Foxbear wrote:The "completely new character fresh from the Well" theory works best for Sidwswipe IMHO. Especially given how Bumblebee treats him like an impulsive young kid to be mentored.
Thing is, though, when it comes to how old a character behaves in relation to when they were "born", it doesn't always matter.
For instance, back when the Beast Wars cartoon introduced Tigatron (this was years before the "Dawn of Future's Past" retcon occurred), he was seemingly "born" from his stasis pod as an old man, much older in behavior than Cheetor, Rattrap, and possibly even Optimus. Yet, all three of the latter had all been online before Tigatron, making them all chronologically older than him, even if they all act younger than him.
Similarly, in Animated, Prowl was alive during the Great War, while Optimus wasn't yet born then. However, Prowl acts like a teenager both in the past and in the present, while Optimus is like a young adult despite having been born much later than Prowl.
And to use an example from the Aligned fiction, the young bot Orion Pax (reincarnated from Optimus Prime of the Thirteen) was born during the Age of Evolution when the very first bipedal humanoid Cybertronians emerged from the Well of All Sparks. Yet, the nameless bot who would come to call himself first Megatronus and then Megatron didn't emerge from the Well until a very LONG time later during the Age of Wrath. And like Tigatron in Beast Wars, he was born older in behavior than the chronologically far older Orion Pax.
So with Sideswipe still being a teen bot here, it's entirely possible that he didn't mature
at all from his days fighting in the Great War and planet-hopping aboard the Ark, while Bee somehow did. Or at least, Bee matured way faster/Sideswipe matured much slower, somehow.
If these three episodes are anything to go by I think I can say I am going to like this show, possibly even more than Prime. 
