The character design for Shiro includes him with a prosthetic arm. Interviews with executive producers Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery have revealed that the reason they initially gave Shiro a prosthetic arm was because they thought it looked “cool.” They seem to have put no thought into what it would mean to a person to have an amputation.
Shiro is captured by the Galra at the beginning of the show and then a little later in the first episode returns to Earth a year later, now with his arm amputated and a prosthetic made of Galra technology. The closest we ever get to any exploration of what it meant to Shiro to lose an arm is a very brief line of dialog at the beginning of 2x03 “Shiro’s Escape,” in which Shiro, in flashback, yells, “You took my hand, what more do you want?” We have no other information about his amputation. Was his arm injured during gladiatorial combat, making it a medical necessity to amputate? Haggar says to Shiro in 1x13 “The Black Paladin, “You could have been our greatest weapon,” so was his arm cut off as part of an experiment she was subjecting him to?
Ultimately, whatever the reason was for the amputation and addition of the Galra prosthetic, the show never tells us. But this is the amputation that everyone already knows about.
Shiro was subjected to a second amputation.
This is something that has infuriated me for a long time, and I’ve never seen anyone else talk about this in any of the Voltron discourse I’ve read.
In season seven, Shiro gets a new prosthetic to replace the Galra one that Keith cut off. I have never liked his new arm. The forearm is lot wider than a natural arm. The disembodied, floating quality makes it vulnerable to disruption (we saw Sendak’s arm be disrupted by Pidge passing her bayard between the shoulder and the arm in 1x07 “Tears of the Balmera”). With the big gap between the shoulder and the arm, the arm lacks the ability to provide leverage, thus something like Shiro arm-wrestling in 8x08 “Clear Day” is impossible. I would think that it would take a lot more power to maintain the disembodied hovering quality of the new prosthetic than it would take to operate a more normal arm. The design and function of the new arm does not seem reasonable to me.
But what makes the new prosthetic worse is Shiro’s shoulder. To implant the shoulder piece of this prosthetic, they amputated Shiro’s shoulder.
Shiro’s Galra prosthetic always looked like it connected to his arm halfway up his bicep. Because of the second, floating prosthetic, sometimes I thought maybe I had misinterpreted the visual design of the Galra prosthetic, that maybe the prosthetic was his whole arm. I couldn’t remember any time where we got to see him without sleeves to know for sure. I learned for sure that I was right that Shiro’s Galra prosthetic only went halfway up the bicep when I did my rewatch and commentary for 3x06 “Tailing a Comet.” In this episode, there is a scene in which we see Shiro (technically the clone) wearing a white tank top. His shoulder is flesh and the prosthetic is not his whole arm.
To have the shoulder implant that he gets in 7x10 “Heart of the Lion,” the rest of his arm and his shoulder would have to be amputated. I would think it would be unethical for a doctor to do this unless it was medically necessary. No medical need to amputate the rest of the arm and the shoulder is given in the show. Narratively, there is no reason that Shiro’s new arm needed to be this disembodied floating absurdity. But I guess once again, the EPs thought it would look “cool,” because they decided to go with this design.
One of two things happened in the process of this new character design work.
One, the EPs and design team realized that they would have to amputate the rest of Shiro’s arm and shoulder and thought having animation inconsistency that they hoped no one would notice was better than having people criticize them for having Shiro amputated a second time, so they had Shiro slightly redesigned from the moment Keith cuts off his arm to when he gets his new prosthetic.
The second possibility is that when they had their design team do the slight character redesign for the moment Keith cuts off the clone’s arm, neither the EPs nor the design team were aware of past work-product and did not remember that the show had shown us that the clone clearly had a flesh shoulder and part of the upper arm. Maybe designing the clone for the moment Keith cuts his arm off, the design team made an honest, though inexcusable, mistake.
Either way, the instant Keith cuts off the clone’s arm in 6x05 “The Black Paladins,” suddenly, the upper arm and the shoulder are metal.
This second amputation is a retcon, a visual redesign. Whether it was done specifically because the new prosthetic design had been approved and they didn’t want to be criticized for amputating Shiro’s shoulder, or whether it was done because they didn’t pay attention to what the show had already established, one way or the other Shiro went from having a flesh and bone shoulder and upper arm, to not.
The way the production of this show treated Shiro, they just could not stop inflicting additional pain and suffering on him. If all the other ways the EPs and writers abused Shiro’s character didn’t also reveal this, we could know solely from the EPs saying that they chose to amputate him and give him the prosthetic because it looked “cool.” Since they never understood the impact being amputated would have on a person, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they amputated Shiro a second time to have the second prosthetic. I will never not find it horrifying that they did this to him.
I guess we’re supposed to assume that Joaquim Dos Santos considered this a really important episode since he has the writing credit for it. This is it, the big reveal of the clone. This episode leaves me annoyed at Honerva, angry at Pidge, and hurt by knowing the full scope of the clone story and how it ends up being just a gimmick posing as poignancy.
Starting where last episode ended, Voltron is fighting Lotor’s ships. Allura must have really slammed Lotor hard when she threw him last episode because he’s still unconscious. I guess since this show was released whole-season on Netflix, most viewers go immediately from finishing the last episode and start watching this one, so they’re carrying over any energy from the previous ending. Since I have a day in between with this viewing, I’m not feeling much weight from this fight right up front. There is nothing in the narrative to reignite the tension. It’s just a space fight.
Coran communicates that he’s bringing the Castle Ship to the fight, but Keith tells him no, saying the Castle wouldn’t fare well against these ships. Voltron’s pinned against an asteroid by Lotor’s ships hitting it with a sustained blaster beam. Immediately negating telling Coran to keep the Castle Ship out of the fight, Keith then asks Coran to destroy the asteroid. I’m not sure I’ve seen the show’s writing demonstrate inconsistency that quickly before.
Lotor’s ships give Voltron enough space and time for Voltron to fly through the rocky debris from Daibazaal, where Keith orders Lance and Pidge to “get us some cover,” so they blast the asteroids. Somehow, the asteroids weren’t cover, but now blown-up asteroids are? They’re just randomly shooting rocks, so it’s not like the weapons fire itself is functioning as cover fire.
A purple, and thus evil because evil is color-coded in this show, wormhole appears. Allura says, “It has to be Haggar. She must have gained the ability, but how?” It actually doesn’t, for once, feel like a jump to a conclusion that Allura would think it’s Haggar. The delivery of this line sounds unintentionally funny though.
“But Shiro’s not Shiro anymore,” Hunk says. That’s really quick of Hunk to so fully dismiss a friend as gone. Keith counters that “something is wrong with him. The Galra or Lotor have to be behind it.”
Voltron, or at least the Black Lion’s wings, start sparking electricity. Keith says his thrusters aren’t working. Pidge replies, “Those beams torched our power core.” All this kind of feels spastic to me. The Lions/Voltron has/have been beaten so much and never really shown to be damageable. Repairs are never shown being made to the Lions. The near invulnerability the show’s given Voltron for so many seasons makes me have trouble with the idea that now they can take physical damage.
Lotor’s ships get through the wormhole, but Voltron isn’t going to make it. Keith orders Voltron to break up so that the process will propel him through the wormhole. It doesn’t logistically feel realistic, but there is an emotional reason for the narrative to have it happen. I don’t like that it makes it such that only Keith is pursuing Shiro now because it has this, maybe unintentional, way of making it feel like the other Paladins don’t care enough about Shiro to fight for him. I say maybe unintentional because I really do want to give the benefit of the doubt, but honestly, I don’t think they wrote the characters in this show to behave like they care about each other most of the time.
Keith pops out the other side of the wormhole to be faced with a bunch of Galra cruisers, which fire on him. Axca moves to attack Keith while Ezor and Zethrid help get Lotor and Shiro to Honerva. She specifically calls Haggar by the name Honerva. That’s a huge thing. For Haggar to now present herself as Honerva to Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid, but to not show how any of the three of them handle being told feels like something’s been left out. Being Honerva was a huge thing Haggar kept hidden for a long while, so why is she now open about it? I know she went to Oriande and came out of the pyramid and resumed her Honerva appearance there, but why are the Galra now okay with following her with her having revealed she’s full Altean? Don’t Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid think Honerva’s a huge hypocrite for not being even part Galra while having condemned Lotor, saying he wasn’t fit to rule the Empire because he was only half-Galra back in 5x04 “Kral Zera?” For that matter, since Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid themselves are only part-Galra, how were they not offended in that moment when Haggar said that to Lotor in that episode?
Keith and Axca fighting one-on-one here adds to the previous moments the show has hinted at something connecting these two characters together. The show eventually abandons further developing this plot, never producing any narrative resolution for the set-up. Since Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery said in that interview that they thought about killing Hunk and replacing him with Axca, I guess their deciding to not do that made them just give up on whatever these Keith-Axca moments were supposed to be setting up.
Lotor’s finally conscious. Shiro has him in handcuffs, which feels strange for him to be treated like a prisoner since this whole story from the end of the last episode until this scene has had a tonal quality of a rescue mission. Zethrid takes Lotor and tells Shiro, “We’ll take it from here.” Shiro just stands there, staring into the distance. Ezor follows after Zethrid, and we see Honerva looking through Shiro’s eyes.
She tells him, “You are to lead the Black Lion away from the fleet.” In a very flat voice, Shiro asks how, and Honerva says, “The Red Paladin’s connection to you runs deep, deeper than the others. He still believes there is good left inside you, which leaves him vulnerable to persuasion. You will exploit this weakness.” Okay, this episode was written by Joaquim Dos Santos, so one of the people who should most understand the story being told. Why then did he write Honerva to call Keith the “Red Paladin?” Keith hasn’t been the Red Paladin for a long time. He hasn’t flown any Lion since 4x01 “Code of Honor,” and he hasn’t flown the Red Lion since 3x02 “Red Paladin.” Of course, I think Keith should be and should always have been the Red Paladin, but the show hasn’t had him be that for a long time. So why was Honerva written to refer to him by that title? Is this a slip up showing that even Joaquim Dos Santos knows deep down that changing the Paladins around was totally forced?
Honerva does confirm for us that Keith does care more about Shiro than the other Paladins do. On one hand, it’s not expected since the two of them have a much longer and personal history than Shiro has with the others. But on the other hand, it does kind of feel like the show confirming how this clone plot makes it feel like the other Paladins just don’t care because the show didn’t bother to make them care.
“He still believes there is good left inside you.” This line infuriates me because it’s a manifestation of what the EPs, and the writers thought of the clone. One, for first time viewers who don’t yet know this is a clone, it’s really hurtful for this line to suggest that Shiro’s evil. Implicit in Honerva’s statement is that there is no good left inside him. But even knowing that this is a clone, it’s still hurtful. The idea that Honerva flipped a switch and all of the good was obliterated from within the clone is an insult to everyone who grew to love this character over the past several seasons. But this is the show justifying its desire to discard the clone as an “evil thing” without having to have any characters feel bad about dehumanizing him and treating him like trash. That the show has the characters so quickly willing to discard the clone is a manifestation of how the EPs and the writers only ever saw him as a “thing” themselves, never as a character. Despite that perspective from them though, they still inadvertently wrote him as a character because they were trying to build up this surprise twist. What was supposed to just be a cover to set up for the reveal ended up being mostly really good characterization. Despite their planned end goal for the clone, they never realized that viewers would get attached to him. Their shortsightedness is one of the aspects of this story that really bothers me.
Honerva is now back to using her monotone Honerva voice instead of the far easier to listen to Haggar voice. I clearly don’t like Haggar/Honerva much at all in this show. She was okay in seasons one and two, but not for the rest of the series. I would much rather have Haggar’s voice than Honerva’s. For the most part, the voice acting on this show is one of the good things about the show, even if the story was terrible and the dialog was bad or off, the actual sound of the voices were good. Who thought this monotone Honerva voice was a good choice?
Keith sees the Altean pod flying away from everything, and Keith assumes that it’s Shiro. It is, but there’s no reason for Keith to assume that instead of just some miscellaneous Galra sentry piloting it. The Galra all jump away while Keith follows after Shiro.
The other Paladins have gotten their Lions back into the Castle Ship. Hunk says the Lions are, “structurally speaking, at about 60%.” That should mean 40% of them were bashed up so much that they would look very visibly destroyed, but this statement ultimately means nothing since the Lions are never shown with any physical damage.
The Castle Ship’s systems shut down. Coran announces a risk that has never come up before, including when the Castle has had all its systems shut down before, that if the “teludav regulator” shuts down, the Castle and everything in the “neighboring system” will be destroyed. Since there are other instances where this would have come into play earlier in the series and it never did, that makes this totally contrived. I honestly don’t care about what’s going on with the rest of the Paladins and the Castle Ship right now.
Lotor, still handcuffed, is brought to Honerva. She takes her hood off, turns to him, and says, “Prince Lotor, my son.” The camera quickly pans to Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid, who all have shocked expressions. Why are any of them surprised? Axca earlier used Honerva’s name when telling Ezor and Zethrid to get Lotor to Honerva. It can’t be that they’re reacting to her calling Lotor her son because everyone in the Empire knows that Honerva was Lotor’s mother. This is just another inconsistency in the writing.
“Understand that the events that transformed me into the witch Haggar also shrouded any glimmer of maternal instinct I may have had for my one and only child,” Honerva says. If you’ve read my commentary for 3x07 “The Legend Begins,” then you can probably guess what I’m going to say here. Honerva had no motherly qualities pre-quintessence poisoning whatsoever. The show making this statement now is an absolute retcon of her character. Also, the whole use of the dual identity – Honerva versus Haggar – is an attempt by the show, the EPs, and the writers to avoid responsibility for having written Haggar as a brutal, dictatorial character now that they think they’re adding depth to her character. They weren’t willing to embrace this character as a single character and one who’s a villain, and the dual identity is how they’re trying to buy space for wanting to write the character differently than what they set the character up as in the first two seasons.
Lotor says, “Enough! My mother ceased to exist when Honerva drew her last breath. Do not believe for a moment that I would ever accept you as kin. You are an abomination. A twisted perversion of what was once so pure and beautiful.” I do not blame Lotor for rejecting her. Despite what some people say, someone who’s been abused does not have to accept and forgive their abuser. It is a bit bothersome that Lotor thinks Honerva was “pure and beautiful” since he never knew Honerva since she adopted the Haggar persona before she gave birth. We can assume that this is similar to his sharp reaction to Allura in 5x05 “Bloodlines” when Allura supposed that Haggar and Honerva were the same person. Lotor seemed to have constructed a fantasy about what his mother was like, and that might be how we should read this line here too.
Honerva glares at Lotor and orders, “Take him away.” The fact that she had him brought to her in handcuffs demonstrates that for all her posturing suggesting she wants to ask him to accept her, she still is treating him like a prisoner. She might want to pretend she’s trying to find some motherly capacity, but the circumstances of her having him brought to her prove that to be a lie.
Axca tries to shoot Honerva, but Honerva teleports away. Zethrid asks Axca, “Are you working with Lotor?” And Lotor replies, “I can explain everything.” Are they really trying to pretend that Axca has been a mole for Lotor the entire time? Ugh.
Lotor wants to grab his ships and “head to the Castle of Lions’ last known location.” Why it’s phrased that way, I don’t know, since that location was Daibazaal.
With the Black Lion’s wing still sparking, Keith has followed Shiro to an asteroid or moon near a planet. He follows Shiro’s footprints into a cave, eventually finding a Galra facility. Inside, Keith sees many stasis pods. He approaches one, touches it, light comes on inside, and it reveals a Shiro clone. Dozens and dozens of other pods light up, revealing more clones.
Here’s a huge problem I have with the clone plotline: What is the point of the clones? This facility, the personnel, time, and resources that went into running it and conducing the cloning program, those are all a significant investment. Why? If it had been just one clone made, it could be argued that Haggar’s plan was to use the clone to spy on the other Paladins. But she had a lot of clones made, so what was the point? What was her goal? Why did she do this? The show never answers this.
I think the reason the show never answers it is because they EPs and writers never thought to answer it. They were never writing the clone story to actually be an actual part of the show. It’s inclusion in the show is not intentional. They used the clone story to bring Shiro back into the show because they were told they couldn’t kill him off like they wanted to. As such, the clone story is nothing but a gimmick. They never thought to think through the implications.
This also makes me think of how in 1x13 “The Black Paladin,” Haggar tells Shiro, “You could have been our greatest weapon.” That line is never explained and resolved. So too is the clone program never explained, and its resolution is just to provide Shiro’s soul with a body.
Back on the Castle Ship, Pidge informs the others that she recognizes the computer code that has shut down the Castle. It’s the same as is in Shiro’s Galra arm prosthetic. I’ll say more about this in a bit, but it infuriates me.
“Wait, are you saying Shiro is responsible for this?” Allura asks, and Pidge says, “Yes.” This scene is written to elicit a shocked response, but because we’ve already had the revelation of the clones in this episode, it doesn’t shock us. The episode has already created a narrative distance between any sabotage the clone did prior to leaving with Lotor. Even if the other Paladins don’t yet know about the clones and thus think it was Shiro who sabotaged the Castle, we viewers don’t. That makes their being shocked have no real weight. Maybe it’s an issue of bad editing decisions, though I would think something like where different parts of scenes are situated should have long been decided during the storyboarding stage much earlier in the process of creating an episode.
Shiro attacks Keith. In the process, the show reveals Shiro’s arm to be able to generate an energy sword, which, unless I’m mistaken, has never happened before.
The teludav continues to be a problem. Pidge does something and everything’s fine.
She says she had copied the code from Shiro’s arm and used it to create a virus that “could terminate all its command prompts in case something like this ever happened.” This makes me severely dislike Pidge. She knew this malicious code existed in Shiro’s arm. She’s known it for some time. She recognized it for being malicious code enough that she used that code to create a virus to use as a countermeasure “in case something like this ever happened.” She knew all along that there was a potential security issue, and she never told anyone? She didn’t think everyone else should know this? She didn’t respect Shiro enough to let him know the danger he carried in his arm? This is not how friends behave. This is not how teammates behave.
I already have a lot of reasons to dislike Pidge. She’s shortsighted, prone to irrational thought in dire moments. She’s selfish. And now, she’s incompetent. She does not care about any of these people, least of all Shiro. And she never faces any consequences of her behavior. None of them should trust her after this. She should have to go through a huge story arc to regain their trust, to earn forgiveness. But she never does. If she had told them what she found, they could have worked to make sure this would never happen. Rather than construct a virus to serve as a countermeasure, they could have worked to keep this from ever happening.
But part of this is the fault of the show’s writing. The easiest thing would have been to just not have any of this part that takes place here on the Castle Ship in the show. But if this idea that Shiro’s arm contained malicious code, and Pidge knew about it and said nothing, then her saying nothing is contrived so that the show can preserve its desired plot twist. With Pidge having discovered the code, it was incumbent upon her to tell everyone, and that would mean that they would have found a way to keep it from happening, which could reasonably have led to them learning about Shiro being a clone who was capable of being controlled by Haggar.
And it’s not like these characters didn’t have multiple opportunities to further investigate what has been going on with Shiro. Pidge, for example, saw Shiro grab his head and cry out in pain in 6x01 “Omega Shield.” She never followed up on that. It’s not normal for someone to react in pain like Shiro did in that episode, but no one cared about him enough to try to figure out what was wrong. Lance knew something weird happened with Shiro in 5x03 “Postmortem,” and he only halfway followed up on that. Shiro then confided in Lance that he didn’t “feel like himself.” Lance never followed up on that. Friends don’t react like this, so I have to conclude that Keith is the only one to ever consider Shiro a friend.
Keith and Shiro continue to fight. The music is really good.
“That’s the Keith I remember,” the clone taunts Keith. Aside from being just generic villainous taunting, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I can’t tell if Keith’s eyes turn a little cat-like for a moment, or if the animation is just odd. They’re fighting on a different level of the facility where there are more stasis pods. There must be hundreds of clones here.
I also wonder how much thought went into the visual design of this location. The facility looks totally open to space, and yet they are breathing air. That would require the facility to be surrounded by an invisible forcefield to hold the air in. Probably in the same way the show’s visual design gives us so many impossible planet shapes without any thought to what they’re designing, so too, this facility was designed for a visual effect without any thought about how this facility would actually function.
Keith says, “Shiro, I know you’re in there. You made a promise once. You told me you’d never give up on me.” This is some good voice acting for Keith.
Shiro responds, “And I should have abandoned you, just like your parents did. They saw that you were broken, worthless. I should have seen it too.” I guess this is supposed to come from the clone’s psychic programming warping whatever memories it has from Shiro of Keith confiding in him about feeling abandoned by his parents? I mean, I’m trying to apply logistics and realism to this dialog when I imagine that JDS only wrote it because he wanted the clone to say something hurtful to Keith, and since this is what Keith has wrestled with, that’s what he used.
“Neither of us are leaving,” Shiro says, and the facility starts to light up all over the place. Either Shiro’s arm has some wireless communication system built into it and he just triggered the facility, or that’s contrived timing. But what this glowing is supposed to mean, I don’t know, because the facility isn’t destroyed by some self-destruct, it’s destroyed by Shiro.
The prostetic starts glowing. Shiro starts screaming in pain and falls to his knees. The prosthetic starts blasting a beam of energy that slices into the facility. (Did Pidge miss, ignore, or keep to herself the ability for the arm to do this too?)
The music is really awesome again.
Keith maneuvers to avoid Shiro’s energy blasts and to make it to a stable part of the facility, ending up exhausted and on his back. Shiro eventually comes to stand over Keith. He swings his energy sword at Keith, who blocks it with his blade.
More good voice acting for Keith: “Shiro, please. You’re my brother. I love you.” It gets through, past the programming controlling the clone, just for a bit.
“Just let go, Keith. You don’t have to fight anymore.” I’m not sure what I make of this line. “By now, the team’s already gone. I saw to it myself.” This line sounds like cliché villain dialog.
Keith’s eyes turn yellow for a moment. I know Keith is half-Galra, but since when is he a shapeshifter?
Keith’s blade grows, and he chops off Shiro’s prosthetic. There’s something revealed here that I’m going to eventually write a separate post about during my commentaries next season.
Shiro falls to his knees. the facility starts to explode and break apart. The music is again amazing.
Shiro is unconscious, Keith barely holding onto him and barely holding onto his blade, which is wedged into the facility. Keith experiences some flashbacks, just silent shots that we’ll see more from in 7x01 “A Little Adventure.”
The structure of the facility breaks loose, and they plummet down toward the planet. Keith closes his eyes, seemingly resigned to dying.
There’s a flashback scene. We see Keith younger at the Galaxy Garrison, beat up. Keith thinks he should just be sent back to the orphanage he lived at prior to joining the Garrison. Shiro tells him, “Keith, you can do this. I will never give up on you. More importantly, you can’t give up on yourself.” Keith, falling down to the planet, opens his eyes, and the episode ends.
I’m not adverse to the premise of the clone plotline. As much as it angers me that Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wanted to kill Shiro, and as much as they didn’t want to bring him back, I’m not bothered by the idea of doing so through a clone story. The problem is that the story is not told well. There is never an explanation for why so many clones were created. There is never any fallout for this plot. No one grieves for the clone, no one even recognizes the clone as being a person. They instantly mentally discard him, and that’s a direct manifestation of how the EPs and writers only ever see the clone as a gimmick, not as a character. Once Shiro’s soul is put in the clone’s body, without any of the characters wrestling with the idea of taking the body away from the soul of the clone (more manifestation of the plot resolving because the EPs and writers only saw the clone as a gimmick), Shiro himself never wrestles with the reality that he’s in another person’s body.
I love the music of this episode. The episode clearly wants to be viewed as deeply emotional, but I watch it now and feel like I’m having to add to the episode to produce my emotional reaction, not that the episode is fully drawing that reaction out of me.
