Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 7 Episodes 7-9

We’re back to Voltron and they’re back on Earth, it’s finally time to address the controversy as we move into...

The Last Stand part 1

The Paladins finally make their move towards Earth, Pidge tries to contact her father but receives a distress call, the Galra have invaded Earth in numbers, most citizens have been captured and those left are making their last stand. They need help and fast.

We flash back to 4 years earlier, Sam Holt returns to Earth but had to undergo a week of testing to ensure no alien pathogens or the like came with him. Admiral Sanda tells him of this and Sam is less than eager, he has somewhere else to be. He goes to see his wife and the two embrace after years apart. He’s eager to talk to the children via the transmitter on his ship but Sanda informs him that she won’t allow him to do so, believing contact may put Earth at risk.

Also, the whole world believes Sam is dead, and the Galaxy Garrison aren’t ready to reveal the existence of aliens to the world, so Sam is confined to the barracks. There’s a lot of politics in this story and it runs for half the season, it’s about as interesting as that sounds. Yeah, this debrief is basically a season recap that I can’t be bothered to recap here, if you’re interested 1) what are you doing here and 2) check out my old retrospective on it, please

Sam wants to reveal what they know to the world and begin bolstering defences against an inevitable Galra attack, but Sanda does not want to instigate mass panic. Sam hopes that contacting the Paladins would help the situation but finds he can’t, I’m guessing this is about when Voltron went missing.

Whilst, until they get contact, they’re gonna stay quiet, that doesn’t mean they’re doing nothing, they’re working to integrate parts from the ship into human tech and have turned both the shuttle Shiro crashed in and the Altean shuttle into simulators so pilots can gain a grasp of their controls. We’re introduced to the best pilots of the Garrison, officers Griffin, Rizavi, Kinkade and Leifsdottir, they’ve been running drills in the two pods for weeks now. Of course, they need a better ship than the shuttle and Sam is their best bet here, not only was he an engineer with the Galra (whilst he was captured), he also worked alongside the Olkari.

Using the schematics Sam brought with them, they begin creating those ships, and within a year, their ships and weapons have all been upgraded to the point where responses from the ship are near instantaneous. They hear from Matt but it’s bad news, Voltron’s been missing for over 6 months, the alliance is being hunted and is more or less gone, and Matt warns Sam against further broadcasts from Earth, and making it a target.

Sam pushes again to tell the world the truth but Sanda shuts him down. They’re building the army to defend Earth, not fight in a war they don’t currently have a part in. A reminder that just because I find the politics a bit tedious, doesn’t mean I don’t understand both sides here. Going into a war is never a good option if it can be avoided, lives are not expendable, that said, considering only the safety of humanity when trillions of other species could be wiped out is cowardly and selfish.

With option of going through official channels expended, and the need of more resources to get their ship done, Colleen decides its time to go behind their back. Colleen begins broadcasting a message on every available coms channel, even using security footage from the Garrison to back them up. Sandi is about to have them arrested but their call to arms got exactly the response they hoped, people are lining up to help.

With the extra help they manage to create an enlarged particle barrier to defend the Garrison but all might be for nought as the Galra arrive in full force. It’s a massive armada, bigger than almost any we’ve seen before, including the one at Galra high command, seriously, this is a ridiculous number of ships.

It’s a necessary episode to get us up to speed with how Earth has been getting along, but that doesn’t mean it’s a favourite of mine

Rating 6/10

The Last Stand part 2

We find out here the attack is lead by Sendak, it’s the “Fire of Purification” and yeah, that’s still too many warships. The Galra Empire is supposed to be fractured; this is 90% of the fleet right here. We see still frames of the Galra landing and blasting the planet, it’s fair to say casualties are massive. Sanda orders basic defences activated, but without the MFE fighters, those flown by the cadets, they don’t stand a chance according to Sam. Commander Iverson is forced to comply but Sam’s predictions come to pass and they’re annihilated.

Sendak puts out a call for the Voltron lions. Sanda tries to explain that they don’t have them but Sendak doesn’t give a sh*t. With the Galra fleet now preparing to open fire on the particle barrier, they have little choice but to launch the MFEs, and prepare a shot with their own Ion canon, it works and a Galra ship is destroyed. Sendak decides now to get his troops to fall back on concentrate on weaker areas, and soon the Garrison loses communication with much of the world. Sendak’s play is continue the occupation of Earth and let the Lions come to him.

With hope fast running out, Sanda has little to say as Sam has to be the one to keep the troops from giving in. But the news doesn’t get much better, they’re short of supplies and unable to complete the ship they need to get those MFEs capable at a long range. Apparently this world had a World War 3, and during that time they constructed underground tunnels for reasons of plot convenience. One happens to link a nearby supply depot that’s conveniently not occupied by the Galra, although that may not last long.

The team for the mission are Officers Griffin, Rizavi, Kinkade and Leifsdottir, lead by Veronica, their handler who’s the only one who can navigate since guidance systems will be blocked by the tunnels. They make it to the depot without incident and begin salvaging supplies, once again, we get still-frames here because the budget has been stretched. They’re almost finished loading when 2 Galra troops spot them. Veonica sets up a gun that does slightly more than nothing against them but more reinforcements arrive. They train handling the supplies gets moving and Veronica blows the tunnel, presumably sacrificing her life to stop them being followed, much to upset of Griffin.

Of course, without her navigating is more difficult but Leifsdottir is able to remember the instructions Veronica gave on the way. They make it back but as they do, Sendak activates the next stage of his plan and cuts off communications. He hopes that no distress signals reach the lions and hence he’ll be able to catch them off guard. This seems odd, because it also doesn’t let them know Earth is under attack. They’re prepared to wait for the Garrison to starve itself out as they begin construction of Galra strongholds throughout the world.

Morale is low but an interesting surprise helps boost things as Veronica returns, very much alive and with the support of a small resistance network with extra supplies and intel they sorely need. Turns out Veronica is Lance’s sister. With the news of the Galra installations being built by human workforce, Sam decides to make one final attempt to send a message to Voltron, sending up a rocket, the Galra fire upon it, releasing a swarm of micro-transmitters broadcasting the message.

Voltron begins its journey into the solar system

It’s a more exciting episode to be sure, but not without its problems. At least we cared about Sam but the pilots, not really.

Rating 6/10

Know Your Enemy

Ok, we’re up to speed on where Earth is now, let’s get back to the Lions. Sam sends a message through warning Voltron not to approach directly, as the Lions are Sendak’s target and he’d likely threaten people for it. They stop but are spotted by 3 Galra fighters. They jam transmissions from Earth as Voltron takes 2 of them out and gets hold of the third, using it as a transporter to get themselves to Earth, hiding the Lions one of Jupiter’s moons, the mice and Kaltenicker and left behind.

Because of the extra weight, they crash down on Earth, they approach a destroyed city and are quickly spotted by Galra probes. Lance manages to snipe them whilst Keith holds their attention but Galra sentries are quickly en-route, they’re rescued by Griffin and his team and taken to the Garrison. Pidge gets a family reunion and so does Lance and his rather sizeable family. Hunk is not so lucky. Keith patches things up with the Garrison but it’s implied there’s a bit of bad blood with him and Griffin.

And we finally get to the moment we’ve been building towards this entire season. Shiro’s boyfriend Adam died during the fighting, and it’s something a lot of people aren’t happy about. There aren’t a massive number of LGBTQIA+ couples in fiction, and it’s regrettably common that one or the other is killed off. I’m gonna throw in my two cents but I’m probably gonna end up p*ssing off both sides here. Given what the story built up in the first episode, this was the inevitable outcome.

Let me explain, in that episode, Shiro left for the Kerberos mission knowing that Adam didn’t want him to go, and essentially broke up their relationship because of it. By killing Adam off by the time he returned, they add finality to that decision. Shiro chose the mission over Adam and there’s no going back for him.

That being said, why did this have to happen off-screen? Why is this brushed off like it’s nothing? We had 2 whole episodes centred around the Garrison on Earth, there’s no reason he couldn’t have played a role in them, no reason his death had to be off-screen (aside from censorship, maybe). No reason for him to have no character development. We care about him only in how it affects Shiro and even if he wasn’t one of the less emotional characters, this is not a good way to go about character death.

So after a full 10 maybe 15 seconds of mourning, we get a debriefing, they don’t have a supply line so supplies are scarce and getting scarcer, resistance pockets have been more or less wiped out and they’ve put a halt on extracting people from the battle as it’s proven too risky, something which Hunk objects to and is shut down by Griffin, seriously, he’s being written as a complete jerk now, why?

Coran offers to help with the MFE’s power, but there’s a subject that Sanda has to bring up. Using the Lions as a bargaining chip to get the Galra to leave. It’s shot down but it does have supporters. The files from the castle of lions Sam has contains a copy of Sendak’s memories from when they had him captured; they hope that might provide some insight into his plan.

Keith and Hunk have a moment as Hunk is on the verge of breaking down, missing his family. They agree to head off together in search of Hunk’s family. And they’re joined by, joy of joys, Griffin and Veronica. They’re brought into a small resistance group. The workforce has been moved inside the camp, meaning getting to Hunk’s family will be nigh impossible. He does manage to see them.

Hearing Sendak’s memories is hard to hear for Allura but she does consider the lessons within and creates a new bionic arm for Shiro.

This tries hard to be an emotional episode, the problem is just how little of it gets any room to breathe, so a lot of it falls flat.

Rating 6.5/10