Transformers Makes Mark Wahlberg's Franchise Return Impossible

July 19, 2024

A throwaway gag in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts puts the kibosh on Mark Wahlberg's return to the franchise (which was already unlikely).

Summary

Mark Wahlberg's return to the Transformers franchise is now impossible due to a throwaway gag in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
The prequel and next mainline installment of the franchise were already moving away from Wahlberg's character, Cade Yeager, making his return unlikely.
Wahlberg's busy schedule and the producers' focus on new storylines suggest that they are more interested in exploring new characters than bringing back old ones.

Thanks to a throwaway gag in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Mark Wahlberg’s return to the Transformers franchise is now impossible. After Shia LaBeouf starred in the first three Transformers movies as Sam Witwicky, Wahlberg took over as the lead for the fourth and fifth films. In both Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight, Wahlberg stars as Cade Yeager, a single father and unsuccessful inventor who joins forces with the Autobots. Wahlberg wasn’t featured in the prequel, Bumblebee, and the next mainline installment, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, has a meta joke that makes Wahlberg’s return impossible.

Inspired by the Beast Wars storyline, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts revolves around an ex-military electrician and a historical researcher who team up with the Autobots to prevent the arrival of Unicron. Along with Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts was an attempt at a soft reboot of the franchise to move away from the explosive style and ever-changing continuity of Michael Bay’s Transformers films, so Cade probably wasn’t coming back anyway. But even if it was already unlikely that Wahlberg would return to the Transformers franchise, a throwaway line in Rise of the Beasts has made that impossible.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts' Mark Wahlberg Reference Breaks The Franchise

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts takes place in 1994, and it has plenty of ‘90s cultural references to remind the audience of that time setting. These references include a nod to Wahlberg himself as it’s mentioned that Marky Mark is leaving the Funky Bunch to pursue a career as an actor. It’s a funny reference that works as both a nostalgic ‘90s joke and a sly fourth-wall break. But it also means that Wahlberg can never return in a Transformers movie, because these characters have acknowledged that they’re familiar with his real-life counterpart, and it’ll be too weird to team them up with a fictional character played by Wahlberg.

Mark Wahlberg's Return As Cade Yeager Was Already Unlikely

It was already very unlikely that Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager would return in the Transformers franchise anyway. The producers have been consciously moving away from Bay’s Transformers films and carving out their own niche with the ‘80s-set Bumblebee and the ‘90s-set Rise of the Beasts. These prequels have intentionally created some distance between Bay’s movies and the current movies. Since Cade’s Transformers adventures took place in the 2010s, Wahlberg would have to be digitally de-aged to appear in the Rise of the Beasts timeline.

Wahlberg has likely moved on from the Transformers franchise and doesn’t want to return. The actor has been keeping busy with upcoming films like Arthur the King, Our Man from Jersey, and The Family Plan, so he probably couldn’t fit a new Transformers movie into his schedule even if he did want to return to the franchise. Rise of the Beasts has set up new storylines for future Transformers movies to extrapolate, like a crossover with G.I. Joe, so the producers are clearly more interested in exploring new characters than bringing back old ones.