Bumblebee Is Not Optimus Prime’s Son, but Their Bond Tells a Different Story
Parental and familial relationships are not the first things that will pop up in your head when you think about the Transformers franchise. They’re robots. They don’t have classical family trees, right? Well, you’re mostly correct if you assume that, but people still ask some interesting questions, and we are here to answer all of them for you. One such question is – is Bumblebee Optimus Prime’s son?
Bumblebee is not Optimus Prime’s son
Practically every iteration – despite the exact circumstances – shows Bumblebee meeting Optimus at a later point in his life. There is absolutely nothing in the TV shows, the movies, or the comics to suggest this, so we can be absolutely certain about our answer.
Familial and parental relations between Transformers are generally tricky, and it’s unclear how Transformers are “born” and their interpersonal relationships.
Some of the Transformers were known to be siblings (e.g., Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus), sometimes they used the term “brother,” but it’s not known whether it signified an actual relationship (e.g., Optimus Prime and Megatron), sometimes a Transformer would foster other Transformers (e.g. Grimlock and the Technobots), and sometimes a Transformer would create other Transformers and thus be their “father” (e.g. Alphatrion with Optimus Prime and Elita One).
But, besides these pretty superficial remarks, there is little we can use to explain the interpersonal relationships between the Transformers. But, despite that, we know for sure that no such relationship exists between Bumblebee and Optimus Prime.
Who is Bumblebee’s father?
Seeing it’s definitely not Optimus, who is Bumblebee’s father?
The answer is, again, very simple – we have no clue whatsoever. Namely, no iteration of the franchise has ever revealed any information about Bumblebee’s birth, and we have no clue who his father is or even if there is a character that could be described as that.
The IDW comics introduced a foster program for newly created robots, but that was not parenthood but rather a mentor-protege relationship. In light of that, the comic Transformers: Galaxies #6 did reveal a character named Shutter to be Bumblebee’s mentor, but since we know absolutely nothing about Shutter, it’s quite possible that it was just a one-off cameo appearance.
Does Optimus Prime even have a son?
Another seemingly complex question, but with a very simple answer – as far as we know, he does not.
We’ve mentioned some examples where he had a sibling or a father, but there is absolutely no record of him ever having a son or daughter. While he might be a father figure to all Autobots, Optimus Prime is just a great leader, but he has not “created” any Transformer himself, and therefore, we can say – with absolute certainty – that Optimus Prime doesn’t have a child, neither a son nor a daughter.
