Sari Sumdac


 * Sari Sumdac is a human from the Transformers Animated franchise.



Sari Sumdac, the daughter of robotics genius Isaac Sumdac, doesn't get out much. She spends all her time within her father's laboratories, receiving her education from robots. Despite this, she doesn't seem like a shut-in. She's curious, excitable, adventurous, and knows that crying can sometimes get her what she wants. She just doesn't know what it's like to be around other kids. Fortunately, she has Bumblebee and Bulkhead to help with that, and she claims that Bee is the best friend she's ever had. In fact, she's become very possessive of all her robotic friends.

The key around her neck has miraculous powers from the AllSpark, but her guardian, the robotic dog Sparkplug, thinks it's just another chew toy.

"If the AllSpark chose you, it must have had a good reason."

- Optimus Prime

Animated cartoon

 * Voice actor: Tara Strong (English), Tanja Schmitz (German)



When her pet robot dog, Sparkplug, stole her security key card, Sari chased it outside and was confronted by Bumblebee and Bulkhead, who spoke to her as if she were Sparkplug's pet. Naturally, she freaked out, but quickly befriended Bumblebee once he saved her from a giant bug that had grown from her father's nanite experiment gone awry. Stowing away on Bumblebee and coming aboard the Autobots' ship, she came across the AllSpark, which infused part of its power into her security key. This allowed her to heal Transformers, such as the injured Prowl, earning her brownie points with the 'Bots. She also managed to talk the police down from shooting the Autobots, saying they were friendly (except Ratchet, who was grumpy, but not evil). Sari later helped teach the Autobots about Earth and humans, explaining their method reproduction to a very startled Optimus Prime.



During the unveiling of her father's new transit system, Starscream arrived and attacked. Bumblebee took a shot meant for Sari, allowing Starscream to capture him, Professor Sumdac, the Mayor, and Captain Fanzone. Sari came up with the idea to distract Starscream while she and Prowl rescued the others (even faking some tears to make it happen). Her key later saved Optimus Prime's life when she used it to revive his spark.

Sari would go on to be Bumblebee's usual partner in crime, encouraging him to engage in such questionable activities as high-profile wrestling matches and installing rocket boosters to make him go faster. Sari likely hangs out with Bumblebee because she knows she can scare the holy beprimus out of him.



On Sari's eighth birthday, the only other kids who turned up were the children of her dad's employees. None of them really wanted to be there and soon focused their attention on the Autobots. Sari was left alone and shunned along with Bulkhead, both morose that the kids didn't like them. Her father's present, a music robot called Soundwave, cheered her up, and she soon began neglecting her friendship with Bulkhead in favour of her new toy. Repeated uses of her AllSpark Key turned Soundwave into a malevolent, sentient being who tried to enslave Humanity, and she learnt she'd been wrong to ignore her friend.

When the Decepticons Blitzwing and Lugnut arrived on Earth, the two Decepticons manhandled the Autobots. Although they survived, it made apparent the fact that more would come looking for the AllSpark, so the Autobots decided to repair their ship and leave Earth. Sari's reaction to this was displeasure (in the form of a high pitch shout of NO!). However, they needed Sari's key to assist Ratchet in repairing the ship. Sari was unwilling to help them leave, nor was she pleased to work with a grouch like Ratchet (who was not that keen on working with a protoform), but they managed to get her to the ship. While alone with the AllSpark, Sari decided to try and sabotage the ship, thereby keeping the Autobots on Earth (and dooming her species to enslavement and/or extinction) but the key repaired the damage. After that, the AllSpark showed her an image of a giant Transformer. In her panic, Sari opened the air lock, nearly drowning, but Ratchet saved her. Ratchet then explained that they were leaving because they couldn't risk anything happening to Earth or her. Swayed by his compassion, Sari used her key to reactivate the Autobot ship's decommissioned weapons, reducing Blitzwing and Lugnut to pieces.

Eventually, Optimus Prime decided that the AllSpark key was no longer safe in Sari's hands, and he ordered Ratchet to take it from her. Distraught, Sari ran off crying, only to be captured later by Blackarachnia, who was looking for the key herself. Sari basically told her "too little, too late," and the two seemed to have a heart-to-heart about their gripes with the Autobots.

While Sari was actually misleading Blackarachnia in circles around the frozen Lake Erie, she was grabbed by Ratchet as he brought the Autobots' ship out of the lake. She was ticked that Ratchet had lost her key and that her dad had helped rebuild Megatron, but the blame game ceased after the ship crashed on Dinobot Island. Prime told the Sumdacs to stay with the ship while they went to fight off Megatron. Fearing that they might die, Isaac Sumdac said that there was something that he needed to tell Sari, but she was more interested in finding something else the AllSpark could charge. The AllSpark refused to respond, other than cryptically displaying an image of a DNA strand. Suddenly, Megatron and Prime burst through the hull of the ship, and during their fight, the key once again fell into her hands. Sari tossed it to Optimus Prime, who used the key destroy the AllSpark and disperse its energy. Acknowledging that he had been wrong in taking from her, Optimus Prime gave the key back to Sari, saying that as the most powerful Cybertronian artifact on Earth, it was too important to be left in the hands of an Autobot.

Unfortunately, all was not well, for Sari could not find her dad...as he was now a prisoner of Megatron.

After her father's disappearance, Sari took over running Sumdac Systems. Board chairman Porter C. Powell opposed her, saying that she was too young and wasting company resources searching for her father. When the Cybertron Elite Guard arrived, Sari was cut off from the Autobots and her only source of emotional support. She soon needed them, as police drones coming out of a Sumdac assembly line began to malfunction, and Powell was unwilling to do anything about it. Sneaking aboard the Elite Guard ship, Sari put the fear of god into Jazz before Bulkhead explained that Sari was okay (and Bumblebee explained that Sentinel Prime was a jerk). With Optimus, Prowl, and Jazz's help, Sari managed to get into the plant's assembly line and shut down the systems. When she returned home, she found that she had been locked out of her office, as Powell was now CEO and Chairman of Sumdac Systems. Insisting that it was still her company, Sari was shocked when Powell revealed that she had no birth certificate, no adoption papers, and no social security number. Powell's smug revelation made Sari realize that not only was there no proof that she was Sumdac's daughter, there was no legal proof she even existed.

After that, Powell kicked Sari out of Sumdac Tower, took Tutor Bot and Sparkplug, and gave her room to Henry Masterson as an office. With nowhere else to go, she went to Autobot HQ. Bumblebee and Bulkhead tried their best to cheer her up, employing such methods as loud music, inedible food, and unedifying teaching lesson. All they did was make things worse. Eventually, Prowl put the two bots in their place and told them to listen to her. Sari opened up about all her frustrations, such as her missing father, being kicked out of her home, her fear of Powell ruining her father's company, and the fact that there was no record of her existence. Bumblebee promised that they were there for her, no matter what, and Sari finally started to feel a little better.

And then Ultra Magnus decided that the Autobots couldn't be there for her, as the Decepticons had begun attacking the fringes of Autobot space, so Prime's crew were needed elsewhere. The Autobots decided that Captain Fanzone was the best human with whom to leave her. (Granted, their list of known humans was rather short and included Prometheus Black and Nanosec.) Before anything close to adoption could occur, they managed to convince Magnus that there were Decepticons on Earth (mostly because Starscream fell out of the sky and landed about ten feet in front of them), allowing them to stay on planet.

Sari was revealed to have a bit bad girl when the Autobots found that she had somehow set an illegal pirated satellite, which she used to watch pay-per-view races (the races were also illegal, but the Autobots didn't know that until they found out from Fanzone). When Bumblebee wanted to got off the races to race against the mysterious blue car, Sari came along with him. Sari found that guy that set the races, Master Disaster, had a remote he used to control the blue car, which happened to have a fragment of the Allspark in it. Blitzwing showed up to take the fragment, so the race turned into Bumblebee running for his life (and Sari getting to enjoy riding on his shoulder when he had to go into robot mode once). Eventually she used the remote to rid off Blitzwing, allowing the Autobots to the Allspark fragment. After that Bumblebee severed her satellite connection, saying that he had to set a better example for her, and Sari responded by telling him not to try to hard or she wouldn't recognize him.

Sari was awakened from her night's rest by the loud cavorting of the Constructobots, and didn't like that they first thought that she was a pet. A game of flattened-oil-barrel frisbee severed her trademark pigtails (if she didn't it probably would've cut her head off), which ticked her off even more.

Trivia

 * A promotional image of Sari from the Cartoon Network Transformers Animated press kit showed her with different shoes, a different key design, and a slightly lighter skin tone.
 * Unused animation from an early version of the opening credits showed Sari riding a tricycle that transformed into a jetpack. This device has not yet actually appeared in the series.
 * Sari's pigtails do not grow back overnight... or do they?

Sari and fans

 * Fan reaction to Sari has been mixedsome fans hate her, quite a few love her, and some are neutral. Considering the widespread vitriol heaped upon previous child characters in Transformers shows (e.g., Kicker), that means she's come off reasonably well.


 * In contrast, her deus ex machina AllSpark key was initially less popular. However, later episodes in the first season showed it to have potentially disastrous effects when used frivolously (e.g., Soundwave), and hopefully, she will cease using it as the cure for all ills. In early Season 2 the key becomes less of a major plot device and Sari-plus-key is mainly used for quick repairs as the plots swing to revolve more around the Autobots fighting the Decepticons and/or villain of the week.


 * Since virtually the première of the show, fans have been speculating whether there is "more than meets the eye" to Sari. Some theorize she could turn out to be a robot, though past events on the show have clearly marked her as at least partially organic (e.g., she deteriorates by anti-organic radiation in "Along Came a Spider", catches a cold in "Nature Calls", and sets off the Elite Guard ship's organic contamination alert in "The Elite Guard" ).  There is definitely something mysterious going on, though, as hinted by voice actor Tara Strong, who said in an interview that Sari's "entire identity might come as a surprise."  In "Megatron Rising - Part 2", Isaac, believing they were both about to die, attempts to tell Sari "something important", only to have her run off before he can continue.  Sari then asks the AllSpark why it chose to empower her in the first place, and its "answer" is to project a DNA strand surrounding a blue, glowing orb.  In the following episode, "The Elite Guard", we find out that there is no legal documentation of Sari's existence, not even adoption papers, despite Sari's official character profile on the Hasbro website saying she is adopted.  Though there is obviously much yet to be divulged, the implication is that there is something strange and unique about Sari. Although the writers gave no indication of what the truth was at a BotCon 2008 panel, they did remark that they were enjoying seeing all the theories about her. At least someone is...