Who was the “Krang” of this show?

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Zog The Magnificent

Why would it have been inherently better to flat out SAY a line, directly to the audience, instead of just showing the audience, and expecting them to be smart enough to get it? As I said, there is no reason to believe that they're still around based on the information we actually have. We don't always need explicit dialogue for every plot point. As much as I like the 2003 show, this kind of thing was one of its biggest problems; so much of its dialogue is WAY too on the nose and spoken to the audience. I would argue that turning to the audience to exposit is worse is most cases.

Because it is a major plot point and you don't want it to be in any way ambiguous unless the intention is to leave the door open, sometimes you actually want to be absolutely clear on this. The eradication of what is one of if not the most important villain faction should be clearly communicated if the audience should know for certain that is what happened. Aside from the Mad Max episodes hinging on the Kraang still being around in some way, it should be noted that the time travel did alter the timeline, Sub-Prime can't be present like in the original timeline because he got stranded in another world, so we can't really count on the rest being exactly the same in the new timeline. The interpretation that they have definitely been eradicated is dependent on the assumption that:

1. The Mad Max episodes aren't canon
2. That Sub-Prime's removal from the timeline and all the other changes that occured thanks to the time travel didn't change the events right before the invasion.

And I don't really feel like bringing up the sloppier elements of the Kraang/Utrom plotline because I'm not sure it's quite relevant for this discussion, but suffice it say that I have trouble taking anything about them on faith because of weird inconsistencies ranging from whether they can speak without their robot bodies to having two contrary explanations for why these two factions of their race exist.

Let's say that there are two hypothetical movies released to continue the plot of this show, one in which the Kraang really are depicted as having been eradicated by the Triceratons during their invasion, and other one in which they still exist albeit in a weakened state. Now, the way the show wrote this whole plotline, neither of these movies would actually contradict show even if they are incompatible with each other. So I can really only conclude that, unless it was just an oversight, that the reason for this isn't that they assumed kids could piece it together but rather because they weren't willing to commit to a definitive answer to this question.