Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 7 Episodes 1-3

We’re finally back to Voltron, with the controversial season 7. I’ll get into detail about the nature of said controversy through my review. This still had a high critical rating, with a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and enjoyed high audience ratings, although a slight dip from previous seasons. We’re back to 13-episode seasons, so let’s spend the next 4 weeks breaking this season down.

A Little Adventure

We open at a school where Takashi Shirogami, or Shiro as we prefer to know him is giving a lecture, being sent from the Galaxy Garrison. A young Keith is looking out the window, not as engaged as the others. He plans to see who would be worthy to join the Galaxy Garrison through a video game in a flight simulator. Most of the students eventually fail the test, with Keith the last to try.

He seems to be succeeding, making it through the levels, impressing Shiro. The teacher calls him a discipline case and someone who’s unlikely to fit in at the Garrison, something that’s soon proven when he leaves the game to go steal Shiro’s buggy. Shiro actually gets him out of prison, so Keith now owes him one, Shiro leaves a card, and tells him to be that address at 0800.

Cut to the present, and things aren’t looking good. Pidge is having no luck contacting the Voltron coalition and Shiro is still lying in a casket, only time will tell if his consciousness will survive in the new body. Beyond that, the Lions themselves are low on energy and without the Castle, they can’t recharge them. Coran suggests they find an element called Faunatonium, an element native to this system that might help speed up their recharging. To find it, they need to find a Yalmor, a native animal that can sniff it out. Keith, Allura, and Krolia will stay with Shiro whilst Coran, Romelle, Lance, Hunk and Pidge head to find the Yalmor.

Back in the past Shiro and Keith meet near the Calipso, the first ship to send astronauts to the moons of Jupiter, a journey that lasted 3 years each way. It was this mission that inspired Shiro to be an astronaut. He sees potential in Keith and wants to help.

Coran quickly finds a Yalmor but through a series of mishaps they end up shrunk, hence the title of the episode. Now the Yalmor is a sizeable threat to them.

Cut to Keith in the past going through a squad drill, Keith ends up getting Lance out of sync, he falls back in line but Keith decides to pull a hasty stunt, convincing the superiors that he’s a show-off. Making matters worse, when someone brings up Keith’s parentage, he lashes out, landing him in even more trouble. Shiro continues to encourage and support him

A chase continues with the Yalmor eventually backing them up against a rock, like the satire of the running away from a large object bit, anyway, Lance manages to shoot a nut down from a nearby tree so it hits the Yalmor on the head so hard it gives it a lump and shoos it away. Unfortunately, with them shrunk their communicators don’t have much range and getting back to the ship will take a long time.

Shiro and Keith practice flying together, with Shiro showing off his own reckless streak. Weird animation thing here but in the scene with the two talking I can see the outline of Keith’s eyebrow through his hair, it’s weird. An alarm goes off on Shiro’s wrist, and whilst Shiro claims it to be something not serious, it’s kind of obvious that it is.

Back with the shrunken crew, it’s theorised that Faunatonium might be able to bring them back to size, but to do so, they need to lure the Yalmor back.

And here’s the first part of what the main controversy is about. Despite clearing physicals, Shiro’s ill health means that many of the Garrison higher ups do not want him on the Kerberos mission. Thanks to intervention by Sam, he remains part of the crew but that creates a rift with his boyfriend/fiancé, Adam. Yes, Shiro is gay and they made a big deal about this. Adam says that if he goes, he shouldn’t expect him to be there when/if he returns. Given the context, he must’ve known about this for ages, don’t see why he’d only be bringing up his concern now. The second part will have to wait a couple of weeks.

Hunk, being the largest and loudest of them is used as bait to lure the Yalmor back, they’re successful and all end up on its back. Keith, having overheard the argument with the higher ups confronts Shiro, who admits he has an unnamed disease that means he’ll only remain at his peak for a couple of years.

Back with the gang, the Yalmor leads them to a spot and calls for friends, with this many, Coran believes they’re on a Fauntatonium Wizplute, I’d guess a concentrated source. With that they’re back to regular size and have what they need. Keith’s begging eventually gets Shiro’s new body to accept his consciousness and he’s awake.

I think this episode is well aware that the Keith flashbacks are by far the more interesting part of the episode, the shrunken stuff is just a fun little adventure with not much to it.

Rating 8/10

The Road Home

Pidge is attempting to broadcast to Earth but is having little luck. Pidge is excited about what her father could be up to on Earth. But the news is less than great from Coran, as it’s calculated they would take over a year to get there without a wormhole. And there’s a matter of distribution of passengers.

For some reason, Lance gets to decide, so of course Romelle is his passenger. The Wolf is with Allura, Hunk gets the mice, Pidge gets Kaltenicker and everyone else bunks with Keith. The mice and Hunk are having a good time, but Keith less so. Romelle acts overly excited about being on the lion, the Wolf begins chewing at things and it turns out Pidge is alone so where the heck is Kaltenicker.

The team agree to make a stop at an old base, the Xylok station. They’re not having any luck contacting anyone inside so go to investigate. It doesn’t look good, long abandoned and torn apart. Enemy ships begin an attack, some of the ships looking like Lotor’s. They attempt to form Voltron but with Lions low on power and without the castle to back them up, they don’t succeed, making matters worse, these Galra ships aren’t using standard battle tactics, luring the paladins into environmental hazards, and blocking their escape. Their only choice is through a space cyclone?

Playing them at their own game, the head for a planet with environmental hazards they can use against the enemy. They take out a few by entering a cave with Lance collapsing the entrance behind them but a few still make it in, including the Lotor-esque ships, they split up as one of said ships grapples Keith’s Lion and zip-lines onto it. Krolia heads out to confront and ultimately defeat him. Hunk unlocks a new ability with his bayard, the ability to shoot out turrets that destroy his pursuer. Alura bits down on her attacker but that jams the Blue Lion’s mouth shut and it’s Romelle that saves them.

Pidge and Lance are in trouble but the wolf, manages to teleport on the pursuers’ ships and destroy them from the inside, they all manage to get out but it’s not over yet as Zethrid and Ezor, two of Lotor’s former generals arrive a scene, commanding a full Galra fleet. I mean, we only see their chins but it’s them.

Nothing especially substantial happens in this episode, it’s just a long chase scene, but it’s nice to see the supporting characters get their moments to shine, except Kaltenicker.

Rating 7/10

The Way Forward

The Lions are all aboard a Galra ship, and the Paladins are imprisoned, minus Coran who’s still trapped in the Black Lion after getting stuck there trying to help Krolia. Coran is helped by the arrival of the mice who unlock the cell for him and take care of the guard. He’s wearing bounty hunter armour that Coran disguises himself in.

Ezor and Zethrid have a heart to heart which implies a deeper relationship between the two than initially thought. Coran’s attempts to blend in are bad, in spite of the disguise, he just had to open his mouth. He’s given an assist with the arrival of Acxa. Ezor and Zethrid enter the cell to confront the paladins, they believe the Paladins have been gone for a while, and yes, that’s a reveal that’s coming.

Acxa and Coran come up with a plan to distract the Galra whilst they make their escape, blast a hole in the hangar, with an ion canon, allowing defence protocol to seal off the others and prevent anything more than escape pods being deployed to chase them. Acxa hacks and gains control of the Ion cannon, but the guard Coran defeated earlier wakes up and sounds the alarm. Acxa uses the ion canon on the hull to defeat the guards.

Turns out the mice are pretty resourceful as once again they take down the guard, and rescue the Paladins as Ezor and Zethrid head off to deal with the hull breach. Coran got himself into a fight with a miniaturised version of Zarkon’s s3 armour, thankfully Allura manages to help him out. With the hull breach, the lions are sucked into space. Keith manages to call his bayard to him and retrieves the armour and weapons of the others. Keith stays behind the help Acxa, fighting against both Zethrid and Ezor. They get knocked back into some explosives, which gives Keith an idea, they use the lions to detonate the explosives, taking out the Galra ship and facilitating their escape

But the hits keep on coming, the Lions are in bad shape after the fight and it turns out thanks their dimensional hopping in the season finale, they’ve been gone for 3 years. Acxa explains how they were stuck on a meteor after Lotor ejecting them until they were found by a Galra ship investigating Lotor’s last known location. They took it over, with Ezor and Zethrid wanting to exploit the Galra power vacuum for their own ends, but Acxa wanting to find a different path.

This episode is not a series high point in terms of quality but does end with renewed threat, the realisation that it’s been so long, means all sorts of old enemies have evolved and new enemies come about.

Rating 7.5/10