Fleeing from the Decepticons, the Autobots land their life pod inside the Autobot Mausoleum. Inside, Daniel believes he's just seen Optimus Prime. The Autobots find the tomb of their former leader, but when they open it, they're shocked to see that it's empty. The Decepticons then attack, but suddenly Optimus appears and starts firing at them. They retreat, whilst the Autobots wonder what happened with Optimus. Rodimus is just happy Optimus has returned, and gives him back the Matrix of Leadership, despite objections from the other Autobots. Rodimus turns back into Hot Rod, whilst Optimus says all he can remember is darkness, cold... then light.

Optimus says he must complete his mission, and shows everyone a ship. But he then suddenly opens fire on the Autobots, and leaves the mausoleum, heading to Cybertron. The Autobots realize that they're on a collision course with a red sun. Optimus gets to Cybertron and informs everyone that Hot Rod and the others are dead, and it was the Quintessons who did it. He says they'll mobilize all of their forces, and move against the Quintessons.

It is revealed the Quintessons are behind Optimus Prime's revival, and intend to use him to lead all of the Autobots to their doom. The Autobots on the mausoleum manage to repair another ship and leave, just before the mausoleum is destroyed. They crash land on Cybertron, where a confused Sludge and Snarl explain that everyone else has left to smash the Quintessons. Hot Rod and the others find out that Optimus has taken the entire Autobot fleet out, so they go after him.

Optimus takes the fleet towards what he claims is a Quintesson base, but in reality the Quintessons have lots of weapons ready to use against the Autobots. The Quintessons open fire, and the Autobot fleet takes heavy damage. Hot Rod's group arrive and board the flagship, where Hot Rod confronts Optimus. Optimus defeats Hot Rod, but is able to overcome his Quintesson reprogramming and returns the Matrix to him, turning him back into Rodimus Prime.

The Autobots then evacuate the flagship, but Optimus remains onboard. Optimus tells the Autobots to return to Cybertron, saying it is his final command. The Quintessons continue firing at the flagship, but it collides with a detonator the Quintessons had set, which explodes. The flagship is destroyed, which is seen by the rest of the Autobots. Magnus says this nova will be Optimus Prime's memorial, whilst Rodimus Prime says he doesn't know if he'll ever be the leader Optimus was... but for sure, he's going to try. He says so long to Prime.

Notes

-Apparently not enough Autobots died in the Transformers movie, so this episode confirms the death of one more: Huffer. Whilst Huffer did briefly appear in the movie, it was just a cameo near the start, where he helps set up a roadblock. None of the early movie script drafts kill Huffer off, so it seems him being named as dead here was possibly a mistake.

-This episode was animated by AKOM, so as usual has a lot of errors. In line with AKOM's use of models where they shouldn't use them, Skyfire makes his return as part of the Autobot fleet. Sometimes, the fleet is made up of generic ships, but in other shots, it's made up of multiple Aerialbots, along with Skyfire and Powerglide. Several of these guys get destroyed (sometimes more than once!) but everyone but Skyfire will be back in later episodes. Presumably the script just said something like "generic Autobot ships are destroyed" without going into much detail, which gave AKOM the chance to do what they do best when coming up with generic designs: use things that aren't generic!

-This episode also features AKOM's use of over the top violence. As mentioned above, some of the Autobots are seen getting obliterated by the Quintesson's weapons. One generic Autobot (who is colored like Dead End, see below) gets ripped to pieces by an explosion!

-When this episode originally aired, it ended with Rodimus saying "So long... Prime". However, when the episode was rerun, new ending narration provided by Victor Caroli was added, which replaced Rodimus Prime's last words. The narrator says the following: "But is this really the end of Optimus Prime? Find out in tomorrow's exciting episode, The Return of Optimus Prime!'" This was to tie things up for the season's final two episodes, but more on that later.

Errors

-During this shot, you can see a Starscream-style jet which is colored like Dirge. The real Dirge can be seen in the same shot.
-Rodimus and Ultra Magnus are firing pink lasers during this shot.
-When Perceptor says "they're alive!", Blaster has a completely white colored helmet. Stood next to Blaster is Jazz, but he's colored like Blurr.
-The first missile barrage fired has the missiles colored black, but they change colors to white.
-An Autobot colored like Dead End -one of the Stunticons -is seen getting blown away on the Autobot flagship.
-Seconds later, another Dead End is seen getting blown up.
-When Hot Rod throws Optimus, the the gray parts of the latter's face are colored blue.
-Optimus Prime's left hand is colored red instead of blue during this shot. What makes less sense about this is that most of his left arm was severed during his battle with Rodimus!