Charr

Charr is where the Decepticons go when they lose. After Unicron's destruction the Autobots retake Cybertron, and the shattered remnant of the Decepticon army, leaderless in all but name with Galvatron insane and Cyclonus improvising, retreats to a dead world of ash-grey wasteland and scorched rock. It is described as a miserable speck of a planet, and the animation backs that up: no cities, no resources, no infrastructure worth the word, just wreckage and the Decepticons sitting in it.

The choice is deliberate storytelling. G1's third season inverts the show's power structure, and Charr is the visual proof. The Decepticons are no longer an army raiding a rich planet from a well-appointed undersea fortress; they are refugees squabbling over energon scraps on a world nobody else wants. Nearly every third-season Decepticon plot begins on Charr with the same premise: they are starving, and something must be tried.

It is also where Galvatron's instability plays out. Cyclonus takes him to the planet of Torkulon for psychiatric treatment in Webworld precisely because Charr cannot hold him, and the Decepticons' repeated attempts to retake Cybertron, ally with the Quintessons or seize some new power source are all launched from there. Charr's grimness is the reason the third season feels so different from the first two, and it is arguably the most important new location the post-movie series introduced.

• Charr is spelled with two Rs in most reference material and is frequently misspelled Chaar, including in some official sources.
• The name is simply the word char, meaning burnt residue, which is exactly what the planet looks like.
• Charr exists to invert the show's premise: the third season is the only stretch of G1 where the Decepticons are the desperate, resource-starved side.
• No Decepticon base or structure of any significance is ever shown on Charr, which is the point.