Primus is the creator-god of the ransformers. An ancient and ethereal being whose origins date back to the beginnings of the universe itself, Primus is a multiversal force for good, his life force existing across multiple realities and infinite alternate universes. In each one, he is the final defense against his fallen sibling, Unicron the Chaos-Bringer.
Primus eventually transformed himself into the planet Cybertron; from its surface, his creations have risen to defend and patrol the galaxy. Within the depths of Cybertron, the mega-computer Vector Sigma serves as his internal mainframe, and a gateway for select Transformers to access his power. A portion of his lifeforce resides within the Matrix, which often determines the leader of the Autobots. Prophecies of a war to come were written down in his holy covenant as well. The spark of each Transformer is a small piece of Primus's essence, and together they form his lifeforce, the Allspark.
Though wise and powerful beyond measure, Primus is neither infallible nor without weakness. At times he has been deceived by mere mortals, has made miscalculations which jeopardized all of existence, and has been betrayed by one of his earliest creations. Indeed, even the intended agents of his grand plan, the Transformers, have all too frequently become mired in endless civil war. Still, in most realities he has managed to hold the line against Unicron and other threats, either directly or through his innumerable children.
The Primus/Unicron backstory first originated in the Marvel Comics The Transformers series under the pen of author Simon Furman. Before reaching its present form, the mythos went through several distinct versions over the course of the series' original run. The first take on the myth was recounted by Unicron himself in the 1988 UK story "The Legacy of Unicron!". Per Unicron's telling of events, he was a primal force of evil at the dawn of the universe who led an army of Dark Gods against his mortal foe, Primus, Lord of the Light Gods. Primus had defeated Unicron at the dawn of time by trapping them both within asteroids on the physical plane. Primus then reshaped his own body into Cybertron, before creating the Transformer species and imbuing them with a portion of his divine essence through the Matrix of Leadership. In this original story, Primus serves less as a character and more a conceptual idea: As merely a counterpart to Unicron, he exists as a way to explain where Transformers came from and what the Matrix actually does, and gives Unicron a motivation that ties him to the Transformers.
The role of the Light and Dark Gods diminished with each subsequent retelling of the story: When the Keeper told the story in Marvel US #61, he noted that Primus and Unicron were the last members of their respective pantheons, holdovers from a prior age of gods. Around here, too, Primus is now a god worshiped by the Transformers. The third iteration in Marvel US #74 explained that Unicron had destroyed the "old realms" that had existed before the present-day universe, and that the "sentient core" of the universe created Primus to defend the universe from Unicron, with the Light and Dark Gods no longer referenced. Since all three of these versions of the Primus/Unicron backstory were first given after the concurrent The Transformers cartoon had ended in 1987, Primus missed out on appearing in said cartoon. But when the later-made Beast Wars cartoon began airing its second season, Primus would have a few namedrops as the Maximals' equivalent of saying "God help us" or the like. However, nothing within the cartoon suggested he was a real being or any of his old origin, and in fact the writers had taken the name from an alt.toys.transformers post with little idea there was any backstory to it.
Meanwhile, the Primus myth would be fully revitalized for the 1998–2001 BotCon storyline Reaching the Omega Point, which firmly plonked the myth into the Beast Wars show continuity. The Omega Point version, which resembled the Marvel US #74 version, was first recounted in the 1999 "Covenant" prose story. Here, before enacting his initial plan to trap both Unicron and himself within asteroids, Primus devised a dry run for his later plan of creating mechanical life, which brought about a group of twelve Transformers called the Covenant, the first of Primus's children. In 2004, the third issue of the Transformers: The Wreckers comics series saw the first attempt of merging the Primus creation story of the G1 comics with the Quintesson creation story of the Generation 1 cartoon, stating that the Quintessons had come to Cybertron and sought to control Primus's power in order to create the Transformers. The supercomputer Vector Sigma, which had given life to the Transformers in the cartoon, was stated to the be the physical embodiment of Primus, and that the ancient Oracle computer from the Beast Machines cartoon was the means through which the Quintessons had subjugated Vector Sigma/Primus.
The first modern interpretation of the myth came from a set of Armada trading cards released by Fleer, which introduced the idea that the two were originally brothers, created by an extra-dimensional entity called the "All Spark". to explore the universe. When he wrote The Ultimate Guide, Simon Furman would expand on this version of the tale by incorporating aspects of the original Marvel stories, and established the name of their creator as "The One". It was also established at this point that Primus had created the original Thirteen Transformers to defeat Unicron—likely building off the Covenant's aforementioned origin story—and that Primus himself could transform from Cybertron into a robot mode like Unicron, but preferred not to, choosing to remain connected to the universe on a planetary level. This became the definitive version of the Primus/Unicron myth, which went on to influence fiction such as the Universe comics and Fun Publications Cybertron comics. Notably, Fun Publications would establish that Primus was a multiversal singularity; across all the myriad dimensions in the Transformers multiverse, there was only one Primus who existed simultaneously across many timelines.
Around this time, TakaraTomy began to take a hard look at the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity and, seemingly in accordance to the "Primus exists in all worlds" concept, decided to bring the character into this universe through a series of retcons that saw multiple separate characters and concepts merged into one entity. Like The Wreckers comics, Vector Sigma was made into a form of Primus, along with the Oracle and, uh, the Oracle, the simian assistant of Primacron. In short, this version of Primus started as Primacron's assistant, became the energy-like Generation 1 Oracle, assumed his Rodimus-esque Primus robot form, transformed into Vector Sigma, and finally evolved into the Beast Machines Oracle. A 2019 comic then saw the Oracle recreated into a new version of Vector Sigma to tie in with its appearance in the later-set Beast Wars Neo cartoon.
After the end of Universe, the Unicron Trilogy, and the Unicron-heavy Dreamwave Productions comic books, Hasbro eased off on Primus and Unicron stories for a while: the major new universes created in western media between then and 2010—those of the IDW Publishing comic books, the live-action movie and the Transformers Animated cartoon—all eschewed use of the Primus creation myth. When IDW Publishing's first universe debuted in 2005, author Simon Furman, likely tapping into some of the fatigue regarding the Primus/Unicron myth, announced that this new universe would have no Primus or Unicron; in Stormbringer, the characters swear by Primacron instead. Animated and the films established the AllSpark as the supernatural mechanism by which new Transformers could be created, while Transformers Animated did not mention Primus at all due to series art director Derrick J. Wyatt's dislike for the character.
In the meantime, the Aligned continuity family featured the return of the Primus and Unicron creation myth, which appeared in several episodes of the Prime television show and the tie-in book The Covenant of Primus.
When Furman left IDW Publishing, different writers were free to reinterpret the rules of the universe, and James Roberts's "Chaos Theory Part 2" introduced Primus as a mythological deity, one of many gods of unclear quiddity worshiped by the Cybertronian race. This then tied into an entirely new version of the Primus creation myth in the 2012 More Than Meets The Eye annual: Primus was the first god who split himself into a pantheon known as the "Guiding Hand", and he had taken the form of Vector Sigma after a vicious battle against Mortilus.
In 2016, Fun Publications finally did away with multiversal singularities through the "Another Light" stories, which threw the entire thing out through the in-fiction concept of the Shroud. This meant that Primus no longer had to exist in all realities; future Transformers stories may include or exclude him as they see fit, or dramatically reinterpret his origins and personality. Indeed, this very phenomenon occurred in the final issues of IDW's first universe: the last few issues of Lost Light revealed that the Primus of that reality was never really a god, nor even a particularly powerful being: he was merely the first Cybertronian ever created, a humble 'bot who now went by the name of Rung. Some years later, the Japanese-exclusive Generations Selects Special Comic series introduced an entirely new backstory for the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon version of Primus by establishing him as having once been the leader of the heroic Primus Vanguard in a previous universe.
As the universe began in its existence and life was beginning to form, it was under threat by the greatest evil: last of the Dark Gods, Unicron. However, this fledging life had a protector created by the sentient core of the universe The Void! in the form of Primus, Lord of the Light Gods and who needed to defeat Unicron before he could take his place in the Omniversal Matrix. However, this clash of the opposing gods caused galactic devastation, against Primus's wishes. Thus, he conceived of a trap; Primus moved from his weakened energy form to the astral plane for apparent further battle, and Unicron followed. Before Unicron could finish him off and extinguish his "lifeglow", Primus returned to the physical world and Unicron followed again... only to find them both materializing in "tiny, barren lumps of space junk". Primus closed off their path, separating the two gods from their energy forms for all eternity and trapping them in their stone prisons. However, both possessed the ability to reshape their prisons—while Unicron created his into a new body, the first Transformer, Primus instead chose to form his physical form into the planet Cybertron and created a native race with converting capabilities mimicking those of Unicron's. Further, Primus infused his essence into a "Genetic Matrix" to create further generations of Transformers with "lifeglow". It was passed down from leader to leader within his children and was the one thing that could destroy Unicron. To prevent Unicron from attacking before his children were ready, Primus underwent slumber to close off the psychic link between the two deities. Before entering his eons-long slumber, Primus created the Last Autobot, and posted the dormant guardian in hidden location on Cybertron.
Eventually, millions of years later, Grimlock, Jazz, and Bumblebee found themselves transported to the center of Cybertron, where they discovered the sleeping form of Primus and were told the tale of his and the Transformers' origins by the Keeper. Subsequently, Bludgeon's Pretenders attacked, and during the battle, a laser blast ricocheted off Grimlock and struck the essence of the sleeping Primus, causing a universe-shaking "Primal Scream" that alerted Unicron to Primus's location. Primus himself immediately slipped back into his sleep, but it was too late. Unicron was coming.
After Optimus Prime sent teams of Autobots to retrieve the lost Creation Matrix, the container of Primus' essence that could destroy Unicron, he communed with the Ark's. Reaching out his mind to the Creation Matrix, the altar gave him a vision of a Matrix that had been tainted by evil.
Unicron dispatched a group of heralds to attack Cybertron and pave the way for his coming, including a Galvatron plucked from an alternate future. Galvatron, however, was not content to serve under Unicron, and instead captured Autobot leader Emirate Xaaron, forcing him to fully awaken Primus, who possessed Xaaron's body and summoned Transformers from all across the universe back to Cybertron. Here, Primus spoke through Xaaron, telling the Transformers of his history with Unicron. Additionally, Primus chose Optimus Prime to lead both factions, united, against the Chaos Bringer. Primus knew this would draw out the Acolytes of Unicron among them, and Autobot and Decepticon were able to put aside their differences to defeat them. When Optimus Prime learned of Primus' ruse, his suspicions regarding his Creator's motives began to grow. Optimus wondered if the Transformers meant anything to Primus beyond being a means to an end.
Though their battle against the Unicron cultists did temporarily unite both factions, this facade shattered once the Planet-Eater arrived. Sheer terror prevented them from carrying out his desire, and the Transformers fled despite Primus' pleas. Primus instead made a stand himself, attempting to dupe Unicron into believing he still retained his full power, but Unicron saw through the deception, and destroyed Xaaron's body. Optimus Prime came to a realization, following Primus' destruction and his retrieval of the lost and contaminated Creation Matrix, that Primus did not mean only for the Transformers to fight his battles for him, but to carry on after he was gone. Flying into space with the Matrix, Prime unleashed the full measure of Primus's power, destroying Unicron.
Though the Transformers were technically victorious, this victory came with a price. With Primus dead, and with the grievous wounds inflicted on Cybertron itself, the planet threatened to come apart. The Transformers made plans to flee it. Ultimately, this was averted by the Last Autobot, who put into motion the planet's recovery, allowing the Autobots, who had finally won the civil war, to return to their home.
In ages long past, Primus created the Demons as a test run of his creation powers. The Demons created a primitive society based around the worship of Primus only for their free will to cause them to turn on each other and destroy their civilization. Displeased, Primus enacted a cataclysm that rendered the Demons virtually extinct. In their place, Primus created the Transformers.
Primus was destroyed in the battle with Unicron when his avatar, Xaaron, was blown to pieces by the Chaos-Bringer. His death left a vacuum in Zero Space, which was filled by the malevolent Dark Matrix creature. The Dark Matrix posed as Primus on several occasions following that, in order to manipulate Primus's children to its benefit.
The rogue senator Jhiaxus had a low opinion of Primus, scoffing at the idea of the creator's grand plan, instead choosing to bring about order on his own terms. Once the Hub had been destroyed, Rodimus Prime realized that "Primus's" orders contravened order allowing him to deduce that the Dark Matrix creature was posing as the deity.
Within the realm of Zero Space, Optimus Prime revealed to Rodimus that Primus still lived but that the destruction of his avatar had banished him from their reality. As Primus prepared to create a new universe based on the optimum aspects of all the others, the Dark Matrix entity sought to corrupt the new universe only for Rodimus to sever his reality from the larger multiverse, killing the entity and saving Primus's plan. Cut off from Primus however, the Cybertronians of that universe turned mortal and eventually passed of old age.
In addition to its occasional invocation in prayer or in righteous anger by the Beast Warriors, Primus's name was also lent to a set of prophetical datatrax, known as the Covenant of Primus. From this document, the Megatron of this era took his name, and the scriptures foretold the events which completed the Beast Wars.
A "unique digital entity" came to exist eons ago. To search for other life in the universe, it sent out the Transformers as explorers. One of the first places the Transformers settled was on a planet that would eventually become known as Cybertron.
Primus was the living energy core of Cybertron, as well as the originator of the precious and ancient fuel, energon. Transformers of this universe believed the stories of Unicron, Primus, and Omega Supreme to be only myth and legend until the existence of Unicron was revealed in the Unicron Battles of 2010. With Cybertron left in a disastrous state after the chaos-bringer's attack, large amounts of energon were required to repair the planet, and to search for and acquire the mineral, the united Autobot-Decepticon forces entered into an alliance with the Earth Federation government.
Primus entered into the equation when the project's head scientist, Dr. Brian Jones, brought his son, Kicker, to Cybertron. Terrified of the giant robots surrounding him, Kicker fled, only to find himself tumbling through tunnels into a hidden chamber deep beneath Cybertron's surface. Primus awoke and saved Kicker from what would have been a fatal fall, and for his own reasons, imbued the child with a special gift—the ability to detect energon throughout the universe. Optimus Prime subsequently discovered Kicker in Primus's chamber, and the god chose to work with the Transformers quite directly, imbuing them with the Spark of Combination, which would allow the Autobots to Powerlinx and increase their powers. Primus went on to advise Optimus Prime on his actions in order to prepare for the future, including the Terrorcon invasion, the return of Megatron, and the impending return of Unicron. Although vague at times, Primus would offer just enough information to allow his children to survive the threats they faced. Primus was often very weak due to the damage done to the planet's surface, and spent most of his time in a mode of stasis to preserve his energy and keep Cybertron's energy grid online.
When Unicron began lashing out after having been deprived of energon for too long, Primus summoned Arcee to help Optimus in getting the titan back under control. Soon after, the Decepticons managed to breach Primus's chamber. Though Primus attempted to fight back, he was unable to prevent the Terrorcons from sapping him of enormous amounts of energon. The Autobots managed to flush out the Terrorcons themselves, but not before Megatron had acquired enough Energon to power up Unicron and transform him into his robot mode.
With the aid of Rad White, Primus restored the fallen Autobot guard Wing Dagger, upgrading him into "Wing Saber" and imbuing him with a Spark of Combination.
With Megatron having succeeded in reanimating Unicron, most of the Autobot army was critically wounded in the ensuing battle. This prompted the sleeping Primus to awaken and infuse their armor with his power, upgrading them into new forms, Optimus Supreme and allowing Optimus Prime and Omega Supreme to grow to planetary size and defeat Unicron. Unicron's spark survived, however, and his consciousness took refuge within Megatron. After his massive output of energy, Primus returned to recovery mode, and became unable to answer Dr. Jones's calls for more energon as the Decepticons launched a surprise attack on Cybertron. Primus remained in recovery mode while the Decepticons took control of planet Cybertron, forcing the Autobots to turn to guerilla warfare to retake their homeworld.
Despite still being in this state, Primus was able to instinctively save Rad and Dr. Jones from a fatal fall when the two humans crashed through his chamber's ceiling. Some time later, Arcee temporarily revived Primus by shooting an energon star into his core. Upon awakening, Primus drove Mirage out of his chamber, allowing the Autobots to retake control of it. But the Energon dose was only enough to awaken Primus temporarily, and he slipped back into sleep mode. He was brought back fully online when Ironhide and the Omnicrons infused him with a greater supply of energon. Now conscious, Primus was able to remotely charge Optimus's spark of combination, giving him the strength to again combine with Omega Supreme. Primus's power supply was once more depleted, however, when Optimus called upon his help to stop Cybertron from slamming into Plains Planet. Primus combined his power with the energon gas in Cybertron's atmosphere to once again grow Optimus to planetary proportions. Primus then became inactive, and began to fade once again.
After the Autobots gained control of the super energon pool hidden in Cybertron's underground, they converted the miracle fuel into super energon stars, and infused Primus with them. Though the process exhausted all of the Omnicons, Primus awakened once more. Primus then came in telepathic contact with Kicker, preventing him from grabbing at Unicron's bare essence, now reduced to a tiny orb out in the void of space. Primus informed the boy that there had always been two sides to Unicron; one which brought forth creation, and the other which brought forth destruction. To Kicker's bafflement, Primus planned to harness Unicron's essence to create a new sun. Primus's essence then left its chamber, appeared at the super energon pool, and used what remained of the fuel to craft a new sun. The celestial mass was then brought to the center of Alpha Q's planetary system, and ignited when Galvatron plunged into it to rid himself of Unicron's influence once and for all.
Primus's plan to contain Unicron's essence in the center of the sun failed when the star collapsed into a massive black hole which threatened not only Cybertron and the universe, but the entire multiverse itself. His energy drained to the point that he had once again been rendered dormant, Primus could now only be awakened and restored to full power by the four ancient Cyber Planet Keys, lost to the far reaches of the galaxy in a failed space bridge experiment eons ago. The magnitude of the threat posed to the multiverse was enough to summon Vector Prime—one of the original thirteen Transformers, who had been following Unicron through the multiverse and repairing the damage he had done—back to Cybertron to aid the Autobots in the quest for the keys.
After a while, the Autobots were able to find the focusing device, the Omega Lock, and the keys from Velocitron and Jungle Planet. Bringing all three together caused the group to be drawn into the consciousness of Primus, who spoke through the three Mini-Cons and told his children to "maintain the balance".
Eventually, despite continued attempts by both Megatron and Starscream to steal the power of the Cyber Planet Keys, the Autobots were able to gather the keys from Velocitron, the Jungle Planet and Earth, and brought them and their focusing device, the Omega Lock. back to Cybertron. Coupling these three keys with the power of the Matrix, Optimus Prime was able to initiate Primus's transformation from planet to robot mode. Communicating with the Autobots through the Mini-Con, Jolt, Primus explained that the destruction of Unicron, the embodiment of the force of evil, had unbalanced the universe, and that only he could seal the black hole and restore order—but to do that, the fourth Cyber Planet Key, from Gigantion, the Giant Planet, was required to reconnect Primus's spark with his body and restore his full power. Attempting to retrieve the Omega Lock, Starscream made a rather pointless attack on Primus, only to find the deity was not as powerless as he appeared, proceeding to casually overpower and hurl away his wayward son.
Still in a state of half-consciousness, Primus's inert form continued to function as Cybertron, still being the site of Autobot/Decepticon battles. Once the Decepticons had been chased away, the Autobots spent their time cleaning up any straggling Scrapmetal.
Shortly thereafter, when Primus was in the process of channelling some of his power into holding back the ever-growing black hole, Starscream tried again, plunging into the energy beam and absorbing more of Primus's power into himself, expanding in size until he was as large as Primus himself. After the Autobots inhabiting him had redirected Primus's internal systems, Primus properly awoke once more and proceeded to once again pound Starscream into submission, even using Cybertron's moons as makeshift weapons.
When he time came for the Autobots to depart for Gigantion, Jetfire, in an attempt to avoid getting a vaccine, offered to stay behind and monitor Primus. The deity stepped in and told Jetfire that he would be fine on his own, so it was really no trouble for Jetfire to go. Left to his own devices, Primus continued to try and hold back the black hole, firing periodic bursts of his power into it to delay its growth, with diminishing returns for his efforts. When Vector Prime passed, Primus felt his demise.
When the Autobots returned to the main universe, Primus was left extremely weak from his efforts, only being able to advise Optimus Prime]] on what to do next. When the sheer magnitude of the threat was enough for every Cybertronian in the galaxy to unite, Primus was moved to combine the Atlantis, the Lemuria, the Hyperborea, and the Ogygia into the mighty Ark. When Galvatron attempted to cause total event collapse, Primus tried to bar his path but found himself no match for his own Omega Lock and the Armor of Unicron. When the planet leaders managed to seize the Omega Lock and the Keys, Primus teleported them all back to him, restoring himself to full power. With the Ark as a conduit, Primus channeled all of his power into the black hole, collapsing it. With peace restored, Primus transformed back into Cybertron, now composed of aspects of all four colony worlds, going right back to sleep.
In the Legacy of Chris Thorndyke, he is known to be the Creator of the Cybertronian Race and his origin, along with Unicron is similar to the Marvel comic version and is a member of the Council of Light as part of the Sector Blue, since that he is blue in his color scheme in Transformers Cybertron.
And he is reprised by Michael Donovan in the English dub and Tessho Genda in the Japanese dub.