Netflix Retrospective - Voltron Legendary Defender Season 6 Episodes 1-4

Season 6 of Voltron came a few months after season 5. I don’t know why they stopped splitting the seasons at this point, I guess the animation was nearing completion and there wasn’t much point stalling it. It’s also the last season where I don’t have to address controversy. I guess I’ll get to it when I get to it. But onto season 6. We’ll cover the first 4 episodes in this one, because ep 3 is kinda filler and I want to leave this retrospective on a more exciting note.

Omega Shield

The Castle Returns to Galra HQ with Lotor congratulating Allura on what she achieved and Lance being a bit jealous. We’re introduced to the character of Daiyak, she’s in this story and… that’s it. She was a governess of Lotor’s and she’s pretty about Lotor’s ascension. Lance finds this hilarious until he gets hit in the face with her stick, for the second time. Hunk wants to know more about the Galra, saying it’ll be easier to bring peace with more information, Lotor says that Daiyak would be a great teacher.

We get a briefing, much of the Galra empire is defecting from Lotor, with many scattered factions but Sendak being the greatest threat. His faction is called ‘The Fire of purification.’ Lotor decides he needs to address his people, when Lance brings up freeing planets, Lotor says he can’t do that without turning the entire Empire against him.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna be skipping over most of the details with Hunk and Daiyak, it’s a comic relief subplot that doesn’t have any major bearing on future episodes. Lotor brings Allura to a ship, he wants her to prepare it from breaching the veil between realities and entering the quintessence field. He believes her teachings from Oriande should help with that. Lotor’s called away to make his speech.

As Lotor makes his speech, there’s a station in space that activates a shield that protects the planet from an incoming radiation belt (is that a thing? Or are they talking about solar flares?) the Captain of the station says he’s going to pledge loyalty to Lotor (mostly out of respect for tradition) whilst the lieutenant is somewhat angered by the idea.

The belt passes and they’re about to contact Lotor but a fleet of Galra ships arrives, it’s the ‘Fire of Purification’ who immediately begin firing on the planet. Voltron volunteer to go and help, and although Lotor wishes for Allura’s work to continue, she’s insistent on protecting the populace. As they 5 head out, not in the castle for some reason, Shiro gets some kind of seizure, I think?

Voltron arrives to help the planet. As we briefly see Haggar approaching Oriande, and giving Shiro another seizure. Cue transformation sequence. Sendak decides that rather than attacking Voltron directly, he’ll target the shield station and jeopardise the lives of everyone on the planet. Sendak decides to just leave, giving Voltron time to perform a last minute rescue because he’s nice like that.

Shiro gets another seizure, seeing Haggar walking into Oriande. They need to reposition the plates, get the generators rebooted, and fix the fractured plate but the lieutenant decides to be an idiot and threaten to overthrow his commander for working with Voltron. You are well aware of the stakes here! Time and place!

Thankfully Hunk uses his newfound Galra knowledge to get him back in line. They activate some thrusters on the dislodged plates to help Hunk get them back in position in time. That’s literally the only time that knowledge is ever used by the way.

Pidge and Shiro head into the base to reboot the generators, Shiro’s Galra-tech arm proving useful. Lance and Allura prove their teamwork by using their combined skills to fix the plate. Hunk's Lion gets some boosters to get his work done faster. But Shiro has another seizure which affects nothing, they get shield up and he gets yet another one which gets him to remove his hand from the screen and stop bringing power to it, the shield goes down and damage is done to the fractured plate by the radiation belt. Lance takes a blast for Allura, who decides to leave her lion right as the radiation belt is about to hit because she’s an idiot.

Hunk tries his best to fix the damage as Pidge struggles to get Shiro back. Allura uses her Altean alchemy to help Lance. They power the shield just in time to stop the radiation belt. The team head together, with Lance and Allura a little closer, Hunk asleep and Shiro having yet another seizure, seeing Haggar, now converted back to her more youthful Honerva form.

This episode is a decent set up episode with a reasonably tense conflict. It’s a pity then that we won’t see Sendak again until the next season. Shiro’s seizures seem sudden and out of nowhere and the fact the Paladins aren’t questioning this, Pidge in particular, is concerning.

Rating 7.5/10

Razor’s Edge

Last we saw Keith, he discovered the Blade member he’d been sent to rescue, Krolia was in fact his mother. He has many questions, but they’re heading after the pure quintessence and 'Mission First' seems to be a family motto. The creature that killed the Galra a few episodes back was found in an unregistered cargo ship that was also carrying some of the pure quintessence. Krolia analysed the ship’s radiation and has worked out it crossed through the Quantum Abyss. You see the word Quantum enough times, and you can guess time travel is involved. The idea is that neutron stars are orbiting even larger stars and nearby bodies are being pulled in a dozen different directions, the impact of the gravity has a distortion effect on space/time itself.

Lotor is with Allura, getting her to infuse the ship with Altean energy so it can pass through the rift. There’s a hint of some romance between the two that was in the original series but whilst there it seemed creepy, I hear, here it seems a bit more natural.

Keith and Krolia arrive in the quantum abyss. There’s a path through the abyss that kept them unaffected by space-time but the probes were all destroyed by something… We see some weird looking creatures attack. They seem to be able to teleport on board the ship, Keith manages to shake a few off with fancy flying, and Krolia shoots the one that teleports but there’s still one on the outside attacking the hull. With no choice, they ditch the ship and let it get torn apart.

They land on a planetoid but a white light envelops both of them and this is their lazy means of explaining Keith’s backstory without Krolia having to do sh*t. And we also get a glimpse of the future with Shiro.  And apparently that’s perfectly normal.

Lance and Hunk tease Lance over Allura and Lotor, next scene. Keith almost falls in and we get another flash of the past. Krolia came to Earth, finding the Blue Lion signature and destroys her compatriot before crash-landing on the planet. She’s picked up by Keith’s dad. They find the Lion, and Krolia tells him not to contact the Galaxy Garrison, also that she plans to stay on Earth.

Hey, remember the mice? It’s ok, I’m not surprised if you don’t. Lance confesses his true feelings for Allura to the mice. Keith and Krolia continue their journey but realise that it’ll take too long, thankfully some flying fish come along who can travel through. They’re basically the space whales from Star Wars Rebels.

Next flashback is back to Keith, Krolia’s blade begins glowing, she sees more scouts coming. She has explosives to disable their ships, which she wants Keith’s father to plant as she interrogates the pilots. He gets shot in the attempt, but ultimately lives, with only a broken arm. Krolia decides she needs to head back, alert the Blade to the new intel and make sure Zarkon doesn’t find the Blue Lion again. She gives the blade over and says it’s for Keith.

Th jump over to the space whale, riding on it’s back through the Quantum Abyss. It creates its own atmosphere, so they don’t have to keep wearing helmets, they rescue and befriend a wolf, who’s gonna be important later on. They see Keith at his father’s gravestone, the wolf has the ability to teleport and 2 f*cking years later, they make it through the abyss.

Allura returns home to the mice. Lance apparently gave them a wash… right… And they tell her that Lance is in love with her. Krolia and Keith arrive on the other side of the abyss, and these suits, besides being practical all save money by not needing to animate lip movement. They find a Galra base and infiltrate it, but on the other side they find a lush forest. They see a woman crying by the river, who happens to be Altean.

I really enjoyed this episode; it’s got a fair bit of great character work and Keith’s story is relatively engaging.

Rating 9/10

Monsters and Mana

OK, Monsters and Mana is 100% a filler episode, so though it may not end up like it, I’ll try and keep this summary brief.

So, Tashi Shirogami, Bloc and Meklavar meet in an inn where they vow to go on a quest to defeat an evil wizard that’s turned a village to stone name Daeken. Tashi gives his own backstory, a demon killed his master, it’s basic cliché stuff you’ve heard a million times. They others walk out because it was so boring and cliché but Tashi chooses to follow them anyway. Tashi is killed by a giant mouse and we see Monsters and Mana is a game. Tashi is Shiro, Bloc is Hunk, Meklavar is Pidge and Coran is playing the innkeeper I didn’t mention before.

Shiro creates a new character, who is also a paladin because… OK, this episode is trying to poke fun at Shiro’s character as he’s one of the more stock archetypes the show uses, which is fine, but I’ll save my interpretation of this until we get the Shiro reveal of this season. Lance and Allura head in, and we get a bit of an explanation of the game’s rules. Each character can perform an action based on the role of a 20 sided die, the lore master, Coran, knows the difficulty of each task and decides based on the score whether he/she can achieve that action. It’s dungeons and dragons basically, or at least what I know of it, which isn’t much.

Allura wants to play and that convinces Lance to as well. Allura becomes an archer, and Lance a thief, named Pike.

I don’t know if Allura’s character ever got a name, but she summons a flying horse because of course she does. She also has a glowing arrow for the dark caverns. Pike finds a door and has to check for traps but accidentally activates it, sending them down through the floor. They fight their way back up into a treasure vault.

Allura gets a new bow with more magical arrows, Meklavar gets some transmogrifying gloves, Pike gets an invisibility cloak, Bloc gets a bowl of never-ending food and Tashi gets a blazing sword sword, he’s quickly killed again. Turns out the innkeeper was Daiken the whole time. Shiro brings a new character into the game, his name is Jiro. They defeat him but he has a second form as a giant dragon.

They throw out some food from the casket, transform it to oil and set it on fire. This somehow defeats a dragon. And it gives Hunk and Pidge an idea for their little project, Allura is called back by Lotor, they set up the game anew and Shiro wants to be a paladin again.

It’s a filler episode but it’s a good one, it uses the characters well, is pretty funny, homages video games with some imaginative content and has a story that makes no sense whatsoever. I wonder if they new the actor who played Coran ended up in a guide role in Jumanji at this point

Rating 7/10

The Colony

The Castle arrives on the ruins of Daibazaal, Lotor and Allura are about to use their ship to enter the quintessence field. They launch, using a rift gate to do exactly as they’d hoped, entering the quintessence field. As they begin gathering quintessence, the Castle gets an alert of an incoming craft, it’s an Altean space pod and they soon find that Keith is the one driving it. He’s not happy that Lotor is in the quintessence field, clearly knowing something the others do not.

Keith docks with the ship and we see the Altean we last saw him encounter is also with them now. Haggar sees Keith and the Altean through Shiro’s eyes. The rest of the team get an introduction to Krolia. The Altean is Romelle and she has quite a quite a story to tell

When Altea was destroyed, many Alteans were off-world on trading expeditions and such. They went into hiding after finding the news out but Lotor managed to track them down offering them a new place to live where ‘the Galra will never find them.’ Generations later with their population thriving, Lotor supposedly offered a second world for them, but needed to assess which candidates would survive the journey.

There would be no communication between the colonies, supposedly to stop them being tracked to either location. Romelle’s brother, Bandor ended up being among those chosen, as her mother and father had been previously. But he’s not entirely stupid, or maybe he is, given what they were told, he handed her sister a communicator so they can keep in contact.

The communicator took a long time to work, but eventually he gets a message through, telling her she was right and that he’s in a forest outside town. Romelle finds him, looking completely drained of energy and he tells her the other colony is a lie before dying. Lotor finds the wreckage but Romelle manages to hide.

Soon after she meets up with Keith and Krolia, and they begin to suspect their cases are linked. Given Bandor’s condition, he couldn’t have piloted the ship very far, Krolia suggests a nearby moon that might be suited to a colony. She shows them old Altean pods which Keith is thankfully able to fly. They scope out the base, finding row upon row of pods of Alteans who were supposedly heading to the colony but are in fact being drained of quintessence.

Right as it’s dramatically convenient, Allura and Lotor return. They kiss and head to the bridge where the others are waiting with their dramatic stares. Allura demands to know what’s going on and soon gets her answer as Romelle quickly summarises Lotor’s deeds. I really want to know what it was he was actually doing? Research? Gathering quintessence as a different source? Thinning the population so it doesn’t get overcrowded? I have no f*cking clue and the episode gives us nothing but vague ramblings about how it’s for a noble cause.

Acxa and Ezor somehow make it aboard the ship and making matters worse, Haggar takes complete control of Shiro. They quickly make their escape, with Lotor. Keith, who quickly changes back into his Red Paladin uniform for some reason, takes command of the Black Lion again and they head after them. On their own they take a beating from Lotor’s generals so cue stock transition as they form Voltron.

And yes, that’s where we’re leaving it for today. It got some good payoff to all the arcs that had been building this season. It’s rather a pity then that Lotor’s motivations make no sense.

Rating 8/10