Elita One

Elita One is the name of several fictional characters in several Transformers universes. The character is usually the love-intrest of Optimus Prime.

The most well-known incarnation is perhaps the Elita One that appeared in Transformers: Animated. This incarnation becomes Blackarachnia. There she is a recurring antagonist/anti-hero.

Generation One
Originally, Elita One was Ariel, girlfriend of dockworker robot Orion Pax, but when the two were fatally wounded during one of Megatron's first attacks, the ancient Autobot, Alpha Trion, rebuilt them as Optimus Prime and Elita One, using the same set of schematics.

Animated Series
Elita desired to accompany Prime on the Ark's mission, but he refused, saying it was too dangerous. When a Decepticon ambush struck the Ark launch site shortly before the craft took off, Elita disappeared in an explosion, and Prime believed she had died. This was not the case, however, and in the following four million years she led her troops in a guerrilla war against the remaining Decepticon forces on Cybertron, advised and aided by Alpha Trion himself, unaware of her connection to him. In 1985, Shockwave uncovered the location of the Female Autobots' base and the Decepticons were able to capture Elita One, using her as bait to lure Optimus Prime to Cybertron. Prime almost met his end in an acid bath, but Elita used her hidden secret weapon - a stasis field which effectively froze time, allowing her to pull Prime from the path of the acid. However, the ability was a sacrificial one, as it drained almost all of Elita's energy. With Elita now hovering on the brink of death, Prime took her to Alpha Trion, where Trion revealed that only Prime's power supply could properly interface with hers (as a result of their shared schematics). Still unaware of Trion's hand in his creation, Prime re-energized Elita, and the two helped rescue their comrades from a Decepticon attack. Elita and her forces elected to remain on Cybertron and fight the battle there, while Prime returned to Earth.

Toys

 * Elita One (BotCon Exclusive, 2009)


 * Elita One is a redeco of the Transformers: Cybertron Thunderblast toy.

Transformers Animated
Elita One/Blackarachnia appears in the Transformers Animated show with a Catwoman-like role.

Design, Powers and Abilities
Elita One herself does not have any known abilities however she has an entirely new look. Most of her body is yellow rather than pink.

Elita's Blackarachnia design has a very similar CGI model to that of the original Beast Wars character of the same name, but with four eyes instead of two, and two skinny, pincer-like “spider limbs” that jut from her back and arc over her shoulders. The pincer limbs can strike like scorpion tails, stunning prey with her venom, or spraying spider-like webs. She also has the ability to download and temporarily absorb other Cybertronians’ powers.

identity
Elita One (here spelled Elita-1) attended the Autobot academy with Optimus Prime and Sentinel Prime. When they were searching on planet Archa Seven for energon cubes on a suspected-crashed Decepticon warship, they were ambushed by alien spiders. With Sentinel already disabled from the first attack, Optimus and Elita got lost but found the ship. However, they found that a spider nest had grown up inside the ship, and were attacked. While Optimus was able to escape, Elita got caught in the exploding Energon. Believing that she died in the blast, Optimus and Sentinel were forced to leave the planet.

In reality, Elita survived the explosion and was damaged as the remaining spiders infected her with their venom. She tried to use her mimicking ability on them to neutralize the damage, but it instead mutated her superstructure into a new body. Horrified with her now half-organic body and using a Decepticon helmet from the warship to cover her face, Elita grew vindictive and distrustful against Optimus for leaving her behind, a hatred that grew to all Autobots. She eventually gave up her Autobot title and became a Decepticon under the new name Blackarachnia. Because of how deeply the organic parts are embedded into her system, Blackarachina is more easily wounded, requires oxygen, and seems to have become more openly emotional.

Animated series
Among the Nemesis Crew, Blackarachnia abandoned ship to evade an explosion that took out most of the Nemesis. By present time, revealed in the comic, Blackarachina found Starscream by accident and offer they would team up to get the Allspark together with Starscream jettisoning her to space. But she secretly planted a homing device on him, leading her to Earth during Bumblebee & Bulkhead's first Halloween, poisoning them before abducting Sari Sumdac with Optimus in pursuit. She then finally reveals herself to him, with Optimus shocked as she then tries to use the Allspark key to rid herself of her organic beast mode. The result sent out energy that sucks out the life out of organics, also nearly killing Blackarachnia in the process until Prime removes the key, restoring everything to normal. Though Prime offers to help her out, she poisons Prime and runs off. She later returns prior to Megatron's arrival, capturing Sari to take the key, only for them to have a slight conversation about being abandoned, before Sari deceives Blackarachnia into taking her to the AllSpark, having the Decepticon wander into circles before Ratchet then raised the Autobot's ship, and knocking Blackarachnia out of the sky.

However, Blackarachnia survived the fall and washed up on Dinobot island where she was cared for by the Dinobots, who quickly became enamoured with her. She uses this to her advantage, convincing the Dinobots to break out Meltdown, in hopes of using his biotech expertise to remove her organic side. In order to have Meltdown get the genetic modifier needed for it, Blackarachnia poisoned Bumblebee and Prowl with an extra-large dose of her venom, offering the antidote to Optimus if he helped Grimlock get the modifier from Meltdown's old lab at Sumdac Tower. However, Meltdown later double-crosses her when they are about to start, intending to wipe out her technological half and use her pure-organic body to achieve his own set of plans. But Optimus stopped the experiment in time and Blackarachnia uses Grimlock's love for her to make her escape, leaving the antidote behind as she promised. Apparently, though she resents Optimus for abandoning her in the past, she seems to still harbor feelings toward him, making Optimus speculate that there is still something left of Elita-1 within her.

Using Meltdown's lab, she continued her attempts of discarding her organic attributes by having Swoop abduct Wasp while on the run from the Elite Guard, using her charm to make Wasp think she was a friend to trick him into letting letting her experiment on him using Transwarp energy. As Wasp reformats into Waspinator, Sentinel Prime arrives and learns the truth behind Elita's fate as he attempts to kill Blackarachina, knocking off her helmet in the process. But once Optimus joins the fray, Blackarachina reveals her intent with Waspinator as he overheard while the Transwarp energy inside him starts to overflow. Blackarachina sacrifices herself so the transwarp explosion only covers her and Waspinator. Unbeknownst to the Autobots and the Elite Guard, Waspinator and Blackarachnia ended up in an African jungle, where Blackarachnia encountered a rhinoceros, gorilla, rat, and "cheetah" (a reference to the original Beast Wars Maximals). Blackarachnia and Waspinator's fates were left up in the air by the end of the series some time later.

IDW Publishing
Blackarachnia appeared in the IDW Publishing Transformers Animated comics series.

Toys

 * Animated Elita One
 * Action figure model of Elita One before becoming Blackarachnia.


 * Animated Deluxe Blackarachnia (2008)
 * Transforms from spider to robot. Includes grappling hook. This figure was sold later as a Walmart-exclusive 2-pack with battle damaged Deluxe Optimus Prime.


 * Animated TA-09 Deluxe Blackarachnia (Takara Tomy) (2010)
 * The 2010 Japan version by Takara Tomy is virtually identical to the Hasbro version, with the exception of the purple Decepticon emblem on the throat.

Transformers: Energon
Ariel (later known as Elita One) is the Japanese name for Arcee. See also has a similar role to G1 Elita One.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Elita One is one of three identical female autobots who transform into Cybertronian motorcycles, the other two being Arcee and Chromia.

IDW Publishing
Arcee, Chromia and Elita One were among the Autobots to come to Earth in response to Optimus Prime's signal inviting all of his kind to come there. She joined with the Earth based Autobots in Transformers: Alliance #4.

Titan Magazines
Note: Information in italics occure in the alternate storyline where Megatron won the battle for the Allspark.

''In "Twilight's Last Gleaming" part 1, Skyblast lead the Autobots Arcee, Armorhide, Elita One, Longarm and Strongarm who in resisting the Decepticons who had conquered Earth. In part 3 Starscream and Scorponok attack the Autobots Arcee, Armorhide, Elita One, Longarm, Skyblast and Strongarm on the moon.''

Movie plot
In Revenge of the Fallen Elita One is accompanied by two similar Transformers, Chromia and Arcee as they chased the Decepticon Sideways in an alley in Shanghai. They are later present when the Autobots face off with the Decepticons in Egypt, sent with Ironhide as an advance team to recover Sam. Upon finding Sam and Mikaela, Decepticons attack and Chromia is seen taking cover while Arcee got shot but is seen getting up on her left side and Elita One was killed by the Decepticon's.

For some reason Elita One was confirmed to appear in Transformers: Dark of the Moon even though Michael Bay and Roberto Orci have confirmed the Arcee Sisters died. Her appearance was cancelled.

Toys

 * Revenge of the Fallen: Hunt for the Decepticons Elita-1 (Deluxe, 2010)
 * Repaint of Chromia with some mold fix, she is said to combine with Chromia and Arcee.

Transformers: Timelines (Shattered Glass)
An Alternative version of Elita One appears in Transformers: Timelines. this version is from the mirrorverse where Decepticons are good and Autobots are evil. She is very violent and has a Russian accent.