That is actually what they were originally going to do. They wanted to have a character and the guy said that basically everyone would love him blah blah blah and then at the end Megatron would make his appearance and kill him and it would be to show what a massive threat Megatron was. But then the people higher up were like “no no no kill him first episode.”
Also they were originally gonna go with Smokescreen but they liked him too much so they went with Cliff instead and introduced Smokescreen in season 2