TLK - Who is Quintessa? (SPOILERS - The Last Knight)

So, the new villain for the Bayverse movies is Quintessa, but we actually know nothing concrete about her, however, through the film I did notice a few things about her, which could solve her mystery....

First up, is the most obvious point, her name is a reuse of the name of the planet the Quintessons lived on in the G1 continuity, and her design even evokes the species as well (tentacles, green-ish colours and manipulative). So, in my opinion the most likely explanation for her is that she is an AI of some sort that represents Quintessa and the Quintessons in general who is sent out to conquer worlds for them to rule over.

The reason I believe that she is an AI is that she was clearly not really there during the film, Bumblebee "destroyed" her with an energy blast, and she just vanished, reappearing in the credits in a human form, again starting to manipulate someone, seemingly trying to get close to Unicron (he is the planet after all) for unknown reasons.

A little known piece of trivia now, the Quintessons were at one point in development for G1 considered to be associates of Unicron's who picked off anyone who escaped his planetary om-noms. So maybe we'll get a return of that plot point in a future movie?

But, since I like over-analysing things, let's take a gander at who Quintessa could be otherwise, as I believe there could be a few options...

Due to her appearance and Quintesson god like attitude, most people would probably consider her to be a female version of Quintus Prime, who was introduced in the Aligned continuity as one of the original Thirteen Primes, which when comparing the above and below images, you can see why...however as I implied earlier, Quintus was male, whilst Quintessa is clearly female, making it less likely to be him.

Next up I have a couple of options based on Quintessa's self-given title of "Prime of Life", there are two Primes that could be considered life givers, the first is the least likely option, which is Prima, the original Prime. His sword has the Matrix as the jewel on it's hilt, which is a life-giving device, which could be the reason for the title. The problem here though, is that Optimus already has the Matrix, meaning that the Star Sabre isn't in his possession, and the title would be null-and-void.

 The most likely option that is left is Solus Prime, the weapons-smith of the Thirteen Primes, she is literally someone who gives life and creates new things, also, in the Aligned continuity, upon her death, her body created the Well of Allsparks, allowing the sparks within the core to be released, and create the Cybertronian species, thus creating new life.
Now you may be about to point out that with this point, it means that she couldn't be Quintessa since she should be dead. But no. In recent issues of Transformers: Lost Light, we've learned about a new medical profession that helps in the progress of new life on Cybertron: the Blacksmith. A Blacksmith in Cybertronian culture is able to help a newly born protoform and spark into a natural shape, allowing them to be born...remember that Solus' design is one of a blacksmith as well, possibly showing a connection.

But wait....there's more words here...what else could I have to say? Quintessa must be either Solus or Quintus Prime right? Well...one more line of dialogue in the film had me asking questions...the Knights of Iacon refer to her as the "Deceiver". Quintessa is shown to be able to change forms (we see her as a robot and a human through the film) and we also see that she can brainwash other Transformers, and perfectly manipulate them with "magic" and her words. There is another Prime with that ability, EXACTLY that ability, the Liege Maximo....

For those who do not know, in recent years, Liege Maximo has been characterized as being pretty much the Transformer version of Loki from Marvel Comics, in the MCU films we see him using holographic-looking disguises to change his appearance, a lot like how Quintessa seems to do as well.

Also, due to Hasbro's tendency to use the same plot lines and characters across their different media, and Liege Maximo was only just dramatically released from his prison in the IDW comic universe a couple months ago for an upcoming major storyline I can assume these things will converge in a future film.

So what do you guys think? Is Quintessa a simple AI or Robot Loki after all? Is she just a Quintesson or something else? Let me know, and I might pay attention and change my head canon!

See ya later!

(I promise comic reviews are comic soon, but I am lazy!)