Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 6 Episodes 5-7

Well, some major revelations happened in the last episodes, we have 3 more episodes of the season, let’s see how they capitalise on this.

The Black Paladins

We’re quickly back into the action with Acxa, Ezor and Zethrid are piloting Lotor’s ships and fighting Voltron, all whilst Shiro is getting away with Lotor himself. The Paladins are pinned down but are rescued with some timely help from the castle of Lions. Keith seems to quickly regain his footing as a leader but they are still ultimately knocked away. The generals escape via portal with Allura concluding that Haggar must be involved.

Voltron is quickly back up and into the fight, but they were damaged in fight so don’t have the thrust to go through as Voltron. Keith tells them to separate, allowing him the thrust to go in, but he’d be doing so alone. They do so and Keith barely makes it through before the portal is closed.

Keith arrives in a massive Galra fleet, which begin firing on him. Acxa also disbands to join the fight as the others bring Lotor aboard. Zethrid and Ezor escort him away as Shiro just stands there. Haggar instructs Shiro to lead Keith away, exploiting the bond between them. Whilst there have been Keith and Shiro moments, particularly in season 2, the bond between them isn’t properly explained until the next season, this is a major weakness if you plan to have an episode like this. I mean that episode has other problems but more on that when we come to it.

Shiro comes out and leads Keith away as the Acxa pulls back to the fleet and it departs. It’s not looking good on the Castle of Lions. A virus begins disabling all the ship’s systems, and manages to outsmart Pidge when she tries to isolate it. They’re dead in space

Lotor is brought to Haggar, and she tries to plead her case as his mother. Lotor’s having none of it and it’s made worse since Acxa shoots at Haggar and she disappears. This is the last we’ll see of Haggar for a while. Apparently Acxa was working with Lotor the whole time, and now they need to head back to the Castle of Lions. Without a wormhole, it’s several jumps away.

Shiro lands on a Galra base and begins walking toward it with Keith following behind him. They descend to find a lab filled with pods. Keith lights one up to find it contains a clone of Shiro, the rest of the facility powers up, showing all the pods contain Shiro clones for some reason. I don’t really understand what reason and that’s one of the more consistent problems with the revelations of this half of the season. I understand having one Shiro clone to use as an infiltrator, I even get having a couple of backups but I don’t understand what Haggar, or Zarkon or anyone else could’ve gained from having a facility full of them.

Back at the castle, Pidge realises the virus’ countermeasures reminded her of the code from Shiro’s arm, confirming that it was Shiro who uploaded the virus into the castle systems. Weird how it was slow to activate. It becomes a hand to hand fight between Shiro and Keith, although Keith is clearly on the ropes with Shiro’s robotic arm and clear drive giving him the edge.

Pidge manages to override the virus because she had already created something that could stop it when she scanned Shiro’s arm. OK... Keith makes a good effort but Shiro completely outclasses him in the fight, then begins taunting him. Shiro blasts through the base as the Galra tech seems to be spreading up his arm. Keith barely avoids falling from the initial attack, he collapses and is barely able to hold as Shiro prepares a finishing attack.

Keith does what he probably should’ve done a while back, draws the sword from his bayard and slices off Shiro’s arm. The base continues to collapse and Keith is hanging on for dear life with one hand and Shiro with the other. We get flashes of an episode in the next season as he slips and begins plummeting onto the planet below.

We get a flash back to Keith’s childhood, with Shiro saying he won’t give up on him after some unmentioned screw up. Again, season 7’s opening episode expands on this and probably should’ve come earlier.

This is a good follow up, although it does have many of the same issues as the last episode

Rating 7.5/10

All Good Things

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear this, but the Black Lion rescues Keith. He’s in the Black Lion void and hearing Shiro’s voice, Shiro appears in the void and gives an explanation. He’s been in the void since the fight with Zarkon back in season 2, the Shiro we’ve been seeing is one of Haggar’s clones, well duh. For all intents and purposes he’s dead, and honestly, given what Shiro does in the next couple seasons, that might’ve been for the best.

But with this reveal being in the forefront now, I’m gonna come back to what I said in the monsters and mana review. Why did Shiro only wanna be a paladin in the game? Is it a subtle hint at him being a fairly generic leader archetype as they once put forward? Or was it a subtle hint at something being wrong? Clone Shiro only knows how to be a paladin because that’s what he was created to be.

He mentions Olkarion and his warning and yes, this subplot with Lance went all kinds of nowhere, which is disappointing. The Shiro clone is also aboard. Thanks to wacky hijinks with Coran, they have the means to jump-start the castle, but Allura is noticeably distracted. Lance snaps her out.

Allura is blaming herself because of Lotor, incidentally we don’t know what Lotor’s plan is, even if he had one beyond what he stated, hence we don’t know what the stakes are. Lance consoles her and the two hug. Lance is actually being smart for once. Keith contacts them, warning them that Lotor is heading back to their position.

And with Keith unable to get there at speed, the other Lions plan to destroy the trans-reality gate before Lotor can use it again. They do so successfully but without the Castle for a quick exit, they’ll have to face Lotor anyway, without the ability to form Voltron. Apparently, it was Coran’s father that built the Castle of Lions, neat.

Lotor makes one final attempt to appeal to the paladins and prevent any fighting, but ultimately Allura manages to tick him off by comparing him to Zarkon and Lotor gives the order for his generals to attack. Coran has formulated a plan to get the castle up and running, and it involves setting off a bomb made from his father’s alcohol. It works, amazingly.

Apparently someone turned the crazy dial up on Lotor, who has suddenly gone completely nuts. Hearing about his plans to wipe out the Galra, Acxa tells the other generals it’s time for them to sever their ties with him, literally the episode after it was revealed they were still working together. Lotor ejects them into space, them merges the 3 ships into a single entity.

His new machine is able to wipe the floor with the Lions, Coran gets a shot but it’s hopeless, and it was the only shot the Castle had power for. Keith is listening to the coms, desperately trying to get there, he calls out to Shiro for help and I guess it seems to work as Keith is able to make a hyper-jump. Keith arrives and does a bit of damage to Lotor, buying them time to cue stock transition and form Voltron. Once again, this is where the episode ends.

This episode offers intense action, and some neat revelations. Not really sure why this episode is the one called All Good Things, I think that’s a more fitting title for the next episode, you’ll see why in a moment.

Rating 8/10

Defender of All Universes

Lotor and Voltron face down, Keith sends clone Shiro to the castle as they block Lotor’s attack and begin returning fire. Lotor’s machine is able to evade with his impressive speed, so they form a sword, unfortunately Lotor has two and the advantage when it comes to speed. They try to back him into a corner to eliminate his speed advantage. They blast him through the meteor but he’s still up and running, making matters worse, Lotor is able to enter the quintessence field at will and charge himself up. He does so again and again, attacking Voltron from every angle.

The only way to match Lotor’s power boost is to go into the quintessence field themselves, Allura theorises she could do, but it would be dangerous. The form a blazing sword and uses it to piece the veil. They enter the quintessence field and the battle resumes, with them all getting more aggressive and unlocking new abilities through the fight. Allura begins to notice and tells the others they have to leave, it’s consuming them, like it did Zarkon and Honerva.

Lotor is already crazy. Allura uses her magics combined with the Votlron to release all the quintessence they’d been absorbing a beam that ultimately defeats Lotor’s machine. With Voltron barely able to function, they’re forced to leave Lotor behind. But unfortunately they’re not done yet, all the travelling through realities they’ve been doing have resulted in a bunch of rifts appearing, the fabric of time and space itself will collapse if something isn’t done.

There is only conceivable option left, opening a teleduv wormhole inside one of the rifts or something. But it ultimately means the Castle of Lions is doomed. They begin unloading all their stuff, including Shiro’s pod, anything of value from their rooms, the mice, Kaltenicker of course and whatever supplies they have. They says their goodbyes as the teleduv overloads, the Castle of Lions explodes and the universe is saved. All that remains is a diamond.

They land on somewhere or another for one final attempt to help Shiro. Keith explains what happened and Lance remembers Shiro’s attempt to get through to him, so glad that subplot was a thing… Seriously, why wasn’t this followed up on? I guess it gives a chance for Allura to give Lance some comfort in a moment of guilt. Allura manages to use her Altean something or another to transfer Shiro’s consciousness into the clone’s body, now completely free of Haggar’s control, and with whiter hair.

So, now they need a new course of action, and the only person with a plan for the Castle of Lions is Sam Holt, they’re heading back to Earth.

This episode is intense, and shows a shakeup in status quo we haven’t seen since the finale to s2, we only have 2 major villains still at large, and each will be the primary antagonist for the next 2 seasons. But that doesn’t mean the universe is safe. We’ll be back for the 7^th and first controversial season of Voltron. 

Rating 8/10

We'll be taking a break from retrospectives for the summer but when we return, we'll be heading back to Marvel and series 2 of Luke Cage.