good case for the latter.
  • Blukic's and Driba’s condescending comments during the "Frogs of War" two-parter on Cerebrocrustaceans being nowhere near as smart as Galvans were probably meant to make us think they were right, but many fans instead interpreted it as the two Galvan being racists toward Cerebrocrustaceans. That is, unless they were just getting beneath Psychobos' exoskeleton to distract him.
• Alternate Self Shipping: After an entire arc centered around alternate universes (each with their own Ben), fans began shipping the different Bens in various combinations with each other. Examples include Prime Ben/No-Watch Ben and Nega Ben/Benzarro.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • For someone who just watched the entire universe get destroyed right in front of him, Ben seems unusually cheerful. Granted, he was able to bring everyone back via Alien X, or more accurately make copies of them, but he probably should have felt some grief, especially since these are technically not the people he knew, but imperfect recreations of them. He showed more grief over his favorite flavor of smoothie not tasting the same than anything else.
  • He also expresses little more than mild surprise when learning Eon is an alternate universe version of him, and doesn't seem at all concerned that he might become a Fallen Hero in one of the future timelines.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Dr Psychobos. The series builds him up as an Evil Counterpart to Azmuth and hinted he was more powerful than he appeared by having him easily subduing both his associates at one point. Moreover, he was one of the few villains to actually escape a confrontation with Ben while getting what he wants. Yet, he is easily outsmarted by Azmuth in "Showdown, Part 1". Granted, he is a Non-Action Big Bad, but you'd have expected him to be a bigger challenge for Azmuth as a mastermind.
  • For the matter, Khyber and his pet aren't exactly impressive either in the same fight: the struggle between Ben and his pet essentially sums up to Ben being either overpowered or incapacitated by the Nemetrix predators, until Azmuth figures out how to take control of the pet. Especially irritating when Ben gets easily incapacitated twice by Hypnotik's abilities, even though "Malefactor" had him figure out how to resist this specific predator's ability.
  • Sixsix, Sevenseven and Eighteight in "Vilgax Must Croak". For the whole episode, they pursue the Plumbers inside Incarceon and almost eliminate them, with a single one of them sending them running. When the Plumbers come back and confront them again... they immediately surrender, despite being clearly stronger than them.
  • Khyber's new pet's Ultimate Form is defeated ridiculously easily by Water Hazard before it could get to do anything impressive.
  • Zs'Skayr and Lord Transyl. Thanks to Viktor betraying Zs'Skayr, Ben is able to turn into Atomix and create a ball of light that kills Zs'Skayr and weakens Transyl enough for Viktor to capture him, put him in a coffin, and push the coffin towards the sun. The funny thing is how the victory music starts playing as soon as Ben turns into Atomix, before he even does anything. It's like a musical Lampshade Hanging.
  • Charmcaster in "Third Time's a Charm". She transforms into a dragon, and Ben defeats her by faking a magic trick, and tricking her into to reaching into her own bag, activating a trap that Gwen set, trapping Charmcaster in there.
• Ass Pull:
  • While the climax of "Showdown, Part 2" is awesome, no clear explanation is given about how Ben got Feedback back during his fight with Malware; he gets eaten by Malware, has a vision of his past self with which to reconcile his issues about losing Feedback, and then suddenly regains said form even though it was made perfectly clear that the Omnitrix could never get it back. The scene is frankly a huge Deus ex Machina. Amusingly enough, Matt Wayne himself admitted he had no idea what happened during this scene when asked about it.
  • Earth suddenly being a major strategic point to start an invasion of the Galaxy at the beginning of "The Frogs of War", even though all three previous series established it as a backwater planet.
  • A somewhat downplayed example in the same episode. Attea’s hatred for Ben suddenly just being a “distraction” to better help conspire against her father. Even though, it can be reasonably assumed that Attea shows great contempt for both, and was simply just lying to avoid any further hostility towards her (especially now that she developed a crush on Bullfrag, Ben’s Incursean form).
  • Gwen not liking Lucy to the point of suspecting her of being a traitor in "Mud is Thicker Than Water." In the only Original Series episode that Lucy appeared in, there was next to no interaction between the two, but they didn't appear to dislike each other at all and even in the flashback sequence to their 11-year-old selves in the very episode, Gwen was only mildly irritated with her (far from actual dislike) and got over it quickly since she had Ben to be angry with. Plus, the issue is solved by the end of the episode, most likely to not be mentioned again ever, so what was the point of this all of a sudden?
  • Gorvan being the real spy at the end of "Mud Thicker Than Water". There was no foreshadowing, we didn't even know he was part of the Plumbers until The Reveal (a fact already hard to explain by itself) and this basically comes out of nowhere just to confirm once and for all that Lucy was a Red Herring.
  • Blukic and Driba repairing the Anihilaarg. They might be Genius Ditz, but it's really hard to swallow that they were smart enough to fix a crushed device from an ancient extinct species (plus, who would have been stupid enough to let them touch the remains to begin with?).
  • Gwen and Kevin being up in Earth orbit for a college astronomy project at the beginning of "For A Few Brains More" to save Max, Rook, Ben and Azmuth.
  • Kai having Ben's phone number at the beginning of "An American Benwolf in London". Back when they first met in the Original Series, the two left each other on not particularly good terms, Ben didn't have a cellphone back then, and it has been confirmed they had not met each other again after this until this point, making you question where she gets his number.
  • 12-year-old Kevin's appearance in "From Hedorium to Eternity", since it basically contradicts everything about him continuity-wise.
  • Azmuth's Omnitrix disabling remote in Malgax Attack. This one especially is blatant, as not only does it raise the question of why he never tried using it before, especially when Albedo kidnapped him in the Duel of the Duplicate arc, but it also contradicts a large majority of the conflicts in the show, considering how many antagonists were motivated by their desire to get the Omnitrix for their own selfish goal. In fact, this was the very reason Azmuth sent the Omnitrix on Earth in the first place.
• Badass Decay: Omniverse features the worst offenders of this trope in the entire franchise, especially when it comes to the villains, who are often depicted as more comical for the sake of humor even if it doesn't fit the characterizations that they had in the previous iterations. Here are some major examples:
  • Rath was portrayed in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien as an Implacable Man whose sole weaknesses were his Hair-Trigger Temper and limited intelligence. Omniverse flanderizes his cat-like aspects, making him afraid of water (despite tigers not having problems with water like cats do in real life), distracted by string-like objects and laser pointers, and vulnerable to Nyancy-Chan's Mind Control power (even though it didn't work on Rook, who is also a cat-like alien). He also tends to suffer The Worf Effect a lot, one of the most humiliating cases being when he got defeated by the Circus Freak Trio, who were Ben's personal Butt-Monkey in the Original Series. Essentially, they're flanderizing his comedic aspects at the expense of his badass ones.
  • While he has his Let's Get Dangerous! moments, Ben is still portrayed as being much more bumbling and incompetent in this iteration compared to how he was in the two previous sequels and has a bad tendency to be turned into a Butt-Monkey. It’s partially justified in the earlier episodes due to his lack of familiarity with the new Omnitrix, but it’s still extremely irritating and becomes less and less credible as the series progresses.
  • Psyphon started off as a legitimately cool and terrifying villain in "The More Things Change, Part 2" via being able to hold his own against both Rook and Ben and in "Outbreak" via pulling off an impressive Batman Gambit. Subsequent episodes have him grab the Idiot Ball frequently and have him defeated in rather humiliating ways. "Bengence Is Mine" is the prime example.
  • Likewise, Khyber started off as a terrifying and effective villain in season 1, but the Duel of the Duplicates arc has him humiliated by him being terrified of Pesky Dust and then put in an even more humiliating dream sequence. "Stuck On You" tries to give him back some of his intimidation factor, but still falls short due to him being betrayed by Skurd which leads his to defeat, as well as having his more comical aspects played up instead of being the full-on Knight of Cerebus he was in Season 1, and his final fight scene with Ben essentially being reduced to slapstick.
  • Albedo; after an entire arc dedicated to making him a menacing foe, turning him back from the Butt-Monkey he had become in Ultimate Alien to a skilled Diabolical Mastermind, Azmuth punishes him for his actions by trapping him into a human form again, this time as an 11-year-old version of Ben, and he is reduced to a crying child. His two next appearances have him work for Vilgax (who by all logic he should have every reason to not team up with), the first as just one more thug and the second as a one-shot villain who is easily defeated by Azmuth.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Bloxx, who's alien physiology of being Built with LEGO received mixed reception. Some fans thought he was an original, delightfully weird alien. While others feel he was one of the silliest, most ridiculous aliens to date, even by Ben 10 universe standards.
  • For similar reason, Liam and his Omnitrix counterpart Kickin Hawk are either considered hilarious or completely stupid.
  • Argit: an annoying Creator's Pet who appears too often or the best damn character in the show.
  • Esther: a good character and love interest or a bad one.
  • Ben himself is divisive with the fans due to the fact that many fans are frustrated towards his portrayal in this iteration due to his exaggerated immaturity and incompetence while others are either okay or just don't care about it.
  • Atomix is either loved for his hammyness, badassery, and being a Call-Forward to the Original Series' episode "Ken 10" or hated for having an ugly, robot-like design.
  • Albedo manages to be a divisive character amongst Alien Force fans: some fans are happy he was turned into a genuinely effective villain again while others are mad he had to devolve from a sympathetic Anti-Villain to a Card-Carrying Villain for this.
  • Charmcaster's portrayal in this iteration is divisive among her fans. Those who loved it found her Genki Girl mannerism to be endearing and appreciated her attractive redesign. Those opposed to it are annoyed with how her complex redemption arc from Ultimate Alien is downplayed in favor of making her more of a Cloudcuckoolander.
  • The Rooters are very divisive due to being the source of a controversial Cerebus Retcon involving Kevin and the Plumbers' Kids. By the same token, they managed to obtain some popularity due to being the first major villains since Malware to shift the tone into a more serious one.
  • Skurd is either considered an awesome character with awesome battle capabilities or yet another Scrappy, Creator's Pet, and blatant attempt at merchandising.
• Broken Base: At this point, the base has been broken down into a coarse powder:
  • A common division: Original Ben 10 series' and/or Derrick Wyatt's fans were glad to see the show going back to the Original Series’ roots and becoming "fun" again, but Alien Force/Ultimate Alien fans were afraid that Wyatt removed everything brought by the sequels (including the good parts) and dumbed down the show for the sake of going back to the Original Series. The fact he confirmed that several episodes in the previous sequels would be Canon Discontinuity, that arcs started in the previous series were aborted, and hinted several times he wasn't really a fan of the sequels doesn't help. Then there are those who still believe in the original series only and in fact resent Omniverse's tendencies of having call backs to the original series.
  • The art style. A part of the fandom liked it for how stylized, vibrant it is and that it allows for more expressive characters and more dynamic animation. The other part see it has a huge downgrade because of not only how different but how simplified it is that made some people call it childish.
  • The decision to cut Gwen and Kevin from Ben's team. Original Series fans who hated Ben's Alien Force/Ultimate Alien team and the Gwen/Kevin ship rejoiced over this decision. Alien Force/Ultimate Alien fans who had watched the characters develop over two series despised how they were suddenly removed with very little explanation.
  • The theme song; some are glad the show gets an actual song with lyrics instead of an instrumental piece again, others feel it's overly childish, even compared to the original series' one.
  • The Continuity Porn, particularly the flashback segments and episodes taking place in the Original Series' era when Ben was 11-years-old; a lot of fans were glad about it since it brought back the original series’ tone and feeling; others felt that it was forced and unnecessary (what's the point of trying to make 16 and 17-year-old characters more like their original series selves if their original series selves will show up in flashbacks on a regular basis anyway?) and will only end up wasting episode time that could have been spent focusing on the plot.
  • Primus and the Codon Stream being Ret-Gone; while many fans who disliked the concept were glad it's gone, others were mad it was just classified as Canon Discontinuity and point out this creates only more plotholes.
  • Vilgax being Demoted to Extra; fans who thought he was overused in previous series were glad other villains could take the spotlight, while others complained about his absence despite his importance in Ben's rogues gallery.
    • Vilgax's portrayal in general; fans were pleased with the return of Steve Blum and his role in And Then There Were None, but many viewed him as having lost his menacing and intimidating factor and had been turned into a joke.
  • The ending of "Third Time's a Charm". On one side, there were those who like it because while trapped in her own bag, Charmcaster is now under the care of two people (Hex and Gwen) who care about her and is no longer being influenced by the likes of Adwatia and Darkstar and they feel this is a nice compromise between doing a Heel–Face Turn and not doing one. On the other side, others just wanted a full-on Heel–Face Turn rather than more setup for one, found Charmcaster's defeat to rely on a very old cliché, and hated that while Darkstar was arrested, Adwatia, easily the more evil of the two, teleported away and will likely stay a Karma Houdini.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • In "Mud Is Thicker Than Water", most fans weren't surprised that Lucy wasn't the spy due to being an existing ally and obvious Red Herring.
  • Kevin being a Fake Defector at the end of "Weapon XI, Part 2". The way he suddenly was convinced into making a Face–Heel Turn by Proctor Servantis felt so forced, some fans suspected right away he was only pretending to believe the Rooters.
  • Spanner's reveal as Ken Tenyson, most had already guessed who it was on his first appearance and as time went on evidence had piled up so much that the only twist would have been if it was someone else.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • While still not well liked, Kai have since been seen in a much better light since the show’s airing thanks to her fans highlighting her positive qualities such as her interest in archaeology and her chemistry with Ester. There’s also an important point to be made about how much she means to many Indigenous fans of the franchise, flaws and all. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but things are looking up for her fandom wise.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Zombozo had inexplicably lost his supernatural abilities in Ultimate Alien and went from a Nightmare Fuel-inspiring Monster Clown to a Denser and Wackier Harmless Villain at the beginning of Omniverse. "Something Zombozo This Way Comes" restores him to his supernatural Humanoid Abomination status from the Original Series and, much like Kevin's powers, provides an actual explanation for the loss of his powers in the previous series.
  • Zigzagged with Ben. His personality owes to the exaggerated moron he was back in the third season of Alien Force, much to the irritation of the fans who liked him as a more competent and heroic character, but some episodes like "Malefactor" or "Max's Monster" do showcase him as smarter and more competent. Unfortunately, by the next episode, he usually tends to get back to be a moron and the writers hadn't settled on either portrayal by the series' end.
  • Kevin's redesign and more borderline sociopathic attitude is seen by some as an obvious attempt at making him more like how he was back in the Original Series, much to the chagrin of fans who preferred how Kevin was before in the previous sequels.
  • Eon's design is portrayed as closer to his movie self. Considering many thought the Ultimate Alien version actually was cooler than his movie self, whether it's a good thing or not is up to debate. With that being said, he's much more like a mixture of the various versions while retaining the basic backstory he had back in Ultimate Alien (he's a version of Ben from an alternate timeline according to Word of God, as already hinted by him and Ben 10,000 sharing their latest VA) as well as threat level and the movie incarnation's appearance. Interestingly, there are also aspects of his movie self that were present in Ultimate Alien but left out in Omniverse, most notably his entire head. It's like Ultimate Alien used half of Movie Eon's design, and Omniverse uses the half that UA didn't.
  • Albedo returned back to being a fairly competent Evil Counterpart to Ben as opposed to the Butt-Monkey (when this show itself has exaggerated Ben's Butt-Monkey traits, ironically) he eventually became in Ultimate Alien. Sadly, the same cannot be said for his motivations. See Motive Decay.
  • Charmcaster's design, personality, and voice (though it has always been done by Kari Wahlgren) much more closely resembles how they were back in the original series than how they were in Alien Force / Ultimate Alien... except zanier.
  • There was an effort to undo the villains' Badass Decay, with various level of success. Vilgax was given a The Bad Guy Wins moment, but also had far fewer appearances and was treated more like a joke by the other characters. Albedo was promoted to Big Bad rank and made a darker, more threatening villain again after having been downgraded to Butt-Monkey after his first couple of appearances in Ultimate Alien (though Azmuth's treatment of him at the end nullifies this effort a bit); Darkstar went back to his old badassitude level after having fallen even farther than Albedo had (though he slips once he gets his Mike Morningstar looks back.) It's a shame Psyphon is more of a Butt-Monkey every episode when he was so cool that first time he operated solo, but then, I guess someone's got to be the Harmless Villain and it sure ain't Zombozo.
  • Vilgax finally goes back to being portrayed as a fully serious and competent villain in "And Then There Were None" by basically destroying all of creation except the one timeline he was in. It’s a shame that it only lasts an episode before he receives a humiliating beat-down, not to mention he is turned back into a joke by "Vreedlemania".
    • Things improve for him again with "Malgax Attacks", however. Vilgax is portrayed as The Heavy. While it's Albedo's plan to attack Galvan, Vilgax, now wearing armor made of Malware's remains, spends the entire episode tossing Ben around like a ragdoll, even beating Atomix (who is infamous for being a walking Deus ex Machina). His loss is also dignified: aside from a slapstick moment of Skurd saving Ben by sticking to Vilgax's head, he's defeated in a fair fight that ends with him Hoist by His Own Petard.
  • Zs Skayr. After his anticlimactic and humiliating defeat in the Galactic Monsters arc, the episode "From Herodium To Eternity", which focuses on 11-year-old Ben, gives him back some of the badassery and intimidation factor he had back in the original series, with his plan to cast the earth into eternal darkness so his Ectonurite subjects could colonize it. He also holds his own against 11-year-old Ben in a straight up fight. And much like Vilgax above, his defeat is a more dignified Hoist by His Own Petard as he is sucked into the portal he used to bring his Ectonurites to Earth by Cooper.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Contested Sequel: Let's face it; with the already large Broken Base caused by the two previous sequels, this show was dead on arrival.
• Continuity Lockout: Perhaps inevitable, considering the fact that the show brings back and references characters and elements that haven't been seen in a long while since the Original Series (For example, the Megawatts, who are a one-off threat from the original series), as well as coming right after two of the most arc-oriented entries in the franchise. Taken to ridiculous extremes when they use Gorvan, a character who only appeared in the first Alien Force video game. Anyone who has never played the game can't possibly know who he is, yet he is treated like he has always been a recurring villain.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Feedback is this trope in the eyes of some fans; he is introduced as being Ben's favorite alien when he was 11, despite the Original Series clearly establishing Fourarms as Ben's favorite. Few reasons about why Ben likes him so much are given, with him simply saying he is "cool and awesome" or mentioning "he felt like he was a part of me" (It was hinted in "Showdown, Part 2" that the form had an addictive effect on him, but this was never explored further). He also tends to be conveniently remarkably effective to defeat a lot of specifically powerful opponents, to the point of almost becoming a Deus ex Machina (such as when he turns out to be the ideal alien to defeat Argost, or when he manages to defeat Ultimate Humongousaur easily, even though Ultimate Humongousaur's abilities aren't energy-related). One of the most infamous examples is the series finale, where he somehow proves a more effective form to contain Maltruant's Doomsday Device than Chromastone and Alien X. To some fans, it just feels like the writers were trying way too hard to turn him into an Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Blukic and Driba are adored by the writing staff; they got two episodes entirely dedicated to them (and the first one, "Blukic and Driba go to Mr Smoothies", is one of the writers' favorite episode), a lot of screentime (including in several season finales) and Derrick Wyatt stated he wouldn't mind them having their own spin-off show. Many fans rather see them as an extremely annoying and obnoxious Plucky Comic Relief duo prone to cause troubles to everybody by their stupidity and irresponsibility and generally the source of rather bad jokes.
  • Ma Vreedle and the Incurseans also got some accusations of being this. Derrick Wyatt contributed to create both, and both were introduced in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien as minor, mostly comedic villains. With Wyatt in charge, suddenly the Incurseans were upgraded to Big Bad rank for an entire arc, making them the first major baddies in the whole franchise to not be Knights of Cerebus, while Ma Vreedle made Vilgax cry. To add insult to injury, Vilgax gets Demoted to Extra with his first episode being essentially a filler in the Incursean story arc.
  • Arguably, Kai Green is this. She was touted by the writers as essentially being Ben's soulmate (with fellow love interest Ester ending her pursuit of him upon learning this because You Can't Fight Fate) and ended up being worthy enough to wield Excalibur when Ben couldn't pull it out of the stone. However, thanks to a combination of her jerkass behavior and her being Strangled by the Red String with Ben, she's become a scrappy amongst the fandom.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Malware and Khyber (Until the latter's Villain Decay). The fact they were two genuinely terrifying villains in the most light-hearted entry of the franchise really made them memorable.
  • Kundo. Creepy? Yes. Especially as a cyborg. Awesome? Jeff Bennett makes it so.

D - I

• Designated Hero: Some actions of the protagonists (often played for laughs) have been perceived by the fans as mean-spirited at best and downright morally questionable at worst. The most prominent examples being Ben permanently turning Harangue into an alien and Azmuth trapping Albedo in the form of an 11-year-old Ben. While both victims clearly were meant to deserve that, many felt the acts in themselves were petty, needlessly cruel, and un-heroic.
  • Ben especially qualifies for this trope in this iteration; he is much more immature, incompetent, and egotistical than he was in previous iterations, much less competent, and his Chronic Hero Syndrome (which had been the one constant in all of the previous iterations) has been considerably toned down to instead put emphasis on him wanting to have a fun (in one episode, he ends up wishing for a new Incursean invasion just because he is bored). And if the series finale is anything to go by, he loves Mr Smoothies more than he does his friends, relatives, or girlfriend. It got so bad that some fans actually almost agreed with Proctor Servantis when it was revealed he intended to kill Ben because he thought giving so much power to an immature, irresponsible child was doomed to end badly.
    • A special mention for the Galactic Monster story arc, where Ben meets up with Zs'Skayr right as he arrives on Anur Transyl, and shows absolutely no concern with stopping him for his whole time on the planet, unless he or his allies get directly involved; in fact, had they not been forced to stay longer than initially intended, he would have left Anur Transyl with Zs'Skayr undefeated and still scheming.
  • Argit is an in-universe example. As he was always a villain, prior to becoming an Accidental Hero when he took down a Waybad. He ends up gaining lots of respect from civilians and soaks all of it up.
• Designated Villain: Phil the former Plumber not the alien monster who took over his body and mind was said by Ben to essentially be less redeemable than Kevin. Sure, Phil was a criminal, but he never did anything as bad as what Kevin had done back in the original series. Even without the With Great Power Comes Great Insanity excuse Kevin had, there wasn't anything inherently preventing Phil as he was from turning over a new leaf. To be fair, only Ben was thinking this way, and he may not have meant to be agreed with, and The Reveal at the climax of the episode makes it kind of a moot point anyway.
  • Charmcaster almost veers into this, because she has no villainous goal at all in this series, she just wants to rule her dimension in peace and she needs to be all-powerful to do so. Thus when the artifact making her all-powerful is stolen and has its power drained, she seeks new magic artifacts that are rightfully her's to replace it, and is only considered a villain because the heroes oppose her. The reason she avoids this trope completely is because she is mentally unwell and being repeatedly manipulated by the downright evil Adwaita, which means that she can NOT be trusted with the power of these artifacts and thus the heroes have a very justified reason for standing in her way.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Ester is either bashed by Ben X Julie / Ben X Gwen / Ben X Kevin fans, or praised by Ben X Julie bashers.
  • Kai gets hit with this by just about every non-Ben x Kai shipper.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Malware is very popular with fans as well via being a major example of Evil Is Cool and one of the few legitimate Knights of Cerebus in this show, especially considering how every villain after him either had comical traits or were eventually reduced to Butt-Monkey status (the only exceptions being the Rooters and Kundo). Many fans feel his potential was under-exploited in the show. And though he does play a posthumous role in "Malgax Attacks" and is hinted to be still alive at the end, the show ending destroyed any chance of him returning.
    • Similar to Malware, Kundo is seen as a competently written and creepy Arch-Enemy to Rook, whose appearances downplayed the humor significantly despite only appearing twice in the series.
  • Gravattack is popular with the fans for having a power that is one of the most unique in the Omnitrix (one criticism of Ben having so many aliens is the lack of unique traits among them) and having a cool design and voice acting. It's often lamented that he's one of Ben's least-used aliens, though most fans understand that he's simply too powerful to be used often.
  • Princess Looma, the Yandere alien in love with Ben, is popular with fans.
  • Attea has become very popular, especially with her redesign and re-characterization as a Big Bad.
  • While most of the comic relief characters are hit and miss, Hobble tends to be considered an exception due to his Cowardly Lion characterization, particularly since he returned in the Galactic Monsters arc and proved to be pretty funny. The fact he's played by Steve Blum in a remarkably different character type than he usually plays is also a factor.
  • No Watch Ben, the Omnitrix-less Ben from "And Then There Were None" and "And Then There Was Ben" seems to have drawn some liking from viewers, seeing him as less cocky and arrogant as main universe Ben and going through more Character Development in those two episodes than main Ben has in the 50 episodes before.
  • Similarly, Gwen 10 is quite well-liked due to being much nicer than her mainstream self.
  • Cousin Lucy is also well-liked due to being A cute shapeshifter, having an adorable personality, using her powers to screw with everyone around her a lot (especially Gwen) and is quite good at it too, which has lead the fanbase to see her as a Memetic Troll and wishing that she had been in more episodes(see Memetic Troll below).
  • Antigravitesla was one of several aliens who appeared only in Latin American promotion commercials for a major Ben-10 marathon during the Omniverse era (but done in earlier show styles) and of them is easily the most popular, getting questions asked of him to the Omniverse showrunner and being the first semi-canon/official non-canon alien to appear in 5 Years Later. The popularity exists for a combination of factors including being an alien expy of Nikola Tesla, a funny commercial, a set of gravity-based powers that could (presumably) be made more useful than just being a Joke Character with some minor tweaking and experience unlike the other aliens created for the commercials, and for the novelty of being a rare green-skinned but otherwise human looking male transformation.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • It's popular fan theory that Ben forgot to include Primus from the Universal Rebuild in "So Long And Thanks For All The Smoothies," as Derrick J. Wyatt says that, pursuant to the mandate that continuity be "cleaned up," whatever that means, it no longer exists. The universal rebuild has in fact been used to explain everything that is different about this series from the previous one. It helps (or not) that production-wise, it is one of the earliest episodes, rather than the seventh episode.
  • A youtuber known as Kuro the Artist of The Ink Tank and Five Years Later fame offers the interpretation that, contrary to Servantis' claims, Osmosians do exist as aliens, just as human aliens that lived on a different planet, and Servantis was really lying to Kevin and everyone else in order to isolate Kevin from his past and manipulate him into becoming the perfect weapon for him to control, acting as his father figure by claiming he never had one.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The Incursean Story Arc is concluded in "The Frogs of War, Part 2" where it turns out all that happened was a Batman Gambit by Princess Attea all along to overthrow her father Emperor Milleus. By the end of the episode, she agrees to leave Earth with the Incursean Empire in exchange for the Plumbers keeping her daddy in custody, which is presented as an acceptable, if not entirely happy, ending. The thing is, in previous episodes, it had been clearly established that Attea was much worse than her father, being an Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild motivated by Rape, Pillage, and Burn whereas her father was a more pragmatic Galactic Conqueror. In fact, she almost blew up Earth For the Evulz in her introduction episode (in contrast to her father, who only threatened to do so if she wasn't returned to him). Now, granted, she is sort of in a Dating Catwoman situation with Ben, so she will most likely avoid attacking Earth again, but that's little consolation to the rest of the galaxy.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Khyber generally got good reception for this before his Villain Decay.
  • Malware even more so. He rivals Rook in popularity amongst the fans.
  • Psyphon was considered by many fans to have gotten cooler in this show than he was in Alien Force and Ultimate Alien. Then "Bengeance is Mine" happened.
  • The Evil Bens from "And Then There Were None" and "And Then There Was Ben" are quite the Ensemble Dark Horses.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Derrick Wyatt's statement that the events of the original series episode "Ken 10" - where Kevin had become the monstrous Kevin 11,000 - are still canon in the future seen in this series, and that Kevin is essentially doomed to lose his mind and become a powerhungry monster over and over again in the years to come. A lot of fans aren't happy with this, not only because it means Kevin will be forced to suffer through the guilt of hurting his friends again and again, but also because it ignores the events of "Weapon XI (Part 2)", where 17-year-old Kevin was actually able to retain his sanity after absorbing energy from the Omnitrix and mutating again.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The show reveals and demonstrates the existence of various alternate timelines, each one with their own versions of Ben and the other characters. We only get to see a small number of alternate Ben and very few get actual development, so fans are free to imagine and write whatever they want about those alternate timelines.
  • The series ends with Ben deciding (as well as hoping to bring along Gwen, Kevin, and Max) to go on a universe-wide road trip. Since no follow-up came out (and is unlikely to ever happen due to the 2016 reboot), it provides interesting fodder for fanfic writers.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Even fans of Omniverse like to pretend that the Rooters arc doesn't exist. This is due to the Retcon of the Plumbers' Kids being just ordinary human kids who were mutated with alien D.N.A. instead of actually being Human/Alien Hybrids, as well as Devin Levin, Kevin's supposed father and Max's Dead Partner, not really existing in the first place, turning out to be a false memory that Proctor Servantis implanted in both Kevin and Max so that the latter will keep an eye on the former. While the Hybrid retcon is almost completely despised, Devin not existing was later begrudgingly accepted for many fans, as the Fridge Logic kicks in (as Max doesn't make any reference to Devin beforehand, not to mention not realizing the connection to Kevin via last names and similar energy absorption in the Original Series).
• Fan Nickname:
  • Dimension 23 SevenSeven is now commonly nicknamed Twentythreetwentythree by the fans.
  • Some fans use the term Classic and Modern to distinguish the two Bens.
  • Gwen's new Anodyte form has sometimes been called Sailor Anodyne.
• Fashion-Victim Villain:
  • Dr. Animo's costume as the Ant-King. Probably intended.
  • Also, Nyancy-Chan.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • For Cartoon Network as a whole. It was a Lighter and Softer rework of a show that ended up being very divisive with fans overall. Due to a number of other factors, the next show the channel premiered that followed a similar formula ended up becoming the single most hated cartoon in the 2010 era. So Omniverse may have unintentionally paved the way for TTG and subsequent cartoons like it on the network, including the Ben 10 franchise's own 2016 Continuity Reboot.
  • Maltruant is often disliked for being an uncharismatic Generic Doomsday Villain. The franchise at large has always had a problem with flat antagonists, but most of them either were cool, fairly unique, or the sequels expanded more on their backstory or personality. With Maltruant, however, he lacked the uniqueness of his predecessors due to his "warlord" character archetype being overused, he wasn't particularly impressive (due to not being very proactive, relying largely upon incompetent henchmen, and having a goofy design), and was introduced in the last stretch of the series, making his shallow characterization too difficult to ignore.
  • In general, Ben being an obnoxious Idiot Hero was much easier to swallow when he was 10, and therefore younger and a complete newbie (in the original series). Rampant Executive Meddling in response to ludicrous complaints of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! from fans towards the original run of Ben 10: Alien Force's first two seasons, such as claiming that aging Ben up to 15 years and writing him more maturely made him a Flat Character, caused his immaturity to reawaken from arrogance, where it was less humorous and caused Seasonal Rot. Ben 10: Ultimate Alien tried to balance this out and somewhat make him, now a 16 year old, more mature again, but further seasonal rot in tandem with the show's darker themes reaching their most extreme eventually caused Omniverse, the last of the sequels, to depict the teenaged Ben as a flanderized version of his original child self for the sake of humor despite him being much more experienced by then, resulting in him coming across as irritating rather than funny.
  • The show received complaints for its Denser and Wackier tone and art style, drastic changes to established characterisation and over reliance on original series nostalgia. All of which can be ascribed to Transformers: Animated, by much of the same creative minds. The difference is that Animated properly entered Cerebus Syndrome where appropriate, was a reboot, allowing the changes to be more accepted and the references were seen as a fresh take, considering how drastically different every previous TF incarnation was (and G1 purists had felt burned by Transformers (2007) not being exactly like the cartoon). But Omniverse being a sequel series that was supposed to build on the original, Alien Force and Ultimate Alien made these flaws more difficult to ignore
• Genius Bonus: The name of Ben's Vladat transformation, Whampire, may just seem like a Punny Name combination of "Wham" and "Vampire", but anyone who knows their horror literature will know that he's also named after Bram Stoker's original name for Dracula, Count Wampyr.
• Growing the Beard: "Malefactor" and the subsequent episodes in the second season began to tone down Ben's Butt-Monkey tendencies and fix the characterization problems he's went through, the pacing slows down, drama somewhat increased, and the complaint that Rook sometimes severely outshines Ben was addressed by showcasing a few episodes with Ben solo or at least with a different partner. Unfortunately, this is undone in the episodes of the third season as a Seasonal Rot kicks in and Ben reverts back to being a moron.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Malefactor" has Malware throwing a gasoline truck at a busload of kids, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the episode aired the next day after the Sandy Hook massacre.
  • Pierce Wheel's death at the hands of the anti-alien Forever Knights is more tragic when it's revealed in "The Rooters of All Evil" that he was never part-alien to begin with.
  • In "Weapon XI, Part 1", some parts of the series were treated far more seriously than before.
    • Ben's recreation of the universe in "So Long and Thanks for All The Smoothies" was initially treated as just as good as saving it. The only two episodes since then to directly mention it, "Collect This" and "Universe vs Tennyson", had both played it for laughs, with Collectimus complaining about Lighter and Softer as part of his role as a Take That, Audience! and with Starbeard taking Ben to court over it in a showcase of bizarre galactic bureaucracy. Proctor Servantis, however, points out with appropriate horror that the universe was destroyed and Ben was partly responsible.
    • Ben's irresponsibility in general has usually been Played for Laughs, but Servantis argues that the extraordinary power the Omnitrix grants is not the sort of thing you want in the hands of an immature Destructive Savior. "Weapon XI, Part 2" ends with the conclusion that Ben, having saved the universe multiple times, was well worth the risk, but Servantis' criticisms cast Ben's less mature actions in a more critical light.
    Servantis: That weapon on his wrist can turn him into a Tokustar. Or perhaps even a Celestialsapien. This grimy child could one day just wish everything out of existence.
  • The critical reception towards Omniverse becomes this after the unfortunate passing of the series' art director Derrick J Wyatt in December 2021, due to how he was a scapegoat for its problems.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In 2010, there was a short-lived LEGO Ben 10 line based on Alien Force. Now there's Bloxx, an alien who's literally Built with LEGO.
  • Also, when Rook can tell that Ester likes Ben, Ben doesn't believe it and responds by saying "'cuz you know everything about girls!" It turns out he does, especially when Ben realized Rook had a girlfriend.
  • Eon, introduced just after the original series, was a temporal-based alien with an unexplained Evil Brit shtick, until having him face off with the also temporal-based Professor Paradox, Captain Ersatz of Doctor Who, turned Eon into an Expy of the Master. Even better, the Art Shift applied to the Professor makes him resemble Peter Capaldi!
  • In Ultimate Alien, 16-year-old Ben countered his 10-year-old self's claim that Swampfire was "just a copy of Wildvine" by throwing seeds to spawn a mass of entangling vines, quipping "can Wildvine do this?" In "Rad Monster Party", Wildvine does exactly that.
  • In one of the Alien Force video games, John Dimaggio played Vilgax, filling in for James Remar, who himself was filling in for Steve Blum. In this iteration, Steve Blum returns and functions as The Other Darrin for Adwaita, a role John Dimaggio played before.
  • A frequent justification used by the writers, as well as Derrick J. Wyatt, to explain the infamous break-up between Ben and Julie, as well as the confirmation she wouldn't be his wife in the future, was to say that in real life, "you don't end up marrying girls you dated as a teenager". Fast-forward to the Time War story arc, Ben's final Love Interest turns out to be Kai Green, a character he had a crush on as a ten-year-old and didn't see for five years after that. In addition, the justification they used for Ben and Julie's break-up doesn't hold up because Ben still ends up marrying a girl he dated as a teenager.
  • Rath's incredibly close resemblance to Incineroar can be explained away as either a case of Small Reference Pools or a simple coincidence. The same cannot be said for Ultimate Negative Rath, who so closely resembles Incineroar's shiny form that one can't help but wonder if the designers of Omniverse are psychic.
  • One of the names thought up for Ball Weevil was "Turd Burglar".
  • When Phil returns and seems like he wants to reform, Grandpa Max asks Ben to give him a chance like he did Kevin, but Ben insists that "Phil is no Kevin". Flash forward to the reboot, where Kevin is once again a villain while Phil gets a massive case of Adaptational Heroism.
  • The whole plot with No Watch Ben and all the alternate Bens seems to be a fusion of three Marvel Films that wouldn't happen until much later. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Think about it:
    • (For Spider-Verse) There's a whole bunch of alternate counterparts of the titular character, and an inexperienced version of the character is the focus of the story.
    • (For Infinity War) There's a galactic conqueror that wants to commit genocide (though for different reasons) and eventually succeeds. Not to mention a powerful wizard that controls time.
    • (For Endgame) And then the second half is based around time travel and reviving everyone that died for a final battle.
• Ho Yay:
  • With Kevin gone, Rook has become the main character yaoi fangirls can pair up with Ben. Not helped by the fact that 1) he admits himself to be an Ascended Fanboy of Ben, 2) he has been revealed to be of a feline species and 3) he actually seems to dislike Esther when she flirts with Ben...
  • Certain episodes are absolutely chock full of homoerotic undertones. Special mention goes to "Bros In Space". For a bit of context, the whole episode revolves around Rook's father not approving of Rook's choices—bringing Ben to Revonnah being among said choices—and as a result, it's overflowing with a "why don't you like my boyfriend" sort of vibe. The cherry on top has to be when Rook snubs Rayona, his ex-girlfriend whom he supposedly still has feelings for, because he "does not yet know the plans of [his] houseguest", AKA Ben.
  • Kevin and Rook also get some moments, like their subplot in "Charm School" where they ignore Gwen and Ben to hang out with each other.
  • As in the previous series, Gwen seems a bit obsessed with Charmcaster in "Charm School" and tries to get her to see reason. The nature of the ending to "Third Time's a Charm" also raises some eyebrows, with Gwen happily smiling and petting the bag with Charmcaster inside it while saying that they can come to be friends now.
  • Many have pointed out that the episode meant to sink Ben/Ester and solidify Ben/Kai really made a convincing case for Ester/Kai.
  • Lucy flirting with Gwen while transformed into Kevin in a flashback episode, which is also more Kissing Cousins antics for this franchise!
  • Many have also pointed out that Psyphon is practically Yandere for Vilgax. Some will even go so far as to say that he's Ambiguously Gay for Vilgax because of how often he gushes about him. This especially shows in "Bengeance is Mine" when Psyphon thinks that Bill Gacks is his master in disguise. He is not afraid to grovel at Vilgax's feet and will do literally anything that is asked of him. Anything for the master!
• I Am Not Shazam: The villain featured in "Trouble Helix" is Malware, not Helix, despite the name of the episode. Helix is the name of the device that was used to create him.
• I Knew It!:
  • Many, many fans had guessed that the reason Ben doesn't use Feedback anymore was because Malware had a part in it, most guessing that he flat-out destroyed the form, which is exactly what he did in "Showdown, Part 1".
  • Many predicted that there would be a parody of the Harem Anime genre due to so many girls being attracted to Ben. Guess what "Rules of Engagement" is about?
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: There have been criticisms about the show reusing ideas or concepts introduced back in the Original Series, resulting in repetitive parts (such as episodes whose scripts seems to be directly based on the original series' episodes) or Continuity Porn that doesn't make much sense (such as a cameo of the Kraken, a creature that wasn't portrayed as an alien in its first appearance, used by space pirate for a watchdog along with a cameo in present of Exoskull, a villain featured in the future at least).

J - P

• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Even though Phil was a bastard in his only original series appearance, Omniverse revealed that, after surviving for a year in the Null Void, he ended up captured by Malware and Psychobos, used as a test subject for the Nemetrix, sent after Ben, apparently gravely injured due to the Nemetrix being unable to function right with him, and then took by his captor again. When he is finally brought back, it turns out he died and his body ended up controlled by parasites.
  • Malware sort of started out as this, but, once Albedo "cured" him, it threw the Woobie part out the window and uses all his next appearances to show us what a bastard he really is.
  • Ben 23 gets this treatment too. In "Store 23", we first see Ben 23 as more of a narcissist than the main Ben. Then, we learn that in this universe Max died before Ben received the Omnitrix. Without Max, there's no Character Development that helped the original Ben become the hero he is today and no one by Ben's side. All the money and fame he receives in the universe will never replace family, treating 23 Ben more as a Stepford Smiler.
  • Hell, the 11 year old Ben may qualify when Feedback's DNA is killed right in front of him by Malware.
  • Even though he is significantly less sympathetic than before, Albedo still manages to be this: just when he had finally got his Galvan form back, Azmuth decides to inflict him a petty punishment by not only causing him to lose it again, but turning him into an 11-year-old Ben this time. The final scene of him crying at the end of "For A Few Brains More" is played for comedy, but some fans felt genuinely sorry for him at this point.
  • Charmcaster may be a Jerkass for doing evil under the advice of the monster who killed her father (who she arrogantly believes is of no threat to her anymore), but she is still a Woobie for still recovering from a mental and emotional breakdown while Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Some older fans are Just Here for Rook.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • In "And Then There Were None", Vilgax destroying all the timelines but the one without an Omnitrix, killing all but one version of Ben Tennyson, including the mainstream one, in the process. Nobody was surprised when it was fixed in the next episode.
  • Kevin's Face–Heel Turn in "Weapon XI, Part 1" left fans skeptical, figuring that after two series of him being a good guy, such a thing couldn't, and shouldn't, be done at this point. So quite a few were unsurprised when Kevin revealed he was faking it.
• Love to Hate: The fans really love Malware (who's easily one of the most vile and despicable villains in the entire franchise) due to him being an terrifyingly awesome bad guy with zero moral qualms. This made him really stand out, especially given the new Denser and Wackier approach.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Khyber is the alleged "greatest huntsman in the galaxy". Hired by Dr. Psychobos and Malware to hunt down all of the predatory species for the Nemetrix and later the Omnitrix itself, Khyber thoroughly studies his prey and begins hunting Ben Tennyson, using the Nemetrix attached to his pet which he controls by whistling, eventually succeeding in subduing and capturing Ben. Assisting in the attack on Galvan-Prime, after being disrespected by Psychobos, Khyber turns on him and escapes with the Nemetrix. Later teaming up with Albedo, breaking him out of prison and swapping the real Ben in his place, Khyber then hunts Ben in his own personal reserve using his new pet. Fighting the heroes over possession of Azmuth's brain, Khyber gets captured and resists interrogation until the information is forcefully extracted from his mind. Escaping yet again, Khyber teams up with Skurd, offering the Nemetrix in exchange for his powers.
  • Attea is the princess of the Incurseon empire and daughter of Emperor Milleous. After being thwarted in her first attempt to usurp her father, she is made a general of his army and invades several planets including an assassination attempt on Vilgax. Acquiring mind control serum made from harvested Amber ogia, she uses it to create an army of Way Bads. Attea and Milleous launch a full-scale invasion on Earth, succeeding in taking it over and exiling Ben Tennyson. However Ben manages to escape and returns as Bullfrag and helps to defeat the Incurseon and Way Bad armies. Upon Milleous being arrested, Attea reveals she was the one who freed Ben and that the entire war was one elaborate ploy to get her father removed so she could take over the empire.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • XLR8 is not amused by your nonsense.
  • Similar to its spiritual predecessor, there were a lot of jokes about the use of Lantern Jaw of Justice in the designs.
  • The existence of Bloxx resulted in many Lego jokes.
  • Rad Dudesman predicted T-Posing.
  • In general, the show spawned many reaction images such as this one.
• Memetic Troll: Lucy Mann. She also has that reputation in-universe. She’s earned this by her constant use of her powers to play people like violins and is quite good at it too, to the point that Gwen even becomes slightly paranoid that ANYONE could be Lucy.
• Mis-blamed: Quite a few fans blame Derrick Wyatt for the Denser and Wackier nature of the show, but this was actually due to Executive Meddling. Since the Original Series always gets the best ratings while the super-dark Ultimate Alien got the worst, the execs wanted Omniverse to go for a tone closer to the Original Series, making the writers insert a more comedic tone. Though admittedly, Derrick Wyatt himself did very little effort to discard these accusations, having often hinted at his dislike of Alien Force and Ultimate Alien on his social media accounts. However, through Vindicated by History and in light of his passing in December 2021, Derrick J Wyatt is accepted as an important contributor to the franchise.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Malware either crossed it either by murdering several Galvanic Mechamorphs in "Trouble Helix" or by using Phil as an unwilling test subject.
  • He definitely crossed it in "Malefactor", when he decides to keep Ben from pursuing him by throwing a tanker truck at a school bus.
  • Ben 23, of all people, almost crosses it by attempting to rip his dimension's Azmuth in half. He is fortunately stopped before this happens.
  • Dr. Psychobos crossed it when he came up with a plan to assassinate Azmuth and commit genocide on the entire Galvan species.
  • If the above didn't count for Malware, helping Psychobos do that to his own species certainly does for him as well.
  • Vilgax's Character Rerailment only cements his position on the other side of this line when in "And Then There Was None" where he sets off a bomb that wipes out all universes, save for the one he was in, which happens to contain a Ben Tennyson with no Omnitrix. He's essentially wiped out millions of worlds, so many lives that counting them would be impossible, and his own allies, all so he can murder a powerless Ben.
  • Proctor Servantis crossed this line long ago when he decided to turn a group of orphan children into his own personal army of living super-weapons. And to make it even worse, all of this was so he could murder an innocent 11-year-old kid just because he might one day become dangerous to the Universe.
  • Kundo in "Rook Tales" crossed it when he assaulted Rook's father for letting Shar, Rook's sister, leave their world to become a plumber. Before, Rook was extremely hesitant to fight his former teacher, but when he learned what happened to his father he decided the line was crossed.
  • Much like with Ben 23, "The Color of Monkey" has a character almost cross the line but get stopped before it happens. In this case, it's Argit planning on selling a baby Lewodan (whose parents are worried sick over) to Jarret, who would eat it. Luckily, Ben out-gambits Argit and the sale never transpires.
  • Maltruant might have caused some death and destruction during the Time War, but the final episode is where he crosses it. His plan was to swap the anihilarg that created Ben's universe with one of his own, which would thereby erase Ben and everyone else from existence, to create a universe in his own image.
• More Popular Replacement: Rook Blonko was initially seen as a Replacement Scrappy for Gwen and Kevin, but opinions of him ended up reversing as time went on. While Gwen and Kevin remain base-breakers in the fandom, Rook has managed to become one of the franchise's most popular characters overall, with some fans wishing he would replace the duo full-time.
• Narm:
  • Malware destroying Feedback. The action is depicted as a Moral Event Horizon and caused Ben a mental breakdown he still hasn't fully recovered from even in present day. The whole thing is played as tragic, but many fans felt it was a bit excessive to see Ben so mentally scarred by what amounted to the loss of his favorite toy considering that even back when he was ten, he had been confronted with things like Mind Rape from one of his own aliens. Similarly, it really seems weird this was what convinced him that Malware was "a complete psychopath" when the guy was going around essentially cannibalizing his own people before this. Though an equal argument can be made that Malware "killing" Feedback was something Ben also felt, an argument backed up by Ben's absolute terror at seeing him alive again.
  • Zombozo's decaying, emaciated body in "Something Zombozo This Way Comes" is quite nightmarish in itself; however, when he finally recovers by feeding on Ben's energy, he returns to his first Omniverse design rather than his Original Series one and does so by goofily inflating like a balloon, which kinda breaks the creepiness of the scene.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • While the concept of a Doomsday Device able to destroy the whole universe is quite scary, it's a bit hard to take it seriously when it's called "Anihilarg."
    • Thats just because nobody who’s tried saying its Overly Long Name ever got the chance to finish before their universe went kaput...
  • Trumbipulor tries to invoke Nightmare Fuel with his robot minions by designing them on the scariest, most threatening-looking creatures he could think of in the galaxy. The problem is, he is afraid of mice, which aren't exactly considered scary by human standards.
  • Maltruant actually looks fairly menacing up close... And then it's revealed that he's a Chronosapien (the species that Clockwork hails from), which makes him look fairly comical and awkward. His hammy accent does not help.
• No Yay: Attea and Ben/Bullfrag. Even excluding the Squick involved by the fact Attea is an Anthropomorphic frog while Ben is human, there is the fact that Incurseans grow faster than humans... meaning Attea is technically a lot younger than Ben, which can be seen by Bullfrag looking like an adult rather than a teen. Though this loses a bit of the creepiness factor when one realizes that most actual frogs and toads have a lifespan of about 12 years and Incurseans likely age along that age spectrum even if they don't share such a short lifespan. Still counts due to her being a bit of an Ax-Crazy Royal Brat.
  • Also, fans' general reaction to Gwen's newfound crush on Hex. Giving a female character a crush on a much older guy who has been stalking her for magical artifacts since she was ten can have this effect.
    • It's also Hex's reaction to Professor Xagliv coming onto him.
  • Many fans feel Kai's obsession with Blitzwolfer (and to some extent with Ben's other alien forms in later episodes) reached a level that stopped being funny and started being rather disturbing.
  • "The Most Dangerous Game Show" has Charles Zenith organize a game where girls have to compete to become Ben's wife. In order to do so, he summons every single woman Ben ever met without their consent. This includes several non-humanoid aliens, women who are adult, married or already in relationships, and Ben's relatives. Thankfully, Ben at least calls out Zenith for the latter and he sends back home all of those who were related to Ben.
• Obvious Judas:
  • Argit in "The Frogs of War, Part 2". The character's entire hat is to betray and double-cross everyone else to save his own skin, so really, nobody was surprised when he betrayed the heroes to Attea.
  • In a rare Heel–Face Turn example, Dr. Viktor makes it no secret that he will eventually be the Judas in the midst of Zs'Skayr's henchmen. In "The Vampire Strikes Back", Zs'Skayr resurrects Lord Transyl, a member of a long-extinct species that once enslaved Viktor's people with the intention of ruling the universe together. Viktor voices obvious disapproval for the scheme, even going so far as to call it "madness," and yet at the very end where Zs'Skayr orders Viktor to hold onto Ben so that Transyl can take control over him, Zs'Skayr is still legitimately shocked when Viktor drops Ben at the last second, proclaiming that the Vladats must never rule again.
• One-Scene Wonder: Cow and Chicken 's cameo appearance.
• Padding: In "Frogs of War, Part 1", the Randomizer function seems to have been added to the episode just to give a problem to Ben, as it doesn't really add a whole lot to the episode considering Ben has problems and frustrations with the Omnitrix already (common problems include the time limit's varying length and changing into the wrong alien a lot), and takes up a few minutes in the least. The Omnitrix could have glitched out and there really wouldn't have been much of a difference.
• Pandering to the Base: The show as a whole is obviously intended to satisfy all of the fans of the original Ben 10 series that complained about Alien Force and Ultimate Alien being too different. As a result, we get characters being redesigned to look closer to their Original Series selves, several characters and elements introduced in the original series returning (including one-shot characters such as the Megawatts), and flashbacks segments and episodes that take place in the original series’ era. Oh, and Kevin and Gwen are Put on a Bus, possibly to satisfy those who complained about Romantic Plot Tumor.

Q - Z

• Questionable Casting:
  • In a nutshell, any time they bring back an old alien but find a new voice actor for them. We got this to some degree with AF and UA with Dee Bradley Baker voicing all of Ben's aliens old and new save Rath, but he is a Man of a Thousand Voices whose portrayal is such that you'd hardly notice. The new ones will make you say "What do you mean that's supposed to be Cannonbolt?!" However, some of the new voices were quite appropriate, such as XLR8's accelerated speech.
  • This is definitely in effect for fans of The Secret Saturdays as many people reacted negatively to the fact that the titular family were voiced by different voice actors in "T.G.I.S." than in the series proper.
    • However, this is somewhat justified in Zak's case. T.G.I.S. takes place three years after The Secret Saturdays ended. Zak was thirteen at the end of his series but he's sixteen here. (The Saturdays went through a three-year time skip, according to Animo and Argost anyway.)
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • The New Omnitrix is by now mostly seen by fans as a Replacement Scrappy even to the Ultimatrix, which some fans saw as a replacement scrappy by itself; This is mostly due to it having a completely different design than all previous variants of the Omnitrix, being hyped up as better and an improvement over both the Prototype Omnitrix and Ultimatrix yet not displaying any actually better features and generally being awfully less practical than its predecessors (in fact, the few functions it displays that weren't present on the previous models only end up making it even harder to use most of the time).
    • The only one feature it had over all the previous models was the lifesaving feature, that would give Ben the right Alien if he is about to die. However, this feature was only revealed in the final episode.
  • One of the many reasons Maltruant was so unpopular was because his spot as the mysterious time-travelling villain could have been easily filled by Eon, another time-travelling villain who had already been established since the Original Series era and whose two possible backstories (Continuity Snarl aside) both gave him potential to be a much more interesting villain. It wasn't helped by the fact Eon did show up in the Time War story arc... as a minion of Maltruant, who ends up pulling You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on him.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Some of the poorly designed alien forms introduced in Ultimate Alien, such as Jury Rigg and Eatle, got a bit of this thanks to their new designs. Jury Rigg's aviator suit, especially, made him only more popular.
  • Psyphon, while not particularly hated, was considered by a few fans to not be terribly noticeable. In Omniverse, he was able to fight Ben on more equal ground more consistently and received a more distinguishable characterization contributed to make him popular. He ended up thrown right back in it with "Bengeance is Mine" and "Cough It Up", unfortunately, in which he very much Took a Level in Dumbass.
  • When their respective powers were finally revealed, both Molestache and Pesky Dust turned out to have abilities original and creative enough to at least make them slightly more likable to the fanbase.
  • Kai was at first considered more likable compared to how she was back in her only appearance in the Original Series, though still heavily divisive. Unfortunately, next episodes made sure to turn her into a Scrappy again thanks to the way her relationship with Ben was handled.
• Seasonal Rot: Every arc after the first two got this in some capacity:
  • The third arc featuring the Incurseans wasn't very impressive, most likely due to the fact that it comes right after two arcs featuring a very personal enemy to Ben, the fact that it tries to (and sort of fails due to the increased focus on their frog-like aspects) reintroduce the Incurseans as a real threat, being too goofy, even in comparison to previous episodes and arcs, and Ben's Character Rerailment being undone. The ending of the arc creating a major continuity error and how the whole thing is resolved didn't help matters.
  • While the fourth arc started out promising, it included slightly more fillers than previous arcs (its storyline was only three episodes long and took some time to actually start) and its finale was generally considered very disappointing due to undoing the Character Rerailment that had been done with Albedo, an Ass Pull used to bring back Kevin and Gwen (whereas they had actually credible reasons to be there in the previous finales), and featuring some rather anticlimactic fights. The arc also included episodes where protagonists did rather morally questionable actions that placed them in Designated Hero territory in the eyes of many fans.
  • The fifth arc had a tendency to wrap up its conflicts with Game Breaking aliens, and failed to fully exploit its potentially interesting premise.
  • The final story arc of the series was not very popular overall. Despite the name, the Time War never actually is featured in the arc and only gets a few passing mentions as a backstory for the main villain, while the season's story involves Maltruant collecting various MacGuffins through time with the help of two goons for his Hidden Agenda (which turns out to be a generic "reshape the Universe in my own image" plan) and even that gets little focus in favor of Ben getting together with Kai in a... not very well-handled manner. Maltruant himself is considered by most fans a blatant flat who would be boring if he wasn't voiced by Mark Hamill. In addition, this season featured a lot of new gimmicks clearly done for the sake of toy promotion, most of which were Base-Breaking Characters at best (Skurd) and Scrappies at worst (the Time-cycles).
• Shocking Moments: "Rooters of All Evil" and the sheer amount of Cerebus Retcons. Kevin is a mutant, not an alien. Max was never his dad's partner and probably didn't even know him, Kevin's real dad was likely not even a Plumber or Osmosian (and thus may still be alive). The Plumbers kids, and Argit, were genetic experiments and pretty much everything stated in Alien Force/Ultimate Alien about any of this was a part of a giant mind control-based false memory.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the show among fans. Omniverse is considered to be a decent show that was loved by fans for taking the show back to its roots of the franchise via making many homages to the original series and giving Rook while also being disliked for its overly simplified art style, Denser and Wackier tone, and flanderized characters (especially Ben).
• Special Effects Failure: There's a sequence in "The Frogs of War, Part 1" where Fourarms charges at some Incurseans, who just stand there not firing or moving as he knocks them over.
• Squick:
  • Space fleas. Sentient space fleas.
  • Zs'kayr's cloak becomes this when you realize that it's not a cloak at all. It's the "skin" that he had when he revealed what he really looked like, meaning that Zs'kayr is wearing his own skin as a hood.
• Strangled by the Red String: Ben and Kai, oh so much. They only knew each other for a B-plot of the original series episode "Benwolf" where Ben has a one-sided crush on Kai and she only showed a casual, off-handed interest in taming Ben's Blitzwolfer form at the end of the episode which broke Ben's heart. While it is implied in a dream of a perfect day for Ben that he still harbors feelings for Kai but it was never expanded on. When the two meet again in "An American Benwolf in London", they have just spent six years without seeing each other and immediately start a Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic where the only attempt to make their relationship more important than the rest of Ben's harem is everyone acting like their fighting is proof that they love each other with some very minor Ship Tease. Even when we actually see them married in the future they are still constantly arguing (though a bit less violently). The trope actually gets invoked with Ben/Kai in "Fight at the Museum", where they are declared true loves because Spanner says so. Oh, and Esther actually gives up on Ben and makes way to for Kai because she believes You Can't Fight Fate.
• The Scrappy:
  • Many of the comedic new characters such as Hokestar, Blukic, and Driba are usually considered fairly annoying or pointless to the narrative. It doesn't help that, in Blukic and Driba's case, they also are Creator's Pets and show signs of Fantastic Racism.
  • Pax deserves a special mention, being a walking hippie stereotype with Animal Wrongs Group tendencies whose very existence contradicts the Original Series (where Florauna were portrayed as a feral and carnivorous in Secret of the Omnitrix).
  • The aliens introduced in Outbreak (namely Walkatrout, Pesky Dust, Molestache and the Worst), due to all four of them having poor designs (the design process was literally just picking some of the preexisting "civilian" background aliens) and being introduced as Joke Characters. Pesky Dust had its powers revealed 28 episodes later, Molestache and the Worst 46 (And Molestache's was revealed in a deleted scene, with that), and Walkatrout never did (according to Word of God, his sole power is to walk).
  • Collectimus, due to being a very obnoxious character and a blatant Take That, Audience!. Fans, especially those who liked the Alien Force/Ultimate Alien era, were not amused, and even those who don't like or don't care about the era he mocks still dislike him for being a Karma Houdini.
  • Kai Green more than ever. Just for starters, she managed to anger almost every Ben-related shipper aside from her own; Benlie fans hate her for being the cause of the incredibly forced and convoluted break-up between Ben and Julie, which was clearly done to make way for her, and shippers who pair Ben with other girls (Esther, Looma, Attea...) are mad because she single-handedly turned all these into Romantic False Leads. Then, you have the fact her romance with Ben was spectacularly Strangled by the Red String; the show tries to play it as Belligerent Sexual Tension, but since they have almost no moment to show they do like each other, and the few ones they have involve Kai caring more about Ben's alien forms than himself, it just comes out as them hating each other. There is also the fact that Kai is a major Jerkass who constantly insults Ben even when he comes to help her and gets too much Character Shilling (she is hinted to be worthy of pulling Excalibur out of its stone than Ben even though none of what she ever did before suggested she was noble enough for this).
  • Maltruant is not particularly well-liked due to being another megalomaniac in a series whose megalomaniac quotient has already been filled and then some, having almost nothing to set himself apart as a unique member of Ben's Rogues Gallery (his plan was almost identical to Aggregor's, his role as a time-traveling villain already was filled by Eon, and even his name and "Red and Black and Evil All Over Palette Swap of one of Ben's aliens" design make him similar to fan-favorite Malware), and being a complete waste of a good concept and voice actor.
  • Nyancy Chan is one of the most disliked characters in the show, for having an annoying voice and unrealistic design, being an extremely pointless character overall, not fitting in the setting even with the more cartoonish approach, and being one of the most pathetically weak villains in the entire franchise.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Albedo has been established to not give a damn about what others think, and will bend the truth to himself to make sure nothing is his fault. However, it's implied at the end of "For A Few Brains More" (which features Azmuth messing with Albedo's Ultimatrix in order to force him back to a Ben form, and a younger Ben form at that), that Albedo might have some legitimate problems with Azmuth.
  • Dr Psychobos indisputably is racist toward Galvans, and his accusations toward them of arrogance is clearly meant to have him appear as a Hypocrite. However, some comments made by Blukic and Driba about Cerebrocrustaceans during "Frogs of War" suggest that his arguments of Galvan arrogance might have some credence.
  • Ben greatly dislikes Spanner's constant attempts to pair him off with Kai. Even though he isn't aware of why Spanner is doing this (he's their son Ken from the future), his dislike of it is legitimate. Not only is he technically in a relationship with Ester, Kai isn't exactly an ideal match; she's constantly disrespectful towards Ben even when he's not being an idiot, treating his alien forms like separate people while showing them more appreciation and constantly picking fights with him.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Ben finally gets called out for his arrogance in "Of Predators and Prey: Part 1" by Rook, who can't stand it at this point, a sentiment that many fans have felt since Omniverse began. While part 2 revealed that it was a charade, he seriously meant what he said to Ben about his arrogance.
  • And according to Word of God, he is not too fond of Fastrack, which explains the increase of the usage of XLR8.
  • Probably unintentional, but those amongst the fans who dislike Blukic and Driba might enjoy this part of dialogue from "Store 23":
    Azmuth: "You two are brilliant scientists."
    Blukic and Driba: "Oooooooooh!"
    Azmuth: "By Earth's standards; for a pair of Galvan, you are remarkably unintelligent."
    Blukic and Driba (disappointed): "Oooooooh...."
  • The Ship Sinking of Ben/Julie came with Ben unintentionally hurling insults at Julie while playing a video game. The fact that Julie was so unpopular with many of the fandom played a role in this. However even fans who disliked the pairing felt their break up was ridiculously contrived and made Ben look like a complete moron in the process.
  • Possibly as an answer to fans complaining about him being a Karma Houdini in Ultimate Alien, Will Harrangue essentially gets everything in the face: Ben "accidentally" sprays him as Water Hazard in Frogs of War, he starts losing viewers after siding with the Incurseans during their invasion, and a vengeful Jury Rigg mutates him into a tentacled alien.
  • Many fans disliked the Ultimate Alien episode "Couples Retreat" due to Darkstar taking advantage of Charmcaster immediately after she'd already suffered from crossing the Despair Event Horizon. The ending to "Mystery Incorporeal", in which Charmcaster appears to have some fun torturing Darkstar for messing with her realm, pleased these fans greatly.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The fact the show privileged a Denser and Wackier approach and Rule of Funny over good plot bothered a lot of fans, especially the return of Ben's Butt-Monkey status and the degradation of many villains, even ones that start off threatening in this series, to jokes.
  • The art and animation style of Omniverse in general compared to the previous iterations, which was changed from realistic to "cartoony." Part of Wyatt's Signature Style is a design scheme that people in the biz call "stylized" and people not in the biz call "Ow, my eyes!"
    • Special mention goes to "T.G.I.S.", the crossover episode with The Secret Saturdays; the Saturdays were completely redesigned to fit the Time Skip and Omniverse artstyle, leading to some changes that weren't necessarily well-received by the series' fans.
    • Another special case worth mentioning with Zs'Skayr; even those who found his portrayal in this series satisfying generally agree turning right-side up his iconic upside-down skull was a stupid move.
  • In-Universe, Collectimus says he prefers the old version of Mr. Smoothy to the new one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Gravattack is the only one of the new aliens that can do something none of Ben's aliens could do before; he also is one of the least used aliens so far. Possibly justified; Gravattack is just too powerful to be regularly used due to the nature of his gravity alteration powers.
  • The Vreedle Brothers; after the Character Development they got in Ultimate Alien and their Heel–Face Turn, the writers decided that they were better as villains and just had them blow up the Plumber Academy before being back to being Con Men. Especially annoying in that this was totally unnecessary: if they wanted villainous Vreedle Brothers, they could have just used a separate pair of clones that were still criminals, seeing how "Con of Rath" established there were an army of them.
  • Speaking of Character Development and Heel–Face Turn undoing, what's been said about Charmcaster's eventual appearance in the series has NOT been received very well by those who liked what the previous show was doing with her. Dwayne McDuffie claimed she was one of his favorite characters; and he named her "Hope" and had her caught in the neutral zone of the Heel–Face Revolving Door following her Despair Event Horizon for a reason. But that seems like it might be forgotten about now that he's gone.
    • A possible subversion, as what Derrick Wyatt had in mind for her was apparently overruled by other writers on the staff and Charmcaster remained a gray-shaded Anti-Villain stuck in the Heel–Face Revolving Door via mental issues and influence from two straight-up villains, instead of just being a baddie for her own sake. It may still count as a waste for some since the redemption arc remained canned (even her true Meaningful Name was written out), and an implied future Heel–Face Turn won't ever be shown unless Gwen's college spinoff ever happens.
  • Also, when Albedo absorbs Azmuth's intelligence in "For a Few Brains More", he has a Heel Realization about the Universe and seems about to redeem himself. Instead of using this to make his character evolve and have him do the right thing, they had Ben seize the opportunity to trick him and ended the conflict with a fight so Ben could show off his new alien Atomix.
  • Did you think the prospect of Phil redeeming himself sounded interesting? Too bad, it turns out that Phil was actually killed from the inside out long ago and a parasite has taken his body and had only been pretending to be The Atoner. Combined with the Vreedles, Charmcaster, and Albedo examples above, many fans at this point are getting sick of Kevin being the only villain to be allowed a Heel–Face Turn.
    • And then Phil is brought back as a member of the Rooters... only to serve little purpose beside serving as an additional minion to Proctor Servantis. His interactions with Max don't even go beyond the first episode of the story arc, and he is defeated offscreen in a comical fashion by Argit without even getting a new confrontation with his old friend. Oh, and the reason the Rooters recruited him to begin with? Never addressed.
  • Julie was starting to get better as a character and had been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap thanks to both Character Development and the fact she Took a Level in Badass. Instead of keeping going this way with her in order to improve her again, the writers decide to have Ben and her break up off-screen (with the break-up being shown as a gag in a flashback; he accidentally broke up with her while playing a video game and having her mistake his shouts at the screen as being at her. They haven't spoken since, and Ben never gave it much thought due to Took a Level in Dumbass and Took a Level in Jerkass.) and introduce several new characters as Ben's potential love interest before eventually bringing Kai Green back. The final nail in the coffin? Word of God is that Omniverse will go to 80 episodes now...and there are no plans for Julie to appear in any of these planned episodes at all. She's been Put on a Bus, quite possibly for good. The exact reason for this is unknown, but it's possible Julie was a Creator's Pest among the writing staff who was forced on them by Dwayne McDuffie, and his death was all they needed to get rid of her. To this day, Ben/Julie shippers are still in the same camp as Finn/Flame Princess shippers (that is to say still sore about the whole thing, though at least Finn/FP's Ship Sinking occurred over several episodes and had some logic behind it, while Ben/Julie was sunk in the most contrived and rushed way possible).
  • Also, Elena Validus has been confirmed to have a non-speaking cameo coming up and that's it. And it will be as Elena, not as the Hive Queen, meaning she was cured of her condition and her problems from the previous series were resolved completely off-screen. This is yet another case of Aborted Arc due to Dwayne McDuffie's death.
    • A graphic novel was eventually published with her as a major character... only for said graphic novel to contradict everything established about her and explain absolutely nothing about what happened to her between the two shows.
  • Many fans of the horror-themed Anur aliens were excited by the news of the Vladats (a species which so far had only been mentioned in trivia and the Transylians' official bio) finally making an appearance in the show, even if only one such character was announced. When said character, Lord Transyl, finally arrived, he was only there for one episode before being quite easily defeated and disposed of. Moreover, his powers and personality turned out to be rather generic and bland.
  • The Evil Alternate Bens in the "And Then There Was Ben" two-parter just barely get enough time to showcase their base personality traits, but they're otherwise just thugs for Vilgax and Eon. Mad Ben is an exception as he gets a two-parter dedicated to him and his world at the end of the seventh arc.
  • Much like in Ultimate Alien, Eon being an alternate Ben is completely glossed over with no attempt to develop how Ben became him in the first place. Especially infuriating in that many feel this alone would have made him a much more compelling and interesting Big Bad for the Time War story arc than Maltruant was.
  • Maltruant; the character is an evil Chronosapien, is stated to have a connection with a Time War, and on top of that, he is voiced by Mark Hamill. Yet he has absolutely no backstory, no explanation for why he turned rogue and the Time War he was apparently part of is never explained or elaborated upon, making him come across as a very bland villain whose voice actor is the sole saving grace. Especially disappointing when you consider he is the series' True Final Boss.
  • Ken Tennyson, Ben 10,000's son with his own Omnitrix and a major Ensemble Dark Horse from the Original Series, finally comes back after being absent for two sequels... and not only do we find out his parents took his Omnitrix because he was grounded (and he never recovers it for the entire show), but he spends most of his appearances in the disguise of time-travelling Spanner, who despite a lot of build-up ends up accomplishing nothing really relevant to the plot. We don't even know it's him until his final episode (not that fans didn't guess), so from the viewer's perspective, he only appears as his actual self in two episodes, one where he only makes a silent cameo.
  • Malware. While he is one of the most beloved villains in the show, many fans felt that him just appearing in the first two season arcs was a complete waste of his potential and had he made more appearances in the show, he would have probably been an even better villain. The fact that he gets reduced to a posthumous role in "Malgax Attacks" only served to rub salt in that wound. Though it is hinted that he might be still alive.
  • When introduced, Master Kundo made himself an ideal villain. He was a skilled fighter, a hypocritical villain with his own idea of perfection, a personal enemy for Rook, a cyborg who loathed technology and displayed more personality and motivation than the actual main villain of the show at the time, Maltruant. Only appears in two episodes.
  • The franchise's main hero and villain, Ben and Vilgax, suffer this big time. For Ben, as shown on this page, his idiot qualities downplayed his more heroic and likable qualities, which results in him having rare moments where he displays his competency and actual heroism (Examples include refusing to let an alien impersonating him endanger people, display concern for Rook, and not leaving the parallel world of Mad Ben under his rule). Unfortunately, the show seemed to prefer making him an idiot too often (Examples include how he purposely endangered an undercover mission because he liked hanging out with the bad guys and became upset about not recreating his favorite Mr. Smoothie drink properly). As for Vilgax, while he still shows more competency than Ben, in both "And Then There Were None" and "Malgax Attacks", his relevance is limited due to the more recent villains like Khyber, Malware, the Rooters, and Maltruant. Furthermore, he starts being treated as a joke, especially when it came to Ma Vreedle.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The very premise of the show: having Ben playing a Big Brother Mentor role toward Rook could have been a genuinely interesting development for the character, not to mention a logical follow up to his evolution over the course of the previous shows. The problem is, Ben Took a Level in Dumbass and acts more immature than ever, making Rook appears as a Hypercompetent Sidekick who actually is much more mature than him, so the whole point is lost.
  • "So Long and Thanks for the Smoothies" involves Ben and Rook trying to prevent a Doomsday Device from falling into the wrong hands, and ends with Ben using Alien X to rebuild the universe. A lot of fans feel the whole thing would have been much better as a serious series finale, or if at least the characters had to deal with the changes caused by such a major event (à la Infinite Crisis). Instead, we get a random comical episode that has seemingly few to no impact on the story. The only change made was a new design for the Mr. Smoothy store that Ben loves to visit and that it "doesn't taste the same." However, many have assumed that the changes to characters and the changes to canon thus far only discussed in interviews are because of it. That would make much sense but so far it's been... well, a perfectly good idea that's been wasted.
  • As of "Showdown, Part 1", Psychobos and Malware's plans for the Nemetrix amounted to using it as a glorified distraction. Khyber alone has it now, but as far as the other two's purpose for it, it's largely disappointing. As a matter of fact, Malware is able to pull out his plan of his own without using the Nemetrix a single time, making you wonder why they worked so hard for five years to complete it when just recruiting bounty hunters or killers to distract Azmuth would have worked just as well.
  • In "Showdown, Part 1", they introduce the natural predator of the Galvans. Due to its avian nature, some fans believe that it should have been a peacock, using Ben's fear of them to its advantage. It wasn't.
  • Khyber hacking the Plumbers' database for information about Malware in "Trouble Helix", as well as the fact he helps Ben and Rook in "Malefactor" suggested he was a Dragon with an Agenda who intended to conspire against Malware at some point. This is never brought up in later episodes, or at least not farther than him being obsessed with getting Ben as a trophy.
    • Talking about Khyber, it had been suggested in previous episode that he actually cared for his pet, a theory fans liked to support. The writers apparently feared this would lead to Draco in Leather Pants, so they had Khyber leaving said pet behind in the finale, despite the fact it was entirely against his advantage, completely dropping the idea.
  • "Showdown, Part 2" has the protagonists of all four iterations (Ben, Max, Gwen, Kevin, and Rook) coming back and teaming up altogether to stop Malware. How do they do so? By splitting up immediately for various tasks, with Ben fighting Malware alone, Rook and Gwen merely acting as pilots and assistant to Azmuth, Max helping Blukic and Driba to repair a station (by giving up his belt buckle, no less), and Kevin just having a short subplot where he befriends Khyber's pet. In the end, we don't get any stand of all of them against Malware, who Ben defeats on his own, with the sole help of the Galvanic Mechamorphs and Azmuth.
  • The show establishes that aliens are a well-known fact among the public, and that they can walk among the populace peacefully. This could have been potentially used to develop issue about Fantastic Racism and how the population is adapting to this. However, the story usually doesn't do anything with the idea, usually just showcasing Ben's interactions and treating everything as if nothing's changed. The lack of use of this idea may have even resulted in a particularly bad, somewhat grating continuity error, where "The Frogs of War" reveals them to the human race for the first time, despite previous episodes, seasons, and series contradicting this as Earth has been attacked by aliens several times now.
  • The flashback in "Showdown Part 1" implies that Ben's love of Feedback might be caused by some sort of addiction to the form, to the point Azmuth actually moves to Earth to warn him about it. This idea is used only as an excuse to get Ben angry so he will lose Feedback to Malware a few seconds later, and is never brought back again, even after Ben got Feedback back.
  • "Malefactor" had Malware absorbing a weapon known as the Tachyon cannon, stated to be able to "rip life forms apart on a molecular level". Such a thing would have been perfect to justify him later being able to destroy Feedback. However, the Tachyon cannon is never mentioned again after this episode, and Malware instead destroys Feedback with a new ability he pretty much pulls out of his ass.
  • When it was revealed the Galactic Monsters story arc would have Ben travel to the Anur system, many fans were enthusiastic about seeing the various planets and their inhabitants. In the end, the arc chose to focus on only one planet (Anur Transyl), ignoring all the other planets in the system and treating Transyl like if it was the home planet for all the Anur aliens. Their culture was also barely explored in favor of portraying Anur Transyl as a stereotypical Halloweentown.
  • "Universe vs. Tennyson" wastes a Celestialsapien smackdown, something that could have been Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann levels of badass, in favor of focusing on a comedic trial against Ben.
  • The Time War arc doesn't go into much, if any, detail about what the war was even about, and nobody particularly seems to participate in it onscreen. Instead it's more of a backdrop to justify Maltruant's existence.
  • This series finally delves into other parts of the multiverse, but aside from Ben 23 and remarks from the show's crew about the backstories of the various evil alternate Bens, very little of it is actually explored in a meaningful fashion, instead being the subject of either single episodes or two-parters.
• Tough Act to Follow: One major downside about Malware being an Ensemble Dark Horse was that he was such a great villain he made every single Big Bad following him pale in comparison. His two immediate successors (Attea and Albedo) were former minor villains promoted to Big Bad status with comical quirks (in contrast with Malware being a Knight of Cerebus with a major case of Vile Villain, Saccharine Show), and an even more iconic villain like Zs'Skayr couldn't compare thanks to his arc being ridiculously short and wrapped up very anti-climatically. Vilgax in the following two-parter and the Rooters in the next arc do seem to have upped the stakes, but the former only lasted two episode while the latter led to a Broken Base at best. Even Maltruant, the True Final Boss of both the show and franchise is little more than a one-shot villain whose only saving grace was his voice actor.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The female WayBad introduced in "The Frogs of War".
  • Much of the Nemetrix aliens. Namely, Mucilator, who more or less looks like a giant dog with weird purple sacs. It somehow manages to be adorable.
• Uncertain Audience: Even for long time fans of the franchise, due to Executive Meddling and different writers involved, the show's tone and story progression from the past three series (or just plain abandoning them) makes it a hard watch. One of the show's interests is to harken back to the original series, which undercuts much character and story development for various characters. Furthermore, even compared to the original series, the show's attempts at humor comes off as more childish and immature. The main character himself being inconsistently written, though the writers favored the idiot hothead he was as a child, making it hard to genuinely root for him. Many major villains, including Vilgax, being downplayed and made more comical in favor of presenting more comical villains such as Ma Vreedle as the show's major focus. Add on the abundance of one-shot episodes and the infamous events of "So Long and Thanks for the Smoothies", Omniverse is a very hit or miss series that, as shown, became the most divisive series in the franchise.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Despite the writers' best effort to solidify him as a villainous character, Albedo still manages to stay this, thanks to Azmuth and Ben both being incredibly dickish to him. It doesn't help that, the one time Albedo seemed like he was about to have a Heel Realization, Ben chose to seize the opportunity to attack him.
  • Phil, Max's traitorous partner, to a lesser degree. While he was a scummy, opportunistic Con man who tried to murder Max, his fate of being trapped in an endless prison dimension full of monsters, used as a human guinea pig by Dr. Psychobos, and ultimately mutated into a monstrous human-Terroranchula hybrid with his original personality erased could be considered needlessly horrifying and sadistic.
  • Gwen in "Mud Is Thicker Than Water." While her suspicions of Cousin Lucy being a traitor were biased and incorrect, it's hard not to feel bad for Gwen because Lucy continuously pranked her throughout the episode, even continuing when it was clear it was really stressing her out.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Ben's ego and immaturity had already started to get on the fans' nerves in the third season of Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, but this was still somewhat balanced by him acting intelligent and selfless on occasions. Now that he was flanderized to the point he takes next to nothing seriously, acts incredibly stupid, and seems to care more about having fun than actually helping people, many believe he is downright unlikable.
  • Blukic and Driba; the many problems they cause by acting completely stupid and irresponsible don't exactly make them come out as charming and their comments on Cerebrocrustaceans' intelligence during "Frogs of War" just make them come out as flat-out racist.
  • Azmuth himself can be this at times. He is supposedly a wise and benevolent ruler, but it's been frequently shown that he can be as much of a jerk as Ben. One prime example is the end of the Duel of the Duplicates arc where he punishes a defeated Albedo by transforming him back to his Ben form, this time as an 11-year-old. Many saw that as a needlessly petty Kick Them While They're Down moment, especially considering one of the reasons for Albedo's Start of Darkness was him being fed up by Azmuth's treatment of him. There’s also how he treated Malware, especially how he keeps delaying fixing Malware’s form and then acts surprised when the Mechamorph finally snaps. To rub further salt into the wound, Malware’s remains is kept inside of the museum, making it seem like Azmuth did not value him whatsoever. With this, can one really blame Albedo and Malware for wanting to get rid of the old Galvan?
  • To a lesser extent, Argit. Granted, he was never intended to be fully sympathetic, but considering his actions in this series (particularly betraying the rebellion to the Incurseans and trying to sell a Tiffin to Jarret) are getting less like a Lovable Rogue's schemes and more like things a genuinely evil character would do, it makes you really question why the heroes are still treating him like a friend, and the fact he still gets away with these makes him out to be a Karma Houdini.
• Unnecessary Makeover:
  • Kevin's new appearance in this show garnered a lot of hatred from Kevin's fangirls. In fact, one of them even wrote a list of all insults used by fans to describe said new look◊, including many fans who actually like Omniverse.
  • Gwen's second redesign was especially a point of contention. Her older look from Alien Force and Ultimate Alien was a nice sign of maturity and that she had grown up. Then out of the blue she's back to short hair, suddenly wearing glasses, has freckles and in a design similar to her original series counterpart. Many thought that was way too much regression just for the sake of trying to go back to the roots. Yes, she's a smart girl, but no reason she had to look the part to the tee.
  • While many aliens' designs were criticized in the Alien Force/Ultimate Alien era, especially later ones like Eatle, Jury Rigg, and Fasttrack, many others were already good to begin with, raising some controversy about the point of redesigning them as well (especially the original series’ aliens, whose designs were critically acclaimed for most anyway). The most notable examples of this include Four Arms having a mustache (although only the 16-year-old Ben’s Four Arms has this. 11-year-old Ben's Four Arms looks the same as the original series, but now has green eyes and the Omnitrix symbol on his shoulder is green instead of white), Big Chill being a bulky bug instead of a skeleton-like skinny creature, and Echo Echo's streamlined design looking like he got crushed in a trash compactor. Swampfire and Rath's redesigns while not necessarily bad don't really improve on the originals. Alien X is given a large chin for no reason whatsoever, which doesn't fit at all with his appearance. Chromastone is this up to eleven as he got a radical redesign in the very last episode after sporting his AF/UA design in all previous appearances.
• The Un-Twist: Argit's betrayal in "The Frogs of War" was something so obvious and in-character for him that you would be forgiven to believe the narrators would have him Pet the Dog and stick to his friends for once, showing Everyone Has Standards. He wastes very little time in proving that no, he still is as untrustworthy as ever.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Pesky Dust, the male Nemuina, is often mistaken for female.
• Vindicated by History: While the series still has a polarizing reception just like when it was airing, it gained much more appreciation nowadays due to the emphasis on worldbuilding that expands the story, diverse character designs and backgrounds compared to Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, and several well-recieved additions to the franchise such as Rook and Malware. While it still has its faults, fans generally see Omniverse as a decent iteration of the franchise.
• Win Back the Crowd: The show has been trying to recapture the magic of the Original Series in order to satisfy the fans. Reactions have varied. They have varied a lot.

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