
Searchlight is one of the supporting characters of the Transformers franchise. He is a member of the Throttlebots.
Personality[]
Seachlight has a quiet and withdrawn demeanor during his missions. A further drawback of working alone comes from his very best quality; his keen senses. A slight sound or movement, if made by something undetectable by his trained sensors, can make him anxious, and eventually send him into a panic. Therefore, though he is serious-minded and works best alone, his superiors must sometimes check on him.
History[]
Searchlight and the other Throttlebots were raiding a Decepticon fuel depot on Cybertron when they were cornered and, to their surprise, given the option of surrendering. They soon found out why: Ratbat was sending them to Earth to fight an outbreak of the metal-eating Scraplets, who had already infected Decepticon Triple Changers Blitzwing, Astrotrain and Octane, along with their Autobot prisoner Blaster. While Searchlight and the others set up acid canisters to kill everything in the quarry where the infected were, Rollbar and Wideload tracked down Goldbug, who had discovered the Scraplets were vulnerable to water. By working with the Decepticons, they managed to destroy them.
Searchlight, along with the other Throttlebots, monitored the Combaticons' activities at Mount Verona from a distance. When they heard explosions and realised the three humans Goldbug and Rollbar had encountered earlier (Joy Meadows, Susan Hoffman and Cindy Newell) had probably decided to take the Decepticons on themselves, Goldbug led them to investigate. Searchlight and the others arrived just in time to stop Onslaught killing the trio.
However, the incident earned them the enmity of the Combaticons, who pursued them, as did anti-robot human group RAAT. The Throttlebots took refuge in a car lot and sought the aid of its owner Big Steve Ludwig. Instead, however, he disabled them with sugar in their fuel tanks and sold them to RAAT while the Combaticons were busy fighting Blaster and the Protectobots.
The group managed to convince RAAT agent Walter Barnett they were innocent of involvement in attacks by Decepticons and, when his superior ordered them executed, he saved Searchlight and the others by placing their brain modules in toy cars, in which form they evaded Ratbat and the Predacons. They were eventually returned to the Autobots and rebuilt into new more powerful bodies. They were among the combined Autobot/Decepticon group who tried to defend Earth from the Underbase-powered Starscream, only for them all to be deactivated before they could even transform.
Cartoon[]
Searchlight first appeared in the two-part third season finale "The Return of Optimus Prime", where he was among the Autobots who accompanied Rodimus Prime to collect Optimus Prime's body only to be infected by the Hate Plague. In the three-part miniseries "The Rebirth", he helped defend Autobot City from Galvatron and later travelled to Cybertron to try and fend off the attack there.