Transformers: EarthSpark

So, I was watching some YouTube videos from TJOmega in which he mentioned, in each video, that EarthSpark's cartoon had been canceled, and I'm like "When was this confirmed?" I've looked around and have found no such declaration from any credible sources. So then, why do he and so many other people think EarthSpark is over? Well, I think I may have found what has brought about the confusion.

----

Back in mid-May 2024, there was a rumor floating around that EarthSpark would be canceled after its second season, which was reported by both TFW2005 and Seibertron:

However, this rumor was based purely on speculation, as there were rumblings of yet another TF cartoon being made (which we now know to be Cyberworld) and the people who initially spread this rumor were assuming that the new show might possibly be a tie-in with TF One, as said movie was still coming soon at the time and the true nature of Cyberworld being a YouTube show of short episodes was not yet known at the time of this rumor's initial spreading.

Near the end of May 2024, however, Seibertron posted a follow up story attempting to clarify some things, as the rumor had grown exponentially and the staff wanted to clear up some misinformation, specifying that Paramount had indeed ordered two seasons of EarthSpark and there was no official confirmation of what, if anything, was to come of the show beyond that initial order:

Still, despite this attempt to play damage control by one site, the rumor persisted elsewhere, as TFW continued to post doomsaying news posts about EarthSpark's imminent demise:

And keep in mind that this one was made before EarthSpark's second season was even released! Meaning they were saying Season 2 was the end before the so-called "Season 3" (as Paramount+ labels it) was even known about!

This next one in particular made explicit claim that Cyberworld would be EarthSpark's "replacement", as though it were impossible for the two to coexist despite one being a Paramount+/Nickelodeon show with full-length episodes and the other being a YouTube show with short episodes (which, again, was not yet known at the time this post was made, so more assumptions were being made without any actual facts):

So, everyone who saw these kinds of news posts and didn't understand the difference between a confirmed fact and an unconfirmed rumor took them at face value and ran with the notion that EarthSpark is dead and canceled, long before it was ever made clear that Cyberworld is a completely different beast (so to speak) from EarthSpark.

----

As for the future of the EarthSpark cartoon itself, well, while it does seem that there were plans for the show that have since changed over time, it doesn't seem to be all doom and gloom as people are saying.

According to this now outdated (as you can see Reactivate featured here before it was canceled) annual quarterly report from Hasbro, the initial plan was to release Season 2 of EarthSpark in two batches in 2024 (which did happen), one batch in 2025 (which has yet to happen), and a fourth batch in 2026 (which... wait, why a fourth batch?):


But around August 2024, a new quarterly report updated these plans to instead say that we would be getting more EarthSpark stuff in the first quarter of 2025 (and, well, more toys and stuff were definitely on the shelves during that time) and that some "S2 Specials" for EarthSpark would be released later in the final quarter of the year after the launch of Cyberworld in the third quarter, coexisting with more Cyberworld stuff in the final quarter:


What's more, around the same time in August 2024, Nick Roche made a couple of tweets that said he was currently working on something for EarthSpark ("On the Earthspark treadmill") and, when asked which season of the show he was working on, he cryptically answered "Cannot confirm which season I'm working on... !" But that exclamation point at the end also made it sound like he was pretty excited for what this might be.

Combine this with the Specials revealed in the updated annual report and it seems that Roche was hinting at the forthcoming release of said EarthSpark specials.

And while I cannot find anything else to support it, this Instagram post by Cartoonempire25 claims that Paramount+ renewed EarthSpark for a "Season 4" back in November 2024, with more episodes to come in 2025 (but we'll see if this is the case or if it's instead just the specials):

It doesn't necessarily matter what's been greenlit or even halfway animated already. Chris Cocks' budget chainsaw is hungry.

CoffeeHorse said:

It doesn't necessarily matter what's been greenlit or even halfway animated already. Chris Cocks' budget chainsaw is hungry.

Click to expand...

He should take that chainsaw and cut himself out of the equation.

CoffeeHorse said:

It doesn't necessarily matter what's been greenlit or even halfway animated already. Chris Cocks' budget chainsaw is hungry.

Click to expand...

That depends on how much, if anything, Earthspark is costing Hasbro.

I can't imagine Alan Tudyk coming cheap.

wonko the sane? said:

I can't imagine Alan Tudyk coming cheap.

Click to expand...

Not to mention the actors from Game of Thrones.

After 2023's financial results, anything that cost anything had to be a candidate for the smelting pool. Unless Earthspark was secretly a bigger hit than all appearances suggest, it's probably done for.

Did Hasbro or the production company pay for the show?

It feels like EarthSpark is just sort of... dangling by a thread. I don't know what its numbers are doing on Paramount+ (and very few people probably do) but it just seems like the brand has moved on to other things and ES is just sort of straggling trying to wrap itself up.

I don't know the details of its end, but I think we're closer then some think.

But if there's one thing I know about Transformers fans... it's that they have a hard time letting go. Hell, people were trying to convince themselves that Cyberworld was part of ES for a period.

I pretty well posted most of what Saberblade said last year, FWIW
Also, those slides were full on LEAKS. Nothing of them ever appeared in an official capacity, and Hasbro NEVER reveals plans more than a year out.

I think the bigger tell on Earthspark’s success is that the series has started to get “licensed out” to Netflix, despite still being ”in production”. Given lead times, I suspect the remainder of Earthspark is already wrapping it up for showing later this year. As I said before, if Earthspark is that much a letdown, they’ll probably just license out to Netflix. A good comparison point is Rise of the TMNT, which flopped on its releases, and the “conclusion movie” didn’t air until on Netflix a couple of YEARS after the show‘s wrap on Nickelodeon.

I expect the product line to pretty much be done by the end of the year, regardless of where the final episodes/specials end up.

Steevy Maximus said:

I expect the product line to pretty much be done by the end of the year, regardless of where the final episodes/specials end up.

Click to expand...

And that's the funny thing. The toyline is still going on with new releases planned for later this year, when the most recent episode batch for the cartoon came out last year. If the doomsayers saying the show is over and done with now are to really be believed, then why is the toyline still continuing when its alleged "replacement" Cyberworld is just on the horizon? I call shenanigans, here.

Hasbro releases new toys for dead shows absolutely all the time.

Sabrblade said:

He should take that chainsaw and cut himself out of the equation.

Click to expand...

I mean if the show isn't getting any traction...

2023 was a bad year for Hasbro. 2024 was 'throw things overboard until we stop sinking' time. Considering the impressive turnaround in their finances, they must have tossed a lot.

I don't see Earthspark being on the "Wait! Don't toss that!" list. It doesn't seem to have been a big hit, and Transformers is a dependable money maker without it.

The question still is how far along was it before they started axing stuff. It could easily be more costly to kill a contract than to see it finished, especially if it's nearly at the completion stage.

The remaining episodes (if it was indeed a 26 episode order) could be still be waiting in a queue somewhere.

For those who don't venture into Allsparkle, know that in this same time period Hasbro silently axed a season that was so far along in its production that it actually started airing. And some of the canceled episodes were almost finished and really just need a bit more sound work, but no. At some point Hasbro had the whole production just stop cold turkey. So the season started airing and just unceremoniously stopped.

It can happen.

Undead Scottsman said:

The question still is how far along was it before they started axing stuff. It could easily be more costly to kill a contract than to see it finished, especially if it's nearly at the completion stage.

The remaining episodes (if it was indeed a 26 episode order) could be still be waiting in a queue somewhere.

Click to expand...

Yeah, and don't networks order a set number of episodes in advance that have to be made in order to meet the requirements of said order? If that's the case for Paramount+, then the folks who made EarthSpark would be contractually obligated to fulfill that order by producing the full run of episodes that were ordered.

I've just been on this ride before. Animated ended sixteen years ago, and you still have people vocal about it coming back.
Prime ended twelve years ago and some people couldn't let it go to such an extent we got a truly heinous fan-made movie trying to "continue" it.
Rescue Bots and Rescue Bots Academy was so beloved that when Cyberverse came along you had people desperately trying claim it could still be Aligned/tied to Rescue Bots because nothing in the initial press releases said it wasn't Aligned.
And it took a while for us to get a Cyberworld thread here because some people just insisted it could still be an EarthSpark thing.

I donno.
I don't know exactly how ES will end. Maybe there's another batch of episodes that are mostly done that could still be released. Maybe there aren't. Maybe production was axed, maybe they're being given the chance to end the show on its own terms. All could be possible. I hope for the best, for the people who enjoyed the show (I found it really engaging at first but think it's kinda fallen off, personally).

But any way you slice it, it does seem like we're in the twilight of ES' run.

Sabrblade said:

Yeah, and don't networks order a set number of episodes in advance that have to be made in order to meet the requirements of said order? If that's the case for Paramount+, then the folks who made EarthSpark would be contractually obligated to fulfill that order by producing the full run of episodes that were ordered.

Click to expand...

Well a big thing about this is that we're not dealing with networks anymore. We're dealing with streaming services. Rules used to be that if you hit sixty-five episodes you could be syndicated, and a lot of shows, if the support was there, could be assumed to get at least that much.

But we live in a world of streaming services now. Syndication? What's that? Doesn't matter anymore. Content is content. Tubi- the syndication of streaming- doesn't care, they'll throw something up there and it doesn't matter the episode total.

I mean technically speaking... the old twenty-two minute time limit doesn't have to be adhered to. There's no broadcast schedule and programming blocs these episodes have to fit into. It's all just content for a drop-down menu. Heck, it's public knowledge what the Nielsen ratings are. Now? Likely only the people who manage the servers for these services know exactly who's watching what in what numbers.

All of this is to say that we're in a new wild west of tv economics. The old rules that governed how things worked no longer apply. If a show isn't gaining traction, isn't worth it for the parent company to produce or the streaming service to host... they can just axe it. There's no more programming blocs, marches towards syndication, or anything else that used to shape how things used to be done.

Hasbro also never released that Micronauts cartoon that was announced and completed.
52 whole half-hour episodes exist and were never released.

Amazon has posted images for the next wave of Smash Changers, Jawbreaker and Twitch.