I agree with you about the game show. It had a lot of potential as an episode 😔 I hated how much bullying Lance got back then😭
sameee like i have so many thoughts about that ep because i really really really loved the concept
like it would be a cool mini break from constant action yk? a lil fun ep
it would also show that they're really a powerful team and show that by working together
but that all went to shit because they could not communicate
let's take the sections of the ep:
first it's keith's turn: they are all shit no one can really work together so they can figure out what he's drawing and we have lance guessing everything really really wrong
pictionary is a family game, lance comes from a huge family, he cannot be this bad at pictionary
then we got lance's turn which is basically the show being like haha look at him he's dumb. he was never dumb, he always had very good ideas and was always shown being a good strategist (see return to balmera for example)
not a single team voltron member stood up for him they all seemed to agree with bob
i understand this was their attempt at comedy but it was way too over the top and just simply irritating
then he is shown communicating with bii boh bii thing only coran can do and i know the fandom agreed that that showed that lance was smart but yk what the show was trying to do?
they were trying to do the whole oh haha lance is communicating with the silly alien and he is succeeding wow! plot twist! he's smart in dumb ways!
then he gets in the acid thing and pidge attempts to save him in mini golf, and purposely fails which for some reason has them win?
that was a really dumb move of their considering they're supposed to be the smart one. you don't do a risky move like that when attempting to save a teammate from what you believe is death.
and then final round. when we're supposed to see the 'development' of the ep where they go from not working well together to being a team right?
well there are issues with this tho because
a. we never saw actual development and them gradually becoming a better team, they just were a bad team who left their teammates to be bullyed and a second later they loved each other. obviously we did not buy that
b. they are in season 7. they were supposed to be a great team by now. the whole oooh they were a bad team but now they're cool does not work here because they were supposed to be a good team already. they had just gotten a new black paladin again and they were suddenly cool? and then they weren't for most of this episode? it just didn't work well
what should have happened is either have an episode like this in the begining, like season 2 if you're gonna do the they developed as a team during the game trope because then it's believable. if you really want it in season 7 then have them at least be somewhat a team because that? was terrible
Keith, Cosmo, Kolivan, and Krolia are at the Kral Zera. Keith is being broadcast across the Galra Empire and he gives a speech, “With the return of Planet Daibazaal, the Galra Empire is at a crossroads. For too long, the people of this extraordinary civilization have been manipulated by a dictatorship that placed a misguided sense of self-preservation above all else. It was a tragic, unfortunate series of events that led us down this dark, never-ending path of power and greed. But now, we, the citizens of the Galra Empire have an opportunity to make right all of the injustices set into motion by our forefathers. Because of the sacrifice made by Princess Allura, we have been given a second chance to come together in rebuilding the Galra Empire by joining the Galactic Coalition and ushering in a new era of peace across the universe.” Everyone cheers for him. It’s interesting that he says “we, the citizens of the Galra Empire.” I guess Keith now considers himself to be not just half-Galra but to be part of the Empire.
Cut to the Atlas, who’s hosting some contentious diplomatic talks. Hunk serves them dinner. It’s a satisfying end for Hunk’s character to combine cooking and diplomacy. Hunk is thankful of the diversity of his cooking crew, which includes Shay, Sal from Vrepit Sal’s, Sal’s chef’s hat-looking android (I think it’s an android), and Romelle. Hunk says, “Princess Allura, the very person we celebrate on this day, once said, we are always stronger together. If the people of your planets work together, so much more can be achieved.” Shiro stands up from the table and concurs with Hunk, “Honor her by following in her footsteps and walking the path towards peace.”
Cut to Pidge is working with Matt to build an android. Matt does not look like Matt. I know his hair cut, but his body, the shape of his face does not quite look like him to me. Colleen comes in to tell Pidge that Sam has the teludav is ready for her. Pidge tells Matt to wait until she gets back before initializing the android, who she’s named Chip, because she wants “to witness Chip’s first moments of consciousness” and she places Matt’s old glasses on the android.
Pidge in the Green Lion takes off and travels through a wormhole.
Cut to Altea. Merla tells Coran, “Construction is on course.” They’re building a new castle. He asks her, “How are preparations for tonight’s feast coming? It has to be perfect. It will be the first celebration of Allura, the first of many to come.” Coran is excited. And this just makes me think about how Allura died and we did not get a moment for her to say goodbye to Coran. Coran, who has been there for her more than anyone else, really. The show didn’t even write her to tell the others to say anything to Coran on her behalf. We get nothing to see how Coran reacted to learning that Allura died. Given how Coran has been depicted in this show, it must have broken his heart.
Up the hill, in front of a large statue of Allura, Lance is talking to a bunch of kids. “And had Princess Allura not seen that there was still good left in Honerva, we most likely would not be sitting here today. She grew to understand that there is good in everyone.” I have such a huge problem with this portrayal of Honerva being good. It just feels so offensive. One kid asks, “Even Emperor Zarkon?” and Lance slightly laughs, “Yes, even Emperor Zarkon.” The kid asks, “Do you miss her?” and Lance says, “I do. Very much. But, I’m reminded of her everywhere I look. So in that way, she’s still very much with me. With all of us, actually.”
Another kid asks him what he does now that he doesn’t pilot the Red Lion. Why does he not pilot the Red Lion? I don’t understand the logic behind this show saying that Voltron is no longer needed. Lance answers, “Well, I help run a small farm back on my home planet with my family. It’s a simple life, just the way I like it.” I am torn on this. It does make some sense in that Lance has a history of missing his family, so I could see him wanting to spend a lot of time with them now that he can. I can even understand that he would have something to do with farming since we got that one scene a long time ago wherein Lance milked Kaltenecker. Lance being a farmer does feel like it doesn’t match the core of his character that drove him to want to be a fighter pilot and proud to be a sharpshooter though. I think for me this works because I can still imagine that Lance only working as a farmer with his family for a while, a few years maybe, before he gets an urge to go once more into the universe.
Pidge arrives on Altea.
Coran, Shiro, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and Keith have a meal together that night in front of Allura’s statue. Pidge says that Earth has become a hub for alien activity since her father has built a teludav there. What powers it, I wonder. Wormholes were created throughout this show specifically by Allura. So where does the power come from? Shiro is pleased because the teludav will help him in his responsibilities as captain of the Atlas. Hunk comments about his use of food with diplomacy and says, “This diplomacy thing isn’t as easy as Allura made it look.” (I don’t actually think she made it look easy, but okay.) Keith says, “But then she did make everything look easy.”
Shiro asks Keith how things are on Daibazaal. Keith says there’s going to be an election for a Galra representative for the Galactic Coalition. Lance says, “Let me guess, they asked you to be their leader and you said no?” Keith says, “Yeah, pretty much.” The Galra, with their long history and culture that rigidly promotes Galra-supremacism, wanted Keith to be their leader? That does not feel in any way realistic. Lance sarcastically responds, “Classic Keith.” I guess Lance’s comment is supposed to reflect back to when Keith left the group in 4x01 “Code of Honor.” It doesn’t quite feel like an accurate response. In that episode, they weren’t exactly asking Keith to lead them, they were criticizing him for being away on intelligence gathering missions with the Blades while the Paladins were having parades. Whatever.
Coran says, “Allura would be proud of your decision Keith. I think she knew that you would always be the key to the Galra’s future.” But Keith’s decision was to not accept the position of leadership of the Galra, so what is Coran talking about? Also, there is nothing in this show where Allura expresses a thought that Keith would one day be key to the Galra’s future. I mean, Lance in 7x04 “The Fued!” said that he thought that Keith was “the future,” but I can’t think of anything from Allura where she thought Keith would make Galra culture less aggressive.
Coran continues, “Just around this table I see so many lives touched by her actions. For some of us, she was a diplomat, a teacher, a leader, and a friend. But to those of us around this table, she will always be family.” He stands, holds his glass forth, and toasts, “To Allura!” I really do like Coran. The others join him in the toast.
Later that night, Lance wakes to a light through his window and the sound of a Lion roaring. He goes outside and is followed by the others. Blue is sitting on the ground while the other Lions are floating in the air. There’s a sequence of juxtapositions of Lions and Paladins. Yellow and Hunk. Green and Pidge. Black and Shiro and Keith. Red and Blue with Lance. Lance’s Altean facial marks glow. Why do they glow?
The Lions blast off. The camera zooms out from Altea.
Then cut to two photographs of the group at Allura’s statue. One from this night’s dinner and one from some undefined time later.
Then there’s the infamous epilogue. In one of their interviews earlier this year, JDS and LM said that the epilogue was originally going to be full of silly things about background characters, not about the main characters. If that’s true, then as bothersome as the epilogue is because of the last-minute change to have Shiro marry Curtis, at least it resulted in them changing the epilogue to focus on the show’s main characters.
An image of Pidge, Matt, and members of the Galaxy Garrison in a hangar with the caption, “The Holt family established the next generation of Legendary Defenders.”
An image of Hunk with a large cooking staff of many different species with the caption, “Hunk created a culinary empire, bringing the universe together, one meal at a time.”
An image of Lance on the farm with Altean juniberry flowers and the caption, “Lance continued to spread Allrua’s message while he surrounded himself with the things he loved.”
An image of Kolivan giving a meeting with the caption, “Kolivan and Krolia became the Galra representatives to the Galactic Coalition.”
An image of Keith in a Blade of Marmora outfit with Axca, Zethrid, and Ezor helping him hand out supplies with the caption, “Keith helped to transition The Blade of Marmora to a humanitarian relief organization.”
An image of Shiro and Curtis in white tuxes with friends behind them with the caption, “Shiro found his happiness and finally left the battle behind.” About this caption, I feel I need details. If this means that Shiro retired specifically from military combat service, then I’m okay with that. Shiro wasn’t ever specifically trying to be a soldier. There might have been some military components to his being a member of the Galaxy Garrison, but his goals were always about conducting space exploration missions. So, if his having “left the battle behind” means he’s returned to space exploration specifically and not military leadership, then I’m okay with that. If his having “left the battle behind” is a reference to him being able to feel restored and whole in dealing with PTSD, I can be okay with that too. If this all means that Shiro gave up everything that had made him happy in the past for this relationship, which is what Adam had wanted him to do, then I’m not okay with that.
The image frame opens up, Curtis moves in and he and Shiro kiss while everyone cheers for them. I’m going to admit, watching it now is making me cry. As a gay man from the United States, I actually never thought that I would ever be able to get married. I’m not married, but maybe one day. But that I am legally able to do so now means a lot to me. I am older than this show’s target audience, but I still love animated storytelling. Had I been able to see a male character have a same-sex relationship like this when I was young, it would have had a huge effect on me. Growing up, I was not taught that it was okay to be gay. I was taught the precise opposite, actually. It was really hard for me. I got to the point of suicide over it. So, I think a lot about queer youth, and I don’t want any of them to go through what I went through. This show has had serious flaws in how poorly it has depicted Shiro being gay. But I really hope that if this show could have any positive effect that it has helped and continues to help kids who are like I was, help them feel that it’s okay for them to be who they are.
After the credits, there’s a shot of the Lions flying toward a nebula that looks like Allura.
Thank you to everyone who has read, liked, reblogged, commented, and talked with me about this show while I’ve done this series of commentaries. I really appreciate it.
As much as this show frustrates me, I do have some level of sadness that this is the last episode, and this specific series of commentaries is at an end. My emotions that this is the end of the show feels more pronounced now than it did the first time I watched this season. There is a sense of loss to it, and some of that sense of loss comes from knowing that with this being the last episode, there is no possibility that the show will course-correct and produce a story that I started the series hoping for. In some ways, I feel like I’m mourning for the wasted potential that this series had.
Every story has flaws. Sometimes what works for one viewer doesn’t work for another. Even if there are aspects of a story that don’t quite work for me, if in the end, I feel fulfilled, then I’m good. Endings should have a sense of fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment. I wonder if the executive producers, the writers, the producers, the executives at DreamWorks, and others involved in this series’s production felt accomplished at the end, or if they just felt like it was finally finished and were past ready to move on.
This ending was not fulfilling to me, and that makes me sad.
The episode starts where the last one ended: Voltron and Honerva staring each other down, the Alteans in the nearby city in a panic. Honerva, with her gaze focused on Voltron, has her mecha aim and fire a hand blast at the nearby Altean city. The blast nearly hits until at the last second something blocks the blast. At first, I thought it was a leg of Voltron, but after a couple different shots, I realized it was Voltron’s sword. Voltron throwing its sword to block the blast leaves Voltron distracted, and Honerva tackles Voltron, sending them both sliding along the ground into the city.
Honerva’s mech extends a blade from its wrist and tries to slam down on Voltron, but Voltron takes flight and maneuvers out from under Honerva and back to its sword. They’re then suddenly out in a nearby field without any of the city in the background and start a sword fight. Honerva uses her tail to trip Voltron, which falls backward onto the ground. She then combines her wing-blades around her wrist-sword to create a spinning purple drill and she dives down into Voltron, sending the ground in the area crumbling. We then get a shot from far above the surface of the planet so that we can see their location relative to the city. My guess is the backgrounds during the more standard shots of the fight lack any inclusion of the city in the background as a way to not have to spend time and energy keeping track of precisely where the city is in relation to where they are in the field.
The drill doesn’t really damage Voltron though. Allura screams, pushes her controls forward, and an energy blast shoots out of Voltron’s eyes. Since when has Allura as a leg of Voltron been able to produce an energy blast attack out of the eyes (the head) of Voltron? The blast knocks Honerva back, and the wing-blades spin off and stab into the ground. Voltron then punches Honerva through a mountain.
Voltron’s sword, having been left stuck in the ground again, now has rockets, and it jets to Voltron’s hand. (Why did Voltron need to stop at the sword a bit earlier and pick it up on the way out of the city if the sword can come to Voltron on its own?) Voltron tries to stab Honerva in the head, but she easily moves to the side and the blow misses her. Allura yells, “Now, let’s finish this,” but then someone else yells “incoming,” and Voltron is hit by a wing-blade. The blade actually penetrates Voltron in the back (and stays stuck in Voltron). Then two more wing-blades stab Voltron, this time in either side of the abdomen. Voltron falls over face-first.
The other wing-blades swirl up into the sky and look like they stab the sky. It’s the wings piercing the fabric of space, and I actually kind of like the way it looks. Purple electricity arcs between the wing-blades to form a circle. The wing-blades piercing Voltron start to glow, a big bolt of purple electricity arcs between Voltron and the circle in the sky. Honerva stands up and flies up into the sky, into the circle. The way this is depicted, it’s so much clearer that she’s drawing energy out of Voltron to create a rift in space than it was the time she must have been doing similarly last episode. (Last episode, this similar moment didn’t show anything making a new rift, it was just spontaneously there.)
Shiro says, “We can’t let this happen. She can’t get away,” the Paladins grunt, Voltron pulls the wing-blades out of itself. There are no holes in Voltron in the three places it had been stabbed.
I do still actually like the visual design of this Voltron-Atlas combination.
Voltron blasts off and soars into the rift, everything goes white, and then Voltron is floating in space, but it’s not regular space. There are what looks like stars in the far distance, but much closer, there are wispy, glowing tendrils, like roots that look like they originate from a central, brighter source.
Lance asks, “What is this place,” and Allura says, “I’m not sure.” Then Honerva’s voice booms, “This is the beginning—” her mecha smashes into Voltron, sending it careening away “—and the end.” Honerva blasts one of the roots with an energy beam and the root explodes. The root withers away, up to the central source, and then that center and every root ignites in orangish, fiery energy.
Allura glows yellow and sounds like she’s in pain and there are flashes of different aliens living their normal lives. The light around Allura fades. Team Voltron concludes that “these strands” “are the only remaining realities” and that “this place is the source of time, of space, of” “everything.”
I know almost everything in this show’s magic system is made up and re-made in the individual moment as each moment of the series has been written, and doing that makes it impossible to argue against anything happening if it can be explained as because-magic, but it does kind of bother me that Honerva can destroy a reality now, not by tearing a rift out of or into a reality but just by shooting a strand representing it with a standard blaster beam.
Honerva sounds ridiculous when she, while gasping for air like she’s out of breath, says, “I—will end this—once—and for all!” Like I mentioned last commentary, I don’t find villains who end with cliché scorched-earth action to be compelling. This series has put a lot of time and effort into trying – and I do think the creative team was genuinely trying – to add complexity to Honerva’s character. I think the attempt was almost always clumsy, quick, and underdeveloped, but for a while they were trying to portray Honerva as not a flat antagonist. But to have her character be this spiteful person who is trying to destroy literally all of existence, every reality erases any attempt this show made to complicate her character. I know the creative team would think that saying that she’s being irrational is a defense of having written her character to act this way, but it’s not.
Let’s say I accept – and I don’t, but I’m going to pretend – that Honerva was a good person before she was poisoned by quintessence and before she was possessed by the rift entity. And then that poison and that possession turned her into the abusive, torturing, genocidal dictator that she’s been for 10,000 years. That I accept the premise that the poisoning and possession took maternal instinct away from her. That she is genuinely upset that Lotor hated her. How is her current behavior a logical, writing choice to have her react like this to a little boy from another reality whose mother died not instantly accepting her as his mother? One little boy that she knows is not her actual son says “no” to her, and she decides to destroy all of existence? Like, even if this one Lotor says no, she doesn’t want to try additional other Lotors in other realities first?
This just feels like an escalation that the writing team thinks works because what can be bigger than destroying all of existence, destroying every reality? And the end of a story has to be about the biggest thing ever, the most cataclysmic conflict possible, right?
Honerva projects energy blasts in opposite directions and spins, destroying several reality strands. Then she throws her arms wide and 18 energy beams blast outward with her at the center. (Her mecha can generate 18 blasts simultaneously? Why hasn’t she used that before? That’s a significant weapon capacity.)
While she and the others grunt with each destruction, Allura says, “She’s destroying – all realities!” This level of destruction is so over-the-top that it doesn’t have any emotional weight. This is supposed to be the climax of the story, and I don’t feel invested in the plot whatsoever in part because of its scale. Another part that keeps me from feeling invested is that this is Honerva’s story. It’s not Shiro’s. It’s not Allura’s. It’s not Keith’s or Lance’s or Pidge’s or Hunk’s. Nothing about any of the six of them has anything to do with what’s happening. They’re all just sort of here. Even with this show in the past having used Honerva/Haggar as a foil for Allura, within this specific plot, that is not being used. Maybe one could say that it comes back later in the episode when Allura’s making the decision to give up her life in order to reboot all of existence, that the story finally brings Allura’s personal story back into this and her as a “life-giver” parallels Honerva as the destroyer of all realities. But that is not now. What’s happening in the plot now isn’t connected to Allura’s story. This decision to focus the story entirely on Honerva makes the show’s protagonists all be reactive. Everything that’s happening, they’re just reacting to, none of them are active, none of them are trying to achieve anything. And no, stop-the-bad-guys does not count as a protagonist goal because it is baseline-level of simplistic.
I think we’re seeing more different species of aliens in this destruction of realities sequence than we’ve seen throughout the entire rest of the show combined. The destruction is now near total, with only one strand coming from the center remaining. Honerva has decided to pause and stare at Voltron for a moment before destroying the last reality strand. For some reason, rather than use her blaster to destroy this last one, Honerva decides to use her sword. Why? There is nothing to explain why Honerva decides to use a sword instead of a blaster. Allura quietly begs no one in particular, “No, please.” Honerva flies toward the last strand, but before she can strike, Voltron slams into her. This is the sole reason why Honerva switched to using a sword when she had been using her blasters: To allow for Voltron to hit her and knock her aside. In other words, it’s contrived. Why was Allura written to react as if there was nothing that Team Voltron could do and then have Voltron swoop in to attack Honerva? There’s a dissonance between Allura’s reaction beat and Voltron then attacking.
Voltron and Honerva fly around in a sword fight. Honerva stabs Voltron, and Pidge shifts her controls and Voltron grows knuckle claws and punches Honerva. Honerva drives Voltron backward, then Keith uses Voltron’s wings to push back. Honerva stabs Voltron with her tail and purple lightning sparks. Honerva’s enegines push harder, and she drives Voltron back more.
“If Honerva destroys this final strand, all of existence will end with it!” Allura says. That feels like it’s stating the obvious and thus unnecessary dialog. Keith thrusts his controls forward, all of Team Voltron screams, and Voltron produces larger wings. These wings are absolutely ridiculous. They are like 50 times larger than Voltron itself. Voltron pushes Honerva back.
Rather than push Honerva away from the strand, Voltron, without any characters saying anything about doing this, pushes Honerva into the light that was central to all the strands. What made them make this decision? It really bothers me that this show writes characters to behave like this. Characters aren’t supposed to just spontaneously do things. The writers are moving to the next set-piece and need to move the characters to there, so they just had the characters move to there.
I don’t understand how the show is conceptualizing this story-world’s cosmology. Where is this place from which Honerva is destroying realities? Does this location itself not count as reality? How could Honerva and Voltron exist here, how could they move around through space here if it isn’t itself a reality? I would imagine the creative team for the show would say something like Honerva and Voltron are outside of reality, but you can’t go outside of universes unless there is something there to go into. It kind of makes the fault of using the word “realities” instead of “universes” noticeable. The latter of those words could work, but the former doesn’t.
Inside, Honerva is kneeling on an endless horizon of white and slight purple above and below her. It looks a bit like the horizons that was the Black Lion’s consciousness until 8x10 “Knights of Light Part 2” had those environments be located inside Honerva’s mind where the Paladins fought the spirits of the old Paladins. I would have much rather had those environments remain the consciousnesses of the Lions, and then to have this white version be the consciousness of the White Lion. But this location is just some miscellaneous elsewhere. I also wouldn’t have minded if this white field location looked like the space Allura was shown in when the White Lion jumped into her in 5x06 “White Lion.”
Imagine if the show had kept Shiro as Black Paladin, kept Keith with Red, kept Lance with Blue, had Allura in command of the Atlas. Imagine if the show got to this environment as part of Voltron’s fight with Honerva. Imagine if here, the conversation that occurs here came to a point where here Allura actively proclaimed herself, I am the Paladin of the White Lion! That would have been so freaking cool!
Honerva turns around, sees silhouettes of the Paladins and Shiro. (I’m still curious what’s up with the rest of the crew of the Atlas. Are they still within the combined Voltron-Atlas mecha? Or were they magically thrown out into space and killed? Or were they magically erased from existence? If they’re still inside Voltron-Atlas, why aren’t they appearing here too? From the moment Voltron and the Atlas combined, the crew was simply ignored, and I guess the creative team on the show hoped the audience would ignore their absence too.)
Honerva asks, “Where are we?” and Allura answers, “The connected consciousness of all existence.” Is this different that the connected consciousness the Paladins used to get into Honerva’s mind in 8x09 “Knights of Light Part 1?” This connected consciousness definitely looks different than that collected consciousness.
Honerva continues to be annoying. “You think you’re safe here? Soon, all will cease to exist.” Hunk replies, “You have to stop this. All these worlds, all these realities, they deserve to live.” What does he mean “all these?” We were just told a moment ago that there’s only one single reality left. Also, why is he framing this as Honerva has to stop doing what she’s doing? Why aren’t the Paladins actively stopping her? This comes back to what I said earlier that this plot only has the Paladins reacting to things. This is being framed as Honerva has to stop herself, not that the Paladins have to stop her. The locus of action for this plot has been placed exclusively within Honerva’s character, not in any of the protagonists. That makes this story weak.
Honerva says, “Those realities are flawed and weak, living out the same pathetic cycle of war and pain.” This philosophy is woefully uninteresting. It feels so weird hearing Honerva say this since she’s been such a huge inflictor of war and pain. She has no validity to speak in objection to war and pain. I can’t take her character seriously because she’s been written to say stuff like this that so diametrically opposite to how she has behaved. Also, if she’s condemning all realties for being flawed, does that mean that she thinks that she is flawless?
A scene of conversation like this at a point of climax in a story should produce a sense of enlightenment, but this doesn’t. It doesn’t work because Honerva’s comments and perspective aren’t, pardon the phrase given this story, grounded in reality.
How did Honerva’s psychology progress from an alternate reality version of her son won’t accept her as his long-dead mother to her having a problem with war and pain? There’s a lot of steps missing between those two mentalities.
Allura responds, “There is beauty in their flaws.” I have actively tried to avoid comparing this show to other stories, but I can’t talk about this line without doing so. This line instantly made me think of a far better-written conversation between a protagonist and the antagonist in a specific Marvel film. That Marvel scene felt poignant, but Allura saying it here does not. For this to have emotional weight coming from Allura, her struggling with her personal flaws would have had to be a much larger, prominent part of her character arc. I want to say that this statement would be better coming from Lance, but then the show gave up on doing anything with Lance and his feeling deeply insecure.
Allura goes on about the war killing her family and her whole planet but that she now has a new family. I wish it felt like they were a family. She also says she’s gained “a purpose stronger than any I could have imagined.” What purpose is that? Beyond stop-the-Galra, which turned into stop-Honerva, what has Allura expressed as feeling like her purpose is? Allura and whatever goals she might have or could have had haven’t been the driving force behind this story for a long time. Narratively, Allura’s purpose has been to wait around until the show got this last episode so that she can die and magically reboot all realities.
Pidge says, “Humans began very flawed. There were wars, hate, but with each mistake they learned and grew.” Is Pidge saying that humans in this story have ceased being “very flawed?”
Shiro picks up from Pidge, saying, “And now we reach out to other worlds, to pass on those same lessons and spread them across the entire universe, like your people once did.” I don’t like this idea that seems built into this dialog that humanity has moved beyond being flawed and that humanity can now function as some kind of lord handing out enlightenment to other worlds. This is a very arrogant perspective.
Hunk continues, “And with every new world touched, the message grows.”
Keith then says, “Every world. Every reality. We wouldn’t exist without the others.” Uh, yes we would. Keith personally might not exist without another world since he’s half-human and half-Galra, but humans here on Earth exist without needing other life on some other planet elsewhere to also exist. The ideal that every person has value is great, but Keith’s statement seems like it goes too far.
Lance says, “Our differences are what make us stronger.” I can agree with that.
Honerva responds, “You think your words mean anything to me? I’ve lived multiple lifetimes, and all of them filled with pain and loss.” Since when? Honerva has lived 10,000 years, that is not the same thing as having “lived multiple lifetimes.” Where did this suddenly come from? She mentioned it last episode too. When talking to alternate-Zarkon, she said, “I’ve spent lifetimes trying to get back.” I don’t if this is just really badly written, like the writers have conflated living one life for 10,000 years with living multiple lifetimes, or is this something left over from the season being revised (not even necessarily the re-edit that some fans think happened, but just something fundamentally changing in the story in the middle of production)?
In 8x06 “Genesis” where Honerva is at the two-hand pedestal and is in the process of bringing Sincline back, we see different realities temporarily mixing with the main reality. There’s a moment where Honerva’s appearance changes several times. At first, I had thought she was shapeshifting back and forth between Honerva and Haggar, but then I wondered if we were seeing multiple different Honervas all doing the same thing the main Honerva was doing at their respective Oriandes. Thinking of that again now that Honerva has twice referenced living multiple lifetimes, I wonder if maybe that was originally what was happening in that moment in Genesis. Maybe an earlier version of this season had Honervas from different realities combining into one Honerva, and these two comments that she’s lived multiple lifetimes are artifacts in the dialog of an earlier version of the season’s story.
If there isn’t some kind of explanation involving a story revised while the season was well into production, then her making this comment about having lived “multiple lifetimes” makes no sense.
She continues, and her voice really bothers me here: “If I cannot experience the simple joys of life, why should anyone else!?” There is a flatness to the sound of her voice. The story and dialog seem to want to evoke sympathy for Honerva, but she’s not behaving like a sympathetic person. The expectation placed on the audience by the narrative and the content the narrative is providing to the audience do not match. This statement she just made is incredibly selfish. We’re supposed to feel sympathy for someone who thinks like this?
I’ve personally had more than a few problems in life, but I don’t resent other people for having better lives than I have. I want people to have better lives than I have specifically because of how much pain I’ve felt in my life.
This show wants us to feel sympathy for Honerva right now, but the method they’ve used to try to evoke that sympathy – having her say, “If I cannot experience the simple joys of life, why should anyone else!?” – demonstrates that Honerva herself is not capable of feeling sympathy for others.
And is this perspective Honerva’s speaking from right now supposed to be her still behaving under the influence of quintessence poisoning? Is she still being influenced by the rift entity? Or is this the real Honerva? It feels like the real Honerva to me. This selfishness she’s speaking with here feels exactly like how Honerva pre-quintessence poisoning in 3x07 “The Legend Begins” felt to me. This is why it’s absurd that the show absolves her abuse, torture, and genocide by layering the quintessence poisoning and rift entity possession excuses on top of her character. This is what’s underneath all those excuses: Honerva is not a good person. Her abusive, torturing, genocidal behavior comes, not from her having been poisoned, not from having been possessed, but from her own inability to feel sympathy for others.
Allura touches Honerva’s head similarly to how she touched Zarkon’s head in 8x10 “Knights of Light Part 2.” With Zarkon, she was angry and showed him all the horrible things he did in his life since he couldn’t remember them. Now, Allura is calm and makes Honerva see her happy memories.
Allura says, “There was a time when you loved more than just your family.” This show has not shown Honerva having ever loved her family, nor has it shown her having ever loved anything. Having a couple of still images here or in “Knights of Light Part 2” does not actually show us Honerva having once been a happy, normal person. These still images that are shown now as Allura’s speaking are a total retcon of Honerva’s character. Throwing this content, these images, these claims in now right at the end of the show is contrary to how this character has been portrayed for eight seasons. This just feels like the show lying to me.
Allura continues, “A time when your fascination with how vast the universe is gave way to your desire to help and uplift others.” Honerva has never once in this show been shown to have acted in any way that uplifted anyone else. It is so offensive to me that this episode literally just showed Honerva being incredibly selfish at the core of her being, and now the show is telling me that she used to be a person who “help[ed] and uplift[ed] others.” This claim that she used to be a good person is not supported by literally any of the content of her in this show. Allura just saying it, having a couple of still images right now, is not this show having established Honerva to have once been a good person. Again, I feel like this show is lying to me right now.
A video-memory of Allura and Lotor together appears in the mist of the two of them in the pyramid on Oriande in 5x06 “White Lion.” Honerva says, “You tried to help him.” I guess she did until she turned against him because someone told her that he had been drawing quintessence from Alteans. Even after Allura threw Lotor across the room in rejection of him, before Voltron and Lotor started fighting in 6x07 “Defender of All Universes,” Lotor still tried to get Allura to not reject him. But she did, and they fought, and the Paladins let him die in the quintessence field.
Honerva continues, “He was happy.” Lotor did seem happy with Allura. But this show told us through the story between 6x04 “The Colony” and “Defender of All Universes” and in conversation with Axca at the end of 7x03 “The Way Forward” that all these happy moments Lotor had with Allura was just Lotor lying and manipulating her.
This is so infuriating! The show introduced Lotor as someone who was abused by his parents, who was mired in the toxicity of his culture, who was subject to ridicule for wanting to treat people better. The show then did its surprise-twist to say that Lotor had been lying the entire time and that he really was “evil” all along. That surprise-twist was a giant retcon of his character. And now, the show is re-retconning him back to having been genuinely happy when he was with Allura in season five? I mean, I would like to have most of season six not exist either, but this show made that season. And they made that season specifically to defile everything about Lotor that had come before. And now the show is doing this. When Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wrote this final episode, did they think that we had forgotten what they did to Lotor in season six?
Honerva says, “He deserved better, better than I could give.” He deserved better than this show’s executive producers and writers gave him for sure. Also, I don’t care about Honerva wishing she could have been a better mother to him now. I have seen this woman literally inflict so much pain on her son that he passed out. I don’t care if she feels bad about it now. I hate that this show is presenting the supposed sadness of an abusive parent reflecting on having abused their child as if their feeling sad about having been a horrible person is important. I care about the wellbeing of the abused, not about the wellbeing of the abuser.
Allura says, “Lotor may have been misguided, but ultimately, he wanted to preserve life.” Where was this understanding from Allura about Lotor trying to preserve life when Lotor was literally telling her this to her face? She rejected his explanations for his behavior. She repeatedly said what he told her was all a lie. The show itself did everything it could to reinforce the conclusion that Lotor was “evil” and that he had been manipulating everyone the whole time.
It infuriates me.
Allura says, “Honor your son. Help me change this.” Honerva responds, “I’m sorry, but the damage is done.” Yeah, the damage that the EPs and writers of this show have done is done. JDS and LM might have written this ending to undo the destruction of all realities, but they cannot undo the damage they’ve caused as executive producers of this series.
Allura thinks for a moment and says, “I can change the quintessence within your vessel. Your son helped me learn how to transform it from a destructive force into a life-giving force.” Here at the end of this show, I still do not understand quintessence. We have been told time and again that quintessence is life energy. That it is inherently life energy. That it is energy produced by living things. That’s how the Galra, that’s how Honerva has gained quintessence, by taking it from living things. So, how is it according to Allura here that quintessence is a “destructive force” that she through Altean alchemy can turn into a “life-giving force?” It has always been a life-giving force. Why did this show have so much trouble keeping something this simple and this fundamental to the story straight? Why is this story even now fundamentally contradicting itself?
Allura says, “But I cannot do it alone,” and holds out her hand to Honerva. Honerva says, “But that would require—” and her voice falls away, and Allura says, “I know the risks.” How/why does Honerva seemingly jump to the conclusion that what Allura is talking about will result in their both dying? Characters throughout this series have jumped to a lot of conclusions, but why does Honerva jump to this conclusion?
Also, if Allura’s plan of action is to generate a lot of “life-giving force” what about this requires her to die? The logic of this resolution makes literally zero sense. Allura’s not about to die because that’s the inevitable outcome of this story. She’s about to die because Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wanted to kill her. It is that simple. JDS and LM wanted to kill Allura, and they made it happen even though there is literally no reason in this story for it to happen.
I know JDS and LM have said that this is a story about sacrifice, but if it is, this seems like it comes out of a perspective of people who have never had to sacrifice anything.
And let me talk about how offensive it is for this show to do this. Allura is a female character of color in an action-adventure animated kids show. This does not happen often, if at all. So, it was amazing to have a female character of color in this show. It made the show seem, for a while at least, like the people working on this show cared about inclusiveness and diversity. They’ve showed us before that they really didn’t with how they treated Shiro’s character. And now, they’re showing again that they didn’t with how they’re killing Allura.
Allura is a female character of color. She’s a character who can use magic. And here, the story kills her to magically solve everyone’s problems. In this series, Allura had been a princess, a genocide survivor, a leader, and a friend. But here, in the end, the show reduces her into nothing more than a magical negress stereotype. If you think that the magical negro/negress stereotype is not a thing, then do some research. There is a long, long history of this stereotype used in black characters in stories. It is a deeply racist stereotype. Often when a character of color is used as a magical negro/negress, the writer thinks that they’re actually doing a good thing by writing them positively: Look at how awesome the character is, they have magical powers! But they’re written to have those magical powers to solve other characters’ problems, so that makes the magical negro/negress character subordinate to the other characters. Voltron Legendary Defender takes its one main character who is a female character of color and kills her to magically fix everything.
Part of me wants to characterize the blame for this as the result of VLD having been written primarily by a bunch of white men. But I feel like that’s just giving them an excuse. I am a white man, but I have at least a bit of understanding about why the show killing Allura to magically solve everyone’s problem is offensive.
Given how this show handled Shiro being Asian and gay and having a disability, given how this show had Lance’s being Cuban pretty much in name-only, given how Hunk’s ethnicity is never really defined at all in the show, given how the show had Zarkon speaking with praise about Keith in saying Keith’s leadership comes from Keith being half-Galra, I just don’t think most of the people who were in control of this show’s story, especially Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, bothered to educate themselves about different constituencies of diversity. I think they were/are oblivious to how hurtful so much of what they wrote into this story has been.
JDS and LM wanted a story with a theme about sacrifice, they’ve said. They seem to think that that means characters must die. I think that they thought they were making it better when, in one of the interviews earlier this year, said that they considered killing all the main characters here at the end of the show. That just sort of emphasizes that they specifically chose Allura to kill to magically fix everything for everyone else in the story.
I don’t think the solution was to kill any of the main characters. Allure here told Honerva that she’s going to use energy that’s in Honerva’s mecha to do this. The show could totally have had Allura have to use, and thus sacrifice, the Lions of Voltron to make this reboot happen. The EPs chose to kill Allura.
Honerva takes Allura’s hand and stands up, and Allura then turns to the others and says, “I’m afraid this is where we part ways.” She tells the others that this “is [her] purpose.” Ugh!
Hunk tells her, “There is no Voltron without you,” and she replies, “Voltron isn’t needed anymore.” How is that accurate? The universe is now going to be an unrealistic peaceful utopia for everyone now?
Allura says, “The rest of the work is up to the people, and they’ll have you to guide them Hunk,” and she hugs him as he cries.
She hugs Pidge and says, “Remain curious and fearless.”
As much as I have a lot of criticism for what’s happening, I do still feel the emotion of it. And Shiro talking to Allura breaks me. I’m actually crying now:
Shiro says, “Most of them won’t know the sacrifice you made so they could live.” Allura says, “And they’ll never need to. Your selflessness taught me that.” They hug. Allura says, “Thank you.” Shiro says, “You never have to thank me for anything.”
Allura moves down the line, “Keith, I cannot thank you enough for all you’ve given me.” Keith says, “Allura, when you accepted me, it helped me to accept myself. Thank you.” Allura hugs him and says, “There is greatness in your heart and in your actions.”
Then she comes to Lance. He says, “No, Allura, there has to be another way.” She says, “There is no other way. This is all we have.” He says, “You’re too important to the cause. You’re too important to me.” She says, “I’ll always be with you Lance. And I’ll always love you.” She kisses him and Altean facial markings appear on his face.
What in the world does Lance getting Altean facial markings mean? There is never an explanation for them.
The light in this long scene has been white, but now it turns yellow. The light in the distance beams like a sun. Allura and Honerva look toward it. In the light stand Alfor, Lotor, Zarkon, Blaytz, Gyrgan, and Trigel. Allura and Honerva walk into the light.
Allura turns back to look at the Paladins one last time before heading on into the light.
(I hate that a story as hurtful and offensive as this is still making me cry.)
The light fades and Voltron and Honerva’s mecha remain. Light shrinks down into a point until everything goes dark then light explodes outward. The strands of existences spring back into existence.
The Lions and the Atlas are separated. Keith quietly asks, “Is this?” and Pidge confirms, “Yeah, it’s our reality.” The cockpit of the Blue Lion is empty.
Hunk sees a planet, “I don’t remember that planet being there before.” Lance looks up, “It’s Altea.”
Because of how long this commentary is, I decided to post it as two parts. Here’s a link to the first part.
Picking up halfway through the episode, Voltron moves through the second rift.
Coran, Sam, and Slav are on the pyramid. Coran touches the two pillars of the pedestal. Only Allura and Honerva have ever been able to operate pedestals like this, but somehow, Coran can now use the pedestal too. Slav says, “If we hit [the rift] with enough energy, it should seal.”
Coran asks, “Are the Alteans in place.” I have no idea who actually answers Coran. Some ethereal, disembodied female voice says, “They’re set.” Is the Balmera talking to Coran? This is so absurd that I am literally laughing out loud.
Voltron arrives in another reality and there is yet another rift there. So, Pidge’s comment a minute ago that “the rift must lead directly to the reality Honerva’s been looking for” is now conclusively untrue. The show gives literally no explanation for why Honerva tore through all these other realities. I have never seen a story treat alternate realities like rooms of a building where you have to go through multiple rooms to get to the room you want to be in. This show treating alternate realities this way makes the whole premise simplistic and silly.
Allura gives us some sophomoric foreshadowing: “I fear [Honerva] has started a chain reaction that can never be undone.” Voltron flies through the next new rift.
The Balmeras send their energy into the pyramid, which redirects it to the rift, and Coran says, “It’s working […] holding the rift together.” Coran’s earlier stated goal wasn’t to hold the rift together but to keep the universe from collapsing. The presence of the rift was supposedly what would cause the universe to collapse, but now he’s trying to hold the rift together? Wouldn’t they want the rift to cease being open because it being open is what’s causing the universe to collapse? Also, the other realities Honerva has tore through are deteriorating rapidly, so why isn’t this main universe in a worse state of collapse than the other realities we’ve now seen since the rift has been tearing through reality here longer than the rifts in the other realities have existed?
Voltron makes it into the next reality, and Honerva’s mecha is floating there, waiting for them. She hits them with a wing-blade. Keith yells, “Countermeasures,” but I don’t know what he means by that because Voltron doesn’t do anything in response to him saying it. Then there’s a dark bubble around Voltron that Honerva created, but I don’t know what precisely it does beyond make Keith briefly grunt because she stops creating the bubble so that she can tuck her mecha into a ball and roll herself into Voltron, sending Voltron slamming into the ground. She then throws a ball of wispy black energy at Voltron. Keith yells, “Form sword” and volleys the ball back at her like they’re playing tennis. Honerva dodges out of the way. There’s a really, really large arch or some kind of structure above them that the ball hits and it explodes.
The combined form of Voltron and the Atlas does actually look cool.
Sam says, “Our current power level isn’t enough to maintain the rift.” I don’t understand why they’re holding the rift open if the existence of the rift is the problem. It feels like something is missing. Again, Coran coming here was supposed to be him working a plan to solve the collapse of the universe. But now that he’s here, his goal is holding open the rift.
Now, Coran says, “Then we’ll hold it as long as we can. Every tick gives Voltron a chance.” Something is definitely missing, or this episode is made out of different stories spliced together. What their goals are now are not the goals the episode had them speak about and act toward earlier. This is the first time that anyone has said anything about the goal being holding the rift open for Voltron. Coran’s actions are supposed to be about closing the rift, not keeping it open.
In warps several Galra ships. Krolia, who would have no idea Coran is leading this effort, calls out to him, asking what they can do to help. Remember the big war meeting at the beginning of last episode? Remember what Krolia said she was going to do? She specifically said that she was going to go get a zaiforge cannon to use in the fight against Honerva. Guess what the show has forgotten about: the zaiforge cannon. Just like the weapons’ upgrade and the needed Balmeran crystal to power it, the zaiforge cannon is now completely forgotten.
Coran tells her that they need more energy. How can Galra ships generate enough energy above what nine Balmera can? Coran says that they’re trying to “prevent the rift from expanding further.” But just a few seconds ago, they were trying to hold the rift open, not keep it from expanding. Sam had said that they didn’t have enough power “to maintain the rift” now they’re back to trying to “prevent the rift from expanding.”
This episode cannot make up its mind what is actually happening. What are these characters trying to do?
Krolia orders the Galra fleet to shoot their ion cannons at the pyramids. So, no zaiforge cannon.
Honerva flies up in the sky, spreads her wing-blades, and the tips of the wings shoot many energy blasts at Voltron. The multitude of new weapons and attacks being used in this episode is overwhelming. It makes me want to give up trying to follow the combat because there’s always going to be some new, random thing that they can do that has no set-up. Voltron again slams into the ground.
Voltron swooshes away from where Honerva’s blasts are targeted and then blasts at her in return with Voltron’s chest. They don’t hit. Honerva hits Voltron with another ball of black energy and then slams Voltron into the ground with her tail. She pins Voltron down with a couple of wing-blades and then draws energy out of Voltron.
This reality starts to disappear starting around the horizon and moving upward through the sky toward a rift in the sky that has not been there until right now. If Honerva had made it to this reality but ran out of energy and thus had to drain Voltron and use that energy to create another rift, then maybe that would explain why she was just waiting here to fight Voltron. But, Honerva is not shown creating this new rift. So, either this new rift comes out of nowhere without her having to create it, or the rift has existed the whole time but somehow was never shown and she had no reason to wait here to attack Voltron.
Honerva moves up through the rift. Voltron remains on the ground. Voltron is given time to pretend that this is the end of the heroes, the villain’s won, Voltron can’t move, the Paladins themselves are weak, and this reality has nearly disappeared. Nearly everyone – Lance, Hunk, Shiro, Allura, and Pidge – makes a statement of failure or doom, but then Keith gives the rallying speech. Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wanted Keith to be the main character, and here he is being the main character. It will always just emphasize for me how much Shiro and Allura were the leaders of this team in seasons one and two, and then both of them were demoted so that Keith could ascend to be the main character. There is nothing about Keith’s story arc though that makes this plot and this battle have anything to do with him. Plot and character in this series is, or at least has become, completely disconnected from each other.
The big rallying speech should produce an uplifting feeling in the audience, but it actually makes me feel even more exhausted.
Voltron gets up, its wings open up, and Keith orders “fire boosters” and they fly upward.
Meanwhile in the main reality. The Galra and the Balmeras have run out of energy. The pyramid starts exploding. Sam says they can’t “contain the rift,” so their goal in this moment is not to hold the rift open. Coran’s plan fails. Regardless of if his goal was to contain the rift or to keep the rift open, they’re not now able to do either. So, what was the point in all this time spent doing whatever they were doing if it’s achieved nothing? There’s a bit explosion and everything goes white, and the main reality seems to have been destroyed.
Voltron is flying toward the rift in the reality they’re in. Reality is disappearing faster than Voltron is moving, so there is no way at the depicted rate of movement that Voltron could get through the rift before reality is gone. Also, what exactly is Voltron supposed to be in as it flies toward the rift if the only part of this reality that’s remaining is the area of the rift itself? How is there still space between Voltron and the rift for Voltron to be flying through?
Everything goes black before Voltron can go through the rift.
Cut to somewhere in space. Honerva is calmly, quietly flying to somewhere. She is eventually shown to be heading toward this reality’s Daibazaal. How did she select this reality? Why didn’t she just directly go from the main reality into this reality. Why does this reality look stable even though she would have had to tear a rift into this reality to be able to get in. If the existence of a rift causes a reality to disintegrate, then why isn’t this one disintegrating? Also, why is she going to Daibazaal? She had specifically gone to the location where Altea had been in the main reality to tear out of reality into the others there. All the other realities she’s been to, she’s been at Altea. But now, in the reality she wants to go to, she’s not at Altea. If she’s been headed to a version of Daibazaal this whole time, then why didn’t she go to where Daibazaal had been in the main reality? Why hasn’t she been at other Daibazaals as she went from one reality to the next?
There is nearly no logic to anything that has happened in this episode.
On the surface of Daibazaal, Zarkon and some other Galra are sparring. Honerva arrives. She teleports out of her mecha and onto the ground outside and walks toward Zarkon. Zarkon points his sword at her and tells her to identify herself.
Honerva says, “You don’t recognize me?” Uh, she’s wearing a weird outfit that covers up her chin, jaw, forehead, and part of her nose, and she’s some distance away from him, so I’m not surprised that it’s hard for him to tell who she is. “I’ve searched beyond the stars to be here, to be with you—” and she is shown walking out of a shadow cast by the setting sun being directly behind her, obscuring her face in the glare, so there’s even more reason for him to not recognize her, making her having said “you don’t recognize me” seem silly. She finishes, “—and to be with my son.”
Zarkon now recognizes her as Honerva. I don’t know if she is delusional here and thinks this is her Zarkon and that this reality will have her Lotor, or if she’s lying to them in hoping that they’ll think that she’s their Honerva.
Cut to inside a space ship. They’re heading to Altea. It just seems so weird to have presented this whole episode like Honerva was trying to get to alternate Alteas, only to then, when she finally gets to the reality that she’s chosen, go to Daibazaal, but then now they’re going to Altea. It makes this episode feel like it’s running around in circles. Zarkon says, “I vowed to raise our son as you would have wanted. He excels in his Altean studies. Lotor has his mother’s intellect.” Of course, this is meant to contrast with how the main Lotor was subject to brutal Galra studies, as seen in 8x02 “Shadows.” It just reminds me of how Lotor was abused by his parents.
On Altea, Alfor and his wife welcome Honerva. Allura steps forward to speak, and Honerva glares at her like she wants to attack her. If an alternate reality has an alternate Zarkon and an alternate Lotor, and an alternate Alfor, why would she be surprised that there’s an alternate Allura? Allura escorts Honerva to Lotor. Here, Lotor is a little kid. He runs toward Honerva but stops short. Honerva asks him to come to her. Lotor says, “No.” Zarkon tries to tell Lotor that his mother has returned, but Lotor says, “She’s not my mother.”
I really like little Lotor. He’s something I can say that I like about this episode.
Honerva tries to convince him that “her love for [him] is that of a mother for her child.” She then turns to the same old Honerva that she’s always been, that she was long before she was poisoned by quintessence and possessed by a rift entity.
Speaking of rift entities, notice how the one in Allura is now completely ignored.
Honerva grows a bit angry, “Come to me!” Lotor stares her down and firmly says, “She is not my mother.” Zarkon tells him, “Don’t speak like that.” It’s amazing that this Zarkon just trusts a woman who shows up and says she’s his long-lost wife. In a well written story (I’m thinking of a specific one in particular that I love), if a long-lost wife showed up out of nowhere, the husband would insist on a lot of tests to figure out who she is and what happened to her. Zarkon does nothing like that because this show doesn’t have people behave rationally.
Honerva says, “Please,” and holds out her hand. Lotor rejects her, “No! My mother is dead, and you cannot replace her.” Zarkon tries to say that Lotor is just overwhelmed. Honerva glares at Lotor. Little Lotor is clearly scared since he’s holding onto Zarkon’s leg for protection. Zarkon kind of pleads with Honerva and says, “If we had some time.”
That’s not acceptable to Honerva. I guess she thought this would be instant satisfaction for some reason. This show has acted like she looked through a lot of different realities to find her perfect one, but this one doesn’t work for her. Did she only just look no further than to find a reality in which that reality’s Honerva was dead? This falling apart so quickly makes it feel like she didn’t bother really looking at all.
She says, “Time? You speak to me of time? I’ve spent lifetimes trying to get back.” What is she talking about? She hasn’t spent lifetimes trying to get here. At most, she’s spent four years. How am I supposed to take her character seriously when her dialog and actions are written in such defiance of what the show has already showed? Just because this Honerva has lived for 10,000 years doesn’t mean she’s spent that time “trying to get back.”
Also, if she didn’t mind having an alternate reality version of Zarkon and Lotor, then she shouldn’t have minded having a clone of them either. So, why did she decide on the much more difficult tearing through other realities until she got here instead of the comparatively much simpler cloning method?
She continues, “Countless worlds have fallen in the wake of my efforts to return to you. And this is how you welcome me.” She creates a ball of black energy in her hand. Maybe this is supposed to be some kind of depiction of her getting what she wants only to have it not be what she wants, but this doesn’t work like that. For that kind of development to happen in a story, the thing that the character wants has to actually be acquired. She hasn’t actually gotten what she came here for. That kind of development is born out of showing how a character has changed internally between when they set the goal for themselves and when they achieved it. But Honerva hasn’t changed. She’s still the same, mean, brutal dictator that she’s always been.
“My own child, my own husband question who I am. I have sacrificed more than you will ever know.” No, she has not! The way she’s speaking right now is exactly how an abusive spouse and/or parent talks. (Trust me, I know.) It is so frustrating that this episode is reaffirming how abusive Honerva is only to come to the end next episode and absolve her of her behavior.
There’s a sound. Surprise!twist Voltron made it through the rift. So, the depiction of the rift closing and everything going black before they could go through was all just really transparent fakery. It makes that fake moment of them not getting through absurd because of course the conflict isn’t finished yet. Voltron’s arrival does not have a sense of a new surge toward victory for the protagonists. It’s more that it leaves me wondering what took them so long to get here.
Honerva’s eyes go wide. “No! It cannot be!” Why not? They’ve followed you through other realities before this, why is their coming through one more so impossible? I mean, I guess she thought she left them absolutely powerless in the previous reality, but really. They were chasing her before now, it shouldn’t seem weird that the chase isn’t finished.
Also, given the other realities disintegrated quickly, why hasn’t this reality disintegrated? It’s not even showing any signs of disintegration. Of course, the entire premise of realities disintegrating because someone tore into them is contrived and fluctuates depending on whatever the creative team wants to be happening at any given moment.
Zarkon yells at Honerva, “You brought this abomination upon us!?” Why would he think Voltron is an abomination? He yells some more, “You are not the Empress! You are not my wife!” He yells for the guards.
Honerva scowls, “If there is no place in this universe for me, then there will be no universe at all!” She teleports away. That’s cliché. Whatever complexity the writers thought they have been adding to Honerva’s character, this scorched-earth simplicity erases all of that. She’s back to being nothing but the uninteresting 80s cartoon villain she was as Haggar in the beginning of the series. She hasn’t actually developed as a character whatsoever.
Speaking of character, notice how this episode is concluding without any connectivity of this series’ plot connecting to any of the main characters. Literally everything in this plot now is driven by Honerva and her desires. None of the main characters have any desires beyond stop-the-villain. This is a huge part of why this show has fallen apart. The executive producers and the writers absolutely lost sight of the show’s main characters. This story has become the Honerva Show. She is not compelling enough to carry the show, especially since she’s not the protagonist.
Everyone in the Altean city seems to be freaking out over Voltron landing. There’s a twinkle in the sky above Voltron. It’s Honerva’s mecha, which lands near Voltron. She can apparently call her mecha to her from millions of miles away. She teleports into her seat in her mecha. There’s an awkward split-screen stare-down between Honerva on one side and the Paladins and Shiro on the other. The lighting of the various images used for Team Voltron and the different facial expressions don’t create a sense of unity of emotion among the six of them. It again looks like they just took six random pieces of animation and used it here. The episode ends.
This episode is a disaster. It is so hard to follow what’s happening, why it’s happening, what characters are trying to do. Characters’ goals fluctuate from one scene to the next. The entire inner story of the episode is given to Honerva, making the actual protagonists kind of superfluous. This episode could have the protagonists in this episode be literally anyone, and the story would not change.
Given how much of a mess this episode is, I can totally see how people think there has to be a late-production re-edit. I definitely get a feeling that this episode is made out of parts. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a sign that there was a concentrated re-edit effort. But there are definitely times in this episode where it feels like two separate versions of a script or multiple different episodes are being stitched together. There is a severe dissonance in how things some dialog doesn’t match other dialog, how events have a discontinuity with other events.
Something went wrong with this episode’s production.
I have written more for this episode than I have for any episode before. Because of that, I’m going to post this commentary in two parts. This show has had some truly messy episodes, episodes where things happen that contradict previous things, episodes where characters behave oddly or out of character, episodes where things are presented as set-up but never resolved, episodes where trying to follow what’s happening is hard because of bad logistics. If you’re familiar with this series and/or you’ve read my previous commentaries, you know this. This episode is all those things but to an even greater degree.
This episode baffles me, not just in how it uses its characters, not just in the frequent, confusing shifts in plot, but it baffles me that it was made like this. This episode feels like a school essay, written hastily and turned in at the last minute, hoping that it makes sense. Of course, it is possible to do an okay job creating like that, but more likely the work won’t be as successful as it could have been. This episode is not a success.
The only thing I can say that I like about this episode is there is some good music in it, especially the arrival of the Balmeras and the combining of Voltron and the Atlas. Though that bit of story, like most of the episode, makes little-to-no sense, it has an atmospheric quality to it that I did enjoy. It’s weird to have to ignore what’s happening in order to enjoy what’s happening.
EDIT: I wanted to add (as I’m working on revisions to the second half of this episode’s commentary and just revisited the moment) that I really like young alternate reality Lotor’s clear recognition that Honerva is not his mother and his rejection of her. Aside from killing Narti and what this show did to Lotor between 6x04 “The Colony” and 6x07 “Defender of All Universes,” I have really enjoyed his character. Even being a little kid from an alternate reality, Lotor is still an interesting character.
The episode starts right where the last one ended. Honerva, with her mecha and Sincline combined, is doing her thing. The Atlas and the Balmera are there. The Lions are floating without power. The Paladins seem a bit baffled about what Honerva is doing, so Pidge comments, “That’s how she’s getting in,” and Keith responds, “What do you mean?” Maybe this was written this way to catch up any viewers who didn’t watch the previous episode or who totally forgot what happened last episode? It doesn’t really make sense that the Paladins would be baffled about what Honerva’s doing right now. Allura is heading toward her Lion, as she’s the only Paladin not yet in the field. Allura continues the recap that Honerva combined her mecha with Sincline.
Coran says, “Our universe is collapsing. Just like the day we lost the Castle of Lions. Those wings are causing the very fabric of our reality to disintegrate.” I don’t remember anyone in 6x07 “Defender of All Universes” saying that the rifts then were causing the universe to specifically collapse. Also, I’m still amazed by how willingly the creative team is ignoring 3x04 “Hole in the Sky.” Again, in that episode, we learn that the same comet that Sincline is made from had opened a tear from this reality through the rift between realities and into another reality, and that it had been holding that tear in reality open for 10,000 years. The universe didn’t collapse during that time. I know the show tried to handwave that last episode by having Pidge say that the comet was natural but Sincline is not, but it still seems like it’s more that this plot is ignoring the way the show had established the comet ore to work.
The Yellow Lion comes back online to give Hunk narrative time to get Coran, Romelle, and Tova to the Atlas.
Honerva starts talking, “My loyal warriors. Merla proved disloyal. She turned her back on our mission and the future of Altea.” So, Merla’s name is spoken in this series. And surprise-twist, Merla isn’t dead, despite having been blown up last episode. This show’s fake character deaths are so tiresome. So many characters are made to look like they die but don’t that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. At this point, it’s just blatantly manipulative. The other two Robeast Alteans, bolstered by Honerva’s speech, fly toward the Atlas. Pidge says, “Those Robeasts are headed our way,” but the logistics of the episode are already falling apart. Pidge and the Green Lion are shown, based on her visual perspective out of her cockpit, to be close to Honerva’s mecha. The Robeasts were shown blasting off toward the Atlas. They’re not heading toward Pidge.
The other Lions come online. Keith asks Allura if she can get to her Lion. She’s been heading to Blue for a good while now. I don’t think it’s taken a Paladin this long to get to their Lion since the extended fat-people-are-slow joke about Hunk in 1x04 “Some Assembly Required.” Shiro says that the Atlas has the Lions covered.
Coran interjects, “What about the collapsing universe?” I mean, what else does he think Voltron and the Atlas can do other than try to fight Honerva? Keith says, “Coran, we’re counting on you to figure something out.” Since the story eventually has the universe collapse and be destroyed, setting up the idea that Coran can actually do anything that benefits the plot here is just empty set-up. I guess they’re trying to give Coran something to do, but none of it really has any narrative relevance.
Keith says, “Paladins, do everything you can to keep the Robeasts distracted. Let’s give the Atlas a shot.” Literally 20 seconds ago, Shiro said, “The Atlas has you covered.” Now, it’s Keith saying that they’re covering for the Atlas. The writing on this show can’t even stay consistent for 20 seconds. The EPs and the writers don’t seem to have actually been able to decide who is doing what in this plot.
Also, Hunk is shown to have dropped Coran, Romelle, and Tova off on the Atlas and has now returned to be with Keith, Lance, and Pidge. Hunk had enough time to start out with the other Paladins near Honerva, jet to the Atlas, drop off Coran and crew, and return to the other Paladins. But in that same time, Allura has not been able to get from the wormhole generator on the Atlas to the Blue Lion in its hangar.
Shiro orders the Atlas to prepare for transformation. The Lions keep fighting the Robeasts. Keith has Black produce its wings spontaneously to fly past a Robeast, and he then declares he “is going in to stop Honerva.” At this point, isn’t Keith supposed to have developed out of his “lone wolf” attitude? So, what does he think he can do by himself? Also, what happened to Keith’s order to the other Paladins that they were going to distract the Robeasts so that the Atlas could shoot Honerva?
It’s impossible to follow what’s happening because things change without any regard to what happened before. First Shiro says that the Atlas is going to provide cover for Voltron, then Keith orders the Paladins to cover for the Atlas, now Keith is ignoring his previous order and ignoring the Atlas, which is supposed to be setting up to shoot Honerva, all so Keith can fly in by himself and “stop Honerva.” The narrative is so uncontrolled right now that it’s easy to see why people argue that there’s been a major, late-production edit of episodes, especially this one. This is just an absolute mess.
Honerva looks at the incoming Black Lion, says the word “Still,” a sigil appears around the Black Lion, and it stops. Since when can Honerva control the Lions remotely? This is a massive power spike for her character. It’s excessive. If she can do this, then the Lions shouldn’t be a threat whatsoever to her. It also actually offends me. Why can she do this? Zarkon had been a previous Paladin of the Black Lion who still had influence over Black, but Honerva has no bond, so how is she able to do this? This has long been a problem with her character, even from the beginning, and it’s rooted in the creative team refusing to establish definitive rules about how the magic of this story works. Honerva just suddenly does things because the creative team just has her do them. They seem to think, Honerva’s really powerful, is enough of an explanation. It’s not. It feels cheap and lazy, or at least woefully underdeveloped.
With the Black Lion “still,” and Honerva about to smash it with a fist, Atlas, which changed into mecha form offscreen, slams into Honerva at the last second. On the Atlas, Iverson over shipwide communication orders “MFE pilots, report to your hangars, standby for launch.” Even without announcing it, the MFE pilots should already be on standby by sheer nature of the fact that the ship has been in battle for a long time already. Iverson having to order them to the hangar and to be on standby is not how serving in the military during combat would work. Also, Shiro had already ordered the MFEs to standby prior to jumping into this battle last episode, so they should already be there. Iverson’s line seems like it was added to fill empty air/time, and it seems like it comes from someone who doesn’t have an understanding of how a military vessel like this would actually function.
Coran tells Romelle and Tova that he has an idea about how to stop the collapse of the universe. He says he’s going to get Slav and Sam and for Romelle and Tova to get the other Alteans. The Alteans were last seen unconscious after having been possessed by Honerva. We have no idea if they’re now conscious or still possessed, so we have no idea if they would even be able to help. We don’t learn of their status until they’re already on their way for this mission.
So, Allura never made it from the wormhole pedestal to the Blue Lion before Atlas changed. With Atlas now close enough to be in a fist fight with Honerva’s mecha, where is Allura and the Blue Lion? She doesn’t even have to travel the distance from where the Atlas was to where the Lions are because they’re all in the same spot now. This really feels like it’s totally contrived, done to justify not having the Lions form Voltron yet. It’s artificial.
Shiro screams, “Allura, now’s your chance!” That phrasing implies that she was waiting for something. What in the world was she waiting for?
The Robeasts continue to attack the Lions. Keith says, “We can’t get past them—” get past them to do what? I guess this is supposed to reference the eventual attempt at attacking the wing-blade mechanism, but the show hasn’t set that up as their ultimate target, so Keith’s comment is totally missing context. Also, there are two Robeasts currently fighting and now five Lions on the battlefield, surely if there’s some need to get past the Robeasts, at least one of the Lions should be able to do so. Moments like this fragment of dialog from Keith really do make this feel like it’s two completely different battles happening that have been edited together.
They form Voltron. The formation music has been changed. Forming Voltron now feels odd to me. I know that Voltron is more powerful than the Lions individually, but they’ve now gone from a five-on-two to a one-on-two situation. If the goal was to “get past them” per Keith’s statement, then they’ve made it easier for the two Robeasts to just focus fire on one target now.
Keith tells Pidge to use her special arm cannon and seemingly blows up one Robeast. She also blows up a lot of… rocks? There’s a lot of smaller explosions along the line of the cannon’s beam, so something has to be exploding, but the only thing there is rock. The blast might pulverize the rock, but why would the rock explode?
They make it look like the other Robeast is within literal inches of hitting Voltron with its scythe, but then cut to a different shot, and surprise-twist, Merla comes to Voltron’s defense and blocks the other Altean’s attack. Anyone remember when Honerva blew up Merla last episode? Merla was one of the few Colony Alteans to be actually given a voice in the show. She was depicted as one of the, if not the most zealous and devout of Honerva’s followers. Her turn against Honerva does not feel earned. It’s more of this show being written not to ensure that characters behave consistently, but written to produce surprise-twists. This form of writing causes characters to be hollow. I know she had a pivot point in the narrative: watching Honerva order the Alteans on the Atlas to give up their quintessence to fuel her action, but Merla has always been one of those who has been shown to believe in Honerva so much that they’d be willing to die for her. Like I said, it just doesn’t feel earned. Merla’s change is too sudden.
Also, what is up with this shot composition? This looks like they just flung together a bunch of unassociated images of various characters. Allura and Lance both only get half their face shown, but that’s more than Hunk gets. It looks like he’s only half a shoulder. The male Altean and Merla are supposed to be in direct combat, but their eyelines give an impression that they’re not currently directly against one another. There is no visual unity to this shot. No two characters in this shot look like they’re reacting to the same thing. It’s really, really weird.
Lance says, “Why is she helping us?” Did he miss last episode when Merla first shot and damaged one of the spires of the pyramid, producing a setback (though temporary, of course) for Honerva, and then later tried to blow up Honerva, resulting in Honerva blowing her up? Having Lance surprised that Merla’s turned when she’s done multiple things clearly showing that turn last episode makes it feel like Lance’s comment is out of place.
Merla says, “Do not harm them. They were misguided much like I was. We all were.” This is such unrealistic, simplistic writing. This feels like more of the show being unwilling to have consequences for characters’ actions (except for Lotor, the show didn’t mind killing him). It’s like the show is unwilling to have any of its villains (except Lotor) ultimately be a villain. And Merla’s massive psychological change that has occurred in just a few minutes is not even slightly realistic behavior. No one changes their entire world view this suddenly. Sure, people can undergo massive changes, but not as fast as Merla has done. This feels like a cheat. It shows how the creative team of this show think that having surprise plot twists is the height of storytelling.
So, Voltron’s sword, with one swipe, cuts through the Robeast in order to carve out the “pilot capsule” from the rest of the Robeast. That is absurd. We have seen one single Robeast hold off both Voltron and the Atlas in 7x13 “Lions’ Pride Part 2,” but now one Robeast is easily dispatched with a single swipe of Voltron’s regular-mode sword. I hate that I keep using the word “inconsistent,” but this really, really is.
Something nearly blasts Voltron with an energy beam attack. I am baffled by what this shot is showing us. Who fired? Voltron is currently slightly offscreen near the camera’s location just a bit off to the right side of the screen. The energy blast was not shown coming from Honerva, and she’s not in position to have shot the beam rightward toward near-camera and also have that beam destroy things near the pyramid on the left side of the shot. The Honerva/Atlas part of this shot to me honestly feels like it was added into the shot after all the rest of the animation of the shot was done. It’s really hard to see, but very close to the direct center of the shot, silhouetted by one of the explosions, is a Robeast that’s doing a bank turn and is swooping toward the camera, thus swooping toward where Voltron is. The shape of its movement has it originally heading from right to left, toward the whole Honerva/Atlas/pyramid morass on the left side of the screen. But it couldn’t have been what caused the blast that nearly hit Voltron either because that blast came from left to right, the complete opposite direction than the Robeast was moving. Maybe it’s all a fault in the logistics of the shot, but I don’t know who fired that beam and caused all these explosions.
Also, how is this Robeast still functioning? The episode was very dramatic about Pidge blowing this Robeast up. There have only been three Robeasts in this extended fight sequence across this episode and last. Merla has turned against Honerva. Pidge blew up one. And Voltron just carved the pilot out of the third. So, this has to be the one Pidge blew up. It is so incredibly frustrating that this show has done this so damn much. It’s all audience manipulation. We’re shown enemies being conclusively dealt with, but then surprise-twist, they’re still alive. You cannot believe any of the plot developments on this show because it’s only a matter of time before the show says that they didn’t actually happen despite showing them happening.
Honerva punches Atlas in the face. I literally laughed out loud. It’s not supposed to be funny. The voice acting of Honerva saying, “No!” right before throwing the punch is devoid of emotion. It just sounds flat. So that primed me to bust out a laugh when she literally punches Atlas in the face. This fist fight between the two of them is animated slow because the animators are trying to give a sense of size and weight to their mechas, but a punch that looks like slow-motion even though it’s real-time just feels weird.
Coran announces that he needs “an escort to Honerva’s pyramid structure.” At first, I thought: Atlas is directly fighting Honerva, there’s only one Robeast (even if it shouldn’t be functioning since Pidge/Voltron blew it up) that, between Voltron and Merla, they should be able to keep it occupied, so why would Coran need an escort? (And guess what, I’m right. Coran’s transit from the Atlas to the pyramid doesn’t have anything happen, so the escort is pointless.) Shiro even says, “What!? Right now!?” But then I realized, if they need an escort, there’s an easy option: the MFEs. They’re not doing anything, despite Iverson having said a long time ago for the pilots to “standby for launch.” They never did launch, despite Iverson’s line of dialog acting as if that launch was imminent.
Slav tells Shiro that “the sooner we go, the higher the probability that we can use the Atleans to stop the space-time rupture.” Coran, Slav, and Sam are in whatever room it is where Slav and Sam work. They’re not in a hangar boarding a transport, which when Coran first announced his need for an escort I expected him to be. Coran tells Shiro that his plan is “similar to how we stopped the rupture when Voltron entered the quintessence field.” This has to be just a clumsy way of Coran referencing the fight with Lotor in “Defender of All Universes.” The way it’s phrased, his specific words could be interpreted to mean that the means of stopping a rupture was by having Voltron enter the quintessence field. It’s just odd that he phrased it as “when Voltron entered the quintessence field” instead of something like, when Voltron defeated Lotor. Of course, the means of stopping that rupture was that they blew up a teludav. What Sam next describes sounds nothing like that.
Sam says, “Only this time, that superstructure will be the energy amplification conductor, and the Alteans will be the energy source.”
Can I tell you how much this infuriates me? Like, this is offensively infuriating. Remember how this show declared Lotor to be “evil” because he drew quintessence out of Alteans from the Colony? And how this narrative condemned Lotor to disgrace and death because he did that? Well now, the heroes want to use the Alteans as an energy source. The show doesn’t condemn the heroes for thinking of and using the Alteans as an energy source like it did when Lotor did the exact same thing. I doubt the executive producers, story editor, writers or anyone whatsoever working on this show realized how hypocritical this is. Through their storytelling, this show’s creative team absolutely condemned Lotor for using Alteans to produce energy. Just last episode, the show, at least temporarily, condemned Honerva for demanding the Alteans give up their quintessence to power her attempt to tear through reality to the point that her doing so was such a severe action that her own lieutenant, Merla, turned against her. But now, using the Alteans as a source of energy is okay because it’s the officially labeled heroes and not the officially labeled villains who’re the ones doing it. Nothing about this plan has established the idea that the Alteans are willing participants in this. We’re left to have to assume that once we see them in action. And the specifics of what the Alteans end up doing is different than what Coran, Sam, and Slav are planning here because the Alteans end up going to the Balmeras, not to the pyramid.
When the teludav was used to close the rupture, there was a huge explosion. This plan is being described here as being similar. So, wouldn’t there then be an explosion at the energy source the same way the teludav caused its explosion? So, won’t the people at the pyramid explode? (This gets even more complicated once this plan is in process because why they’re doing it keeps changing.)
Shiro concludes this discussion by telling Curtis, “Get a team in place.” I’m surprised that Shiro didn’t instantly think of ordering the MFEs to fly escort. Again, it’s not like the MFEs are doing anything.
The Robeast that had once been destroyed by Pidge’s cannon blast but then was surprise-twist okay continues to fight Voltron. Merla slams into it, and then Voltron swoops in and, like when they carved out the cockpit from the other Robeast, cuts this Robeast in half with Voltron’s sword in one single swing. How was Luca’s Robeast able to endure being attacked by both Voltron and Atlas in “Lions’ Pride Part 2” when twice here Voltron has been able to take two Robeasts out with a single swing of the sword?
So, the MFEs are part of the escort. I never knew that Curtis had the authority to order the MFEs on a mission.
Also, since Coran, Slav, and Sam are working on this plan now, and Hunk, of course, is part of Voltron, this reveals how absolutely pointless part of last episode was. Last episode, Hunk, Coran, Romelle, and Tova went to the Balmera to get a crystal to power an upgrade to Atlas’s weapons that Sam, Slav, and Pidge were putting together. But now, none of that is happening. Why did this show waste time last episode by having Team Coran go to the Balmera for a crystal and Team Sam working to design a weapons’ upgrade for the Atlas if the upgrade never happens? And Coran had Allura wormhole the Balmera to here because he couldn’t find a crystal big enough to power the weapon upgrade, though there was nothing said about what Coran was thinking they would do that required them to bring the Balmera here.
All of that – Coran, Hunk, Romelle, and Tova going to the Balmera, the introduction of new Balmerans who look nothing like the long-established Balmerans – Allura standing by at the wormhole generator specifically to bring Hunk and crew back and ultimately bringing the Balmera here, and thus Allura taking forever to get from the wormhole generator to the Blue Lion in this episode – Sam, Slav, and Pidge working together to engineer the Atlas weapons’ upgrade, and Pidge getting annoyed with Slav’s OCD – none of that means anything. It was all a giant waste of time.
Out of curiosity, I went through last episode and counted the time the episode spent on having characters talk about the weapons’ upgrade, going to the Balmera, actually going and coming, and Honerva’s attack on the Balmera. If I’ve done my math correctly:
Excluding Honerva’s attack on the Balmera, last episode spent 4 minutes 35 seconds on this weapons’ upgrade/Balmera crystal plot.
If you include Honerva’s attack on the Balmera, the time spent was 5 minutes 40 seconds.
These numbers are just last episode. These numbers do not include any time this episode spent recovering from that plan, like Hunk having to drop Coran and crew off on the Atlas or how much time Allura wasn’t in the Blue Lion because she was moving from the wormhole generator to her Lion (I don’t even know how one would actually calculate this latter element since it takes unusually long for her to make the trip).
The length of last episode between the end of the opening title sequence to the start of the end credits is 21 minutes 50 seconds.
Without Honerva’s attack on the Balmera included, last episode spent 1/5 of its time on the weapons’ upgrade/Balmera crystal plotline.
If you include Honerva’s attack on the Balmera, last episode spent 1/4 of its time on the plotline.
Spending one-fifth to one-quarter of an episode on a plot that is never resolved, never manifests, goes nowhere, means nothing, is totally forgotten, etc. is outrageous. It’s not like this is a plotline introduced seasons ago or even at the beginning of the season but then forgotten or abandoned much later. This is a plot that was introduced just last episode. Now, seven minutes (including the opening title sequence) into this episode, with Coran, Sam, and Slav now going to the pyramid to stop the universe from collapsing, the weapons’ upgrade plot is abandoned. Why spend so much screen-time last episode and have logistics ramifications this episode that had to be resolved for a plot that had no purpose in the narrative?
We finally see that the Alteans are conscious and seemingly unpossessed now. Team Coran is travelling to the pyramid on a rebel ship that includes Matt and his girlfriend.
Voltron swooshes, past Honerva and Atlas fighting, toward the rift. Keith has Hunk form Voltron’s shoulder cannon to shoot, I guess, the spinning wing-blade device. The cannon fires, everything goes black, and then there’s a huge explosion. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if the cannon caused the explosion or if the explosion was just the natural end of the cycle of the spinning wing-blades doing their thing. With no reason explained, Voltron and Atlas are now drifting without power, while Honerva’s mecha is positioned, fully functional, directly in front of the spinning wing-blades. Atlas is now between Voltron and Honerva, so given the size differential between Voltron and Atlas, the explosion had to send Voltron flying back far past where it had passed Atlas and Honerva fighting. How Honerva is now suddenly directly in front of the wing-blades is not explained either. It definitely feels like a transition is missing. The episode has totally just skipped over something again.
Honerva causes the wings-blades to stop spinning and to return to their wing-like position around her mecha. She flies into the rift, everything goes white, then the light from the rift fades. Then there’s a shot that places Voltron in between the Atlas and the rift, when the last we saw them, the Atlas was between Voltron and the rift. The logistics of this episode are a mess.
Keith says that they’re going in and orders the Atlas to follow him (because Keith is in command of everything, apparently). Coran reports that the Atlas can’t, and Pidge confirms, the Atlas isn’t made of transreality comet ore, so it can’t go through the rift. This makes me realize that the ship that the transreality comet was on in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky” was not made of the ore, but it somehow sat with one half of the ship in this reality and the other half of the ship in the other reality for 10,000 years. How was it able to transverse realities if it wasn’t made of the ore?
If Atlas can’t come with them, Keith says Voltron will go in alone. Slav says that won’t work because Voltron alone is unlikely to defeat Honerva.
Then, literally out of nowhere eight more Balmeras warp into the area. As others have pointed out, if Balmeras can warp like this (and they’ve never been shown to be able to do so before), then why did Allura have to remain in standby waiting to wormhole the Balmera to this location last episode?
Beyond the abandonment of the weapons’ upgrade plot making the trip to the Balmera last episode absolutely pointless, and thus negating a need for Allura to have been kept away from her Lion and out of the fight for so long, the fact that the Balmera can apparently travel at super speeds necessary to all warp in like this now is a second reason that Allura did not have to be written to be out of the fight. It makes you question: Why did they write Allura out of the fight then? Keeping her out of it is clearly artificially created since it has nothing to do with anything necessary to the narrative. Was it solely that the creative team for this show couldn’t think of what to have Voltron doing during this battle if Voltron was formed for all of it?
Also, how did these Balmeras know to come here now? Why didn’t they come earlier? This is all completely contrived. To deal with the Atlas not being made of comet ore, and thus (if you ignore the ship in “Hole in the Sky”) not able to enter the rift per the rule that only ships made of ore can go in, the show needed to do what Honerva had already done for herself. To balance Honerva’s creating a new, unified mecha of Sincline and her mecha, the show wanted to combine Voltron and the Atlas. But there is no mechanism for that to happen. Honerva used the energy she tore out of the Balmera to power her mecha combination. So, here come a bunch of Balmeras to power the Voltron-Atlas combination. There is no other reason for this to happen but to produce the combination. But because literally no characters planned for this, it happens out of nowhere. Again, the arrival of the Balmeras is completely contrived. No character has to do anything, and boom, magical power upgrade.
I actively try to avoid ever referring to anything in any story as being a deus ex machina. But the arrival of the Balmeras to cause Voltron and the Atlas to combine is a clear and blatant deus ex machina.
One of the Balmeras has Shay and her people on it. Bringing in this species, who’ve been exclusively presented as Balmerans the whole series until a new species was introduced last episode emphasizes the discrepancy or dissonance of there being two different species who’re called Balmeran.
Lance actually asks, “What called them here,” and Hunk answers, “Shay.” This is not an answer. This is a writing cheat. Just because the writing has Hunk say Shay did this does not explain how this situation came to be. How did Shay know to come here and to do so now? She had no ability to know that now is precisely when Voltron and the Atlas would need power to merge mechas. Even if Shay somehow magically knew to come, how did the other Balmeras know? This is absolutely absurd.
The music of this moment is really nice, at least. There is an atmospheric quality to the moment that, though it makes no sense, feels kind of cool.
Voltron and Atlas combine. Maybe I’m wrong for thinking this, but the design of the combined form totally looks like it has feminine high-heeled shoes/boots. That would make so much more sense if Allura, not Shiro, was the captain of the Atlas. The closest they can get to try to explain it away is that Allura is the pilot of the Blue Lion, which is one leg of Voltron, so somehow her being a leg causes her femininity to influence the feet of the combined mecha. That’s me really stretching to try to give them an explanation for the design aesthetic that works with what made it into the final product of this show.
Shiro orders Coran, “We need you to secure this area and find a way to suppress this rift.” Like with the weapons’ upgrade plot, why is the show spending time having Coran organize and act on a plan to stop the collapse of the universe when the show has everything he’s doing as part of that rendered meaningless because the universe ceases to exist?
Coran suddenly realizes “how to get the Altean energy into the structure.” It’s still really weird that they’re going to use the Alteans as energy generators while having condemned Lotor for his having done so. Anyway, he’s going to have the Alteans do something with the Balmerans. He, Sam, and Slav, meanwhile are going to the pyramid. None of this matters though because it doesn’t affect anything.
Voltron travels through the rift to an alternate Altea. Lance says, “It looks like this reality is crumbling, just like ours.” At least Hunk points out that it’s happening really quickly. Pidge tries to say that it’s specifically because the wing-blades are what opened the rift, but it just doesn’t work for me.
Pidge says, “The rift must lead directly to the reality that Honerva’s been looking for.” So, the reality that they’re in is not the reality that Honerva was looking for, so then why did Honerva tear into this specific reality then? She tore into this one and then tore out of it to another one. Why? She’s supposed to have already found the specific reality she wants to go to, so it’s not like she has to go into each one and spend time looking around to figure out if any particular reality will suit her desires.
There’s a shot of Shiro. He’s floating in the air in front of his control screens. His floating looks odd. There is no other bridge crew, so that makes me wonder, what happened to the rest of the crew of the Atlas during this merger with Voltron?
Shiro says, “Any reality that those wings bore through is falling apart.” Well, Pidge just said that the new rift (the one up in the sky, not the one behind them that they just came through) “must lead directly to the reality that Honerva’s been looking for.” So, that means only three realities should then be affected by Honerva. It seems clear that this line of dialog from Shiro is set up to negate what Pidge said. So, why did the writer not just revise Pidge’s line of dialog so that she wasn’t saying something that wasn’t true?
I just realized that I am only halfway through this episode.
(Here’s a link: This episode’s commentary continues in part 2.)
This episode title doesn’t seem to me to have any relevance to this episode. The only thing I can guess is that the uncharted regions are supposed to be the other realities that Honerva is looking into? The moment where she looks into other realities is so brief though. None of this episode actually takes place somewhere that no one has been though. It’s actually the opposite: most of this episode in a well-known location: where Altea used to be. If it’s not a reference to the brief moment of Honerva looking into other realities, then I have no idea why the episode is titled what it is.
I have plenty of problems with this episode, but at least it isn’t as confusing as the last two episodes.
The episode starts with Honerva, just like she did as her Haggar persona, standing around in the middle of a room. She gasps. I guess she is now awareness that the Paladins were in her mind? Meanwhile, on, the bridge of the pyramid – because the pyramid, ancient building on Oriande that has existed since the ancient Alteans, now has a bridge because it’s spontaneously been retconned to be a ship. I guess those ancient Alteans knew that one day Honerva was going to want to steal the pyramid from Oriande and made sure her staff could operate it as a ship to do so. In other words, this feels contrived to me. The pyramid is travelling through a wormhole.
Honerva tells Merla to take the pyramid to a certain location, saying that the Paladins knowing of their plans is providing them with an opportunity to do something. What this opportunity is is never elaborated on. Maybe it’s reference to Honerva’s eventually possessing the Colony Alteans on the Atlas to drain the Atlas’s crystal of its energy? That ultimately fails though, so if that was what Honerva’s statement was written to be referencing, then having her make this statement is a narrative dead end.
Allura is unconscious in the medical bay on the Atlas. Keith says that Honerva used the entity against Allura. I still think it’s all totally ridiculous. Honerva is supposed to be possessed by the entity and thus not to blame for the abuse, torture, and genocide she’s done over the past 10,000 years. That would require that the entity to be controlling her. But then, we have moments like this where the show says that Honerva can control the entity. If Honerva can control the entity, then she is in control, meaning, she is responsible for her actions. By writing Honerva to be able to control the entity, the show undermines its own absolution of Honerva’s behavior.
Shiro calls the Paladins to the bridge to tell them that, while they’ve been unable to detect Honerva since Oriande, they can now. Once again, they found her through detecting her creating a wormhole. So, does that mean that Honerva, the Colony Alteans still with her, and the pyramid have all been just hanging out in a wormhole the entire time? If not, then she/the pyramid would have to have entered the wormhole in order to be able to now exit the wormhole, so the Atlas should have been able to detect the entrance wormhole whenever the pyramid first entered it. Shiro says that the Atlas won’t be able to get to where they detected Honerva’s wormhole while Allura’s unconscious. By making Allura a Paladin instead of keeping her in an admiral-like position and have her in command of the Atlas the way she was in command of the Castle for the first two seasons, the show has had to deal with how the show had established that Allura is the source of power for the creation of wormholes. The method the show used to deal with it was mostly to ignore it whenever it was convenient to do so. The Atlas didn’t need Allura when it opened a wormhole at the end of 8x06 “Genesis,” for example. So, having it be a limitation that they need Allura now really does feel contrived.
Also, they have located Honerva due to her using a wormhole. Anyone remember how the narrative established the reason the Paladins were going into Honerva’s mind was to locate her because she hadn’t done anything to reveal her location? So, the reason the show gave for everything the Paladins did in the “Knights of Light” two-parter was a giant lie. The show could have just had the reason be wanting to know what Honerva’s plan was as justification for the Paladins doing what they did, but the show explicitly presented the reason as being finding Honerva’s location. The Paladins never learned anything about Honerva’s location while in her mind. Also, now trying to find her location being the reason for going into her mind is undermined by having them find Honerva by the old method of wormhole detection. I’m sure someone would argue, well, going into her mind caused her to reveal herself because she wants to lay a trap for Team Voltron. But what is that trap? There’s nothing about what happens in this episode that unfolds as a trap, everything that happens is just the next step in Honerva’s on-going plan. This is all really sloppy writing.
Honerva goes in a room and stares at Sincline, talking to Lotor. I guess maybe she’s just talking to the air as if he was there with her. But if she’s talking to Sincline because she still has Lotor’s melted corpse on Sincline, then that is so gross. I don’t know what the executive producers and writers were thinking having Lotor’s body revealed last episode like they did. The fact that it was done in a still frame instead of fuller animation could be cited as part of a potential re-edit of the season. I would still like to know how Sincline was seemingly operated very much consciously and clearly by Lotor in 8x06 “Genesis” if he’s dead and his corpse is melted as it was shown last episode.
So, Honerva boards her mecha, the one that it seemed like Lotor was piloting in the dream that Allura had in 8x08 “Clear Day.” This mecha has a set of crystal? wings that turn into a circle and starts spinning. The inner non-crystal structure of this wings-circle structure makes me think of the giant teludav (which didn’t look anything even remotely like the teludav that was onboard the Castle of Lions) that Team Voltron used against Zarkon in 2x12 “Best Laid Plans.” As the wings-circle spins, different images appear in the circle. So, this is when Honerva looks for and chooses what she thinks is her perfect reality? So then, why were alternate realities visible during what she did on Oriande in “Genesis?” Why was she in that episode doing something that revealed other realities if all she was doing then was getting Sincline out of the rift between realities? Neither Sincline nor Voltron ever went into other realities when they went into the rift in 6x07 “Defender of All Universes.” So, that moment in “Genesis” then was just contrived and inconsistent with previous story.
The Atlas is having a staff meeting. Shiro, the Paladins, Coran, Veronica, Curtis, Iverson, Slav, Sam, Romelle, the MFE pilots, Krolia, Kolivan, and Axca are all in attendance. Keith states the basics of Honerva’s plan: Use the Sincline, made out of the transreality comet, to go to another reality. Pidge says, “The problem is the transreality ore has been travelling between realities for millions of years, and it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon. What Honerva is doing is forcing that process to happen, which could have catastrophic side effects on this and any reality she travels through.” I appreciate that they’re at least trying to pretend there’s something different about what Honerva’s doing that makes what she’s doing a threat, but it still doesn’t work for me. What delineates the difference between natural occurrence and applied use? Is the ore sentient and knows someone is using it compared to when it’s doing it on its own? The specific ore that Sincline is made of held open a rift from this reality through the rift between realities into another reality for 10,000 years and nothing reality-ending happened. Voltron went into that reality for some time and nothing reality-ending happened. (3x04 “Hole in the Sky”) Sincline entered and exited the rift many times during the battle of “Defender of All Universes,” and that only presented as a danger to this reality. Why the rifts that Sincline created then didn’t close once Sincline had finished passing through the opened rift makes no sense since the rift in “Hole in the Sky” closed as soon as the comet’s material was removed from the rift opening. All this seems to me to be a failing to properly and consistently define the rules of magic for this story. The creative team wanted to not feel restricted in what they could have happen if they created structure and rules and followed them as rules, so they kept everything as undefined as possible, and that’s now led to having the events that are happening conflict with past events. That makes the supposed threat the story is now presenting feel hollow.
Krolia says there’s a Galra fleet nearby. This is such a weak attempt to bring the Galra back into the story here at the end when the story has definitively set aside the Galra as finished. Krolia says that this fleet has a zaiforge cannon. This zaiforge cannon (from what I remember during my original watching of these incredibly confusing episodes) is never used in these episodes. The writers of this show would seem to be unacquainted with the idea of Chekhov’s gun then. Don’t reference a zaiforge cannon in the narrative background unless specifically using that zaiforge cannon is part of the future plot. Keith tells Krolia and Kolivan to take Lahn and try to convince the Galra to join them.
I really don’t like that Keith is leading this meeting. The show took the position of Black Paladin unceremoniously and without any actual explanation away from Shiro and gave it to Keith. Joaquim Dos Santos did so while trying to pretend that Shiro was getting something even better in commanding the Atlas. But here, Shiro’s not even being allowed to lead his own staff meetings. Everything is being done by Keith because that has been the single-most important goal for JDS and Lauren Montgomery: Keith as the head of everything. They lied when they pretended that they weren’t sidelining Shiro. This is a perfect example of how what they’ve done to Shiro’s character in the past two seasons has been explicitly about sidelining him. They weren’t allowed to kill him, so they did what they could to diminish his presence and effect on the story as much as possible. They turned Shiro, once one of the two main characters of this show, into a total unimportant background character. It’s infuriating. They should have never created Shiro’s character in the first place then. But, they created him specifically to kill him off. That had been their desire for Shiro: Kill him to produce the ascendency of Keith. It is amazing to think that they specifically created Shiro’s character to kill him. And then, to have Shiro be a person of color, a person with a disability, and a queer person, that they thought they could kill him to benefit the straight, white, able-bodied Keith is a manifestation of the EPs’ and the writers’ privilege. For all their claims about being pro-inclusion and pro-representation of diverse characters, they really haven’t been. Diversity on this show has always been peripheral, at best.
Sam says he and Slav have been working on prototype upgrades to the Atlas’s weapons. Installing new, untested weapons, especially ones that Sam says they’re not even sure how they’re going to provide power to, right before going into a battle is not a reasonable idea, not that this show cares about having characters act realistically. (And the upgrade ultimately doesn’t happen before battle anyway.) Pidge volunteers to help Sam and Slav. Coran says there’s a convenient nearby Balmera for more power, Hunk says they can take the Yellow Lion, and Coran says he wants Romelle to go too because he’s “been training her in Altean customs. She’ll be quite helpful in communicating with the Balmera.” Allura’s previous communication with a Balmera was presented as something unique to Allura because of her ability to manipulate quintessence. Since when did Romelle gain the ability to manipulate quintessence? This communication can’t be something that’s just an “Altean custom,” otherwise Coran himself could do it. This all just feels like this show is trying to find things they can say these characters are doing so they can pretend these characters are part of the final story arc.
The Atlas staff meeting ends and the Captain of the Atlas, Shiro, never speaks even once.
Lance and Keith have what’s supposed to be a big, personal conversation. It’s clear what the creative team views as being the main character and his best friend character are talking in this scene. It’s a standard trope of a scene. For me though, it just marks how much this show has taken being the main character away from Shiro. Shiro used to be Keith’s best friend, and now, the series can’t even have Keith and Shiro have a conversation, let alone a personal one. If all you saw was this episode, you would not believe that moments like Keith’s fighting Zarkon specifically in defense of Shiro in 1x13 “The Black Paladin” and 2x13 “Blackout,” Keith’s upset over Shiro’s death in 3x01 “Changing of the Guard,” his desperate pursuit and attempt to save Shiro in 6x05 “The Black Paladins,” and all the flashbacks in 7x01 “A Little Adventure” were a part of the story. There’s nothing between Keith and Shiro here at the end of the story, where, because it was such an integral part of Keith’s character up until the last two seasons, you would think that now would be when their friendship was maximized. But their friendship is nonexistent now.
I really hate what this show became. The creative team had something great, and they sacrificed what made this show great in order to turn the show into something mediocre, at best.
Romelle tells the Colony Alteans that she’s going. The other Alteans worry about their still having an entity in them and being manipulated by Honerva; in other words, they’re going to eventually be manipulated by Honerva. Tova, however, since he’s no longer possessed, offers to go with Romelle. Since these specific Colony Alteans can manipulate quintessence, they could have had Tova stay on the Atlas as the wormhole operator, thereby freeing Allura up from having to do both that and pilot the Blue Lion, but no.
There’s a scene full of technobabble between Pidge, Sam, and Slav. It doesn’t feel like it really adds much. It gives some parameters of their planned upgrades, but those details are in no way crucial.
Team Balmera and Team Zeiforge Cannon depart from the Atlas. Veronica announces there’s another wormhole signature, and Shiro expositions that it’s the fifth one detected in the last hour. No pattern to these wormholes has been determined. Iverson wonders aloud if Honerva is sending out the Robeasts again, and Keith responds, “It could be, or it could be her.” This line has no meaning. It could be her… what? This episode never reveals what these additional wormholes were about.
Keith is standing right here on the bridge, right beside Shiro, and yet, they don’t talk to each other. They don’t even talk in the most perfunctory ways. It’s like they don’t even see each other. This scene helps make the nonexistence of their relationship, when their relationship had been the strongest one in the entire show, even more glaringly noticeable.
Curtis and Veronica realize that the Atlas has a “long range scout” in the area of Honerva’s location. How? The show has established that it would take a long time, too long, for the Atlas to get to where Honerva is. How is it that the Atlas is able to have a scout ship in that location if the Atlas can’t get itself to the location? This is blatantly contrived from the perspective of transportation. Also, if this scout ship is in Honerva’s location, then why didn’t their scouting work result in them contacting the Atlas about Honerva’s presence then? The Atlas learned Honerva was here because of her wormhole activity. If they have scouts there, then those scouts should have observed Honerva and reported that information to the Atlas. Also, if these are scout ships running missions for the Atlas, then it should not have taken them hours to realize that they have scout ships at the same location as Honerva’s wormholes. This is inconsistent in so many ways.
The rebel ships that are part of this scout group move in on Honerva’s precise location. After pulling up an image of the pyramid, one of the rebels says they’ve never seen a ship like that before. Voltron saw the pyramid rising into the sky at Oriande in “Genesis,” did they not provide that information to not just the Atlas, but to the whole Coalition? That’s information that most absolutely would be disseminated if characters in this show did things that normal people would. The rebels spot Honerva’s mecha and start to report it back to the Atlas when they’re attacked by a Robeast. The Robeast seeming destroys all the scout ships. Keith’s addition to the scene – “They need to get out of there!” – seems so strange. How are they supposed to get away? They’re small, old ships that don’t have the large, advanced engines the Atlas has. How does Keith think that, given that the Atlas can’t get to the location, the scout ships would be able to get away?
Honerva tells Merla, who’s in the Robeast, to “set a course for Altea.” So, Honerva has assigned Merla to both be a Robeast pilot and the executive officer on the bridge of the pyramid?
Slav continues trying to get Sam and Pidge to do what he feels needs to be done according to his OCD. Pidge yells at him, which makes me think of how Shiro did everything he could to work with Slav in 2x10 “Escape from Beta Traz.” The only time Shiro yelled at him was to tell Slav to do whatever he needed to do to work his way through his OCD, he was never dismissive of Slav’s OCD like Pidge is when she yells at him here. This whole scene is presented as humor, but I just don’t feel it. At least, it’s not in the absolute middle of combat or other high-tension scene or sequence. After Slav points out that he has actually calculated the probability of what he’s talking about, Pidge joins him in his OCD performance. That’s not Pidge respecting Slav for his having OCD, that’s her respecting him for his being a mathematician.
Shiro and the Atlas detect Honerva’s jump to where Altea and Daibazaal once were. It’s still really weird to me that both planets were in the same solar system, that the Galra have always been conquerors, yet they never conquered the nearest alien civilization to their homeworld.
Lance sits with unconscious Allura, asking her to help them. She opens her eyes after he finishes speaking. Honerva knows that Allura has regained consciousness. Lance and Allura arrive on the bridge. The Atlas contacts Hunk, who says that they’ve “found a new Balmera and new Balmerans.” They already knew this Balmera was there, so how did they find a new one? Also, these new Balmerans do not look like Balmerans. So, with the introduction of this species which is now labeled “Balmeran,” we’re to understand that this entire show until now, “Balmeran” wasn’t the name of the species that’s been identified as such since the first season of this show? Why? Why introduce this new species now? It doesn’t add anything to the story. Hunk says they’re “having trouble finding a big enough crystal.” I guess it’s just contrived that it has to be a single crystal and not a bunch of crystals used together. Coran has some unspoken, undetailed plan (if his plan is just to bring the whole Balmera with him, then that’s not actually a plan, that’s a postponement of finding a solution). Allura tells him do whatever he needs to because she can wormhole them to the destined location.
Shiro announces the ship to prepare for the transit and orders the MFE squadron to the ready. Allura uses the two-handed podium to wormhole the Atlas. I like the music during this moment. This is the first time I can remember saying that I liked the music this season.
The Atlas arrives at the pyramid. Everyone’s mouth drops open. The pyramid has glowing sigils above it, there are several Robeasts, Sincline, and the Honerva’s mecha all there. “What’s she doing?” Pidge asks. Hadn’t they figured this out already? They had a staff meeting at the beginning of the episode to talk about having learned that Honerva was going to use Sincline to tear through realities. The show even had Shiro say, “That’s where she’s going to cross through realities” when they learned Honerva had jumped to where Altea used to be a couple scenes earlier. So, why does Shiro now answer Pidge’s question with, “I don’t know” when he knew several scenes before?
Keith tells Allura that she’ll “have to wait until Hunk and Coran return. We need Voltron as soon as possible.” But this show has had the Atlas (and the Castle of Lions before that) create wormholes without Allura there to do so. The show having her here have to be there to do it now does not fit what the show has previously done. This show really has the necessity of Allura for wormhole generation be completely contrived, sometimes she has to be there, sometimes she doesn’t have to be there. When the show can’t make up its mind like this, it has an effect on the audience. The inconsistency produces confusion, prevents the audience from being able to understand the rules of the systems working within the story, the audience cannot track the story, and it makes the story fall apart. It generates an apathy in the audience.
Black, Blue and Green Lions launch and begin fighting the Robeasts. It is amazing that the Atlas just jumped in here with no plan whatsoever. The Atlas raises its shields and says they’ll draw the Robeasts’ fire so the Lions can get to Honerva. The three Robeasts create a shield to block the Atlas’s cannon fire. Hunk communicates that they’re ready to come, and as Allura goes to wormhole them in, she gets a flash and a headache and falls down screaming. She hears Honerva say, “Arise, my children. The time has come to act. Repent for your traitorous ways.” The Colony Alteans are shown having reactions similar to Allura. Merla is shown as being aware that this is happening. Honerva continues, “Lend me your quintessence and all will be forgiven.” The Colony Alteans’ eyes glow yellow like Honerva’s did when she was Haggar, and they break out of the brig and make their way to the bridge. They’re shown getting into an elevator and then they’re immediately in the hallway outside the door to the bridge. They break down the door, they punch Shiro across the room. They do a hand-touch-glow on the floor. Honerva says, “Deliver me the power I need to return to our homeland. Give your energy along with the ship’s crystal. All of it.” With the crystal chamber up out of the floor, they reach toward it, and there’s a bright flash of light.
Cut to the Lions still fighting the Robeasts. What happened to the Atlas shooting at the Robeasts to occupy them while the Lions got to Honerva? Is that supposed to have stopped happening because the Alteans on the bridge messing with the crystal? If so, the show needed to show the Lions reengaging in combat with the Robeasts since they had already moved on past the Robeasts.
Merla looks toward the Atlas and yells, “My people!” This is so out of character for her. She’s a zealot. Why is she now suddenly concerned about them dying when she’s been cool with it this entire time?
The bridge crew of the Atlas stand around and let the Alteans draw energy from the crystal and beam it to the pyramid. No one thinks to pull out a gun and shoot them. Of course, it would be nice if they could stop them without killing them, but if necessary, that crew would realistically kill these Alteans to stop them now. I know the show couldn’t actually show them getting shot dead, so just don’t write it to be shot to death, but still shoot them. Do something? The Atlas crew is just letting this happen.
It also makes me want to know why Allura didn’t try to draw the entities out of the other Alteans. She drew it out of Tova. Between then and the Paladins deciding to use the entity-in-Allura to go into Honerva’s mind, why didn’t she pull the entities out of the other Alteans? Having her not do so is totally contrived so that the show could have this moment. I really don’t like when characters are written to behave illogically just so the show can have another moment later. Rather than having moments flow from one to another in the story, this story is constructed set-pieces first and then those set-pieces are forced together, connective content that bridge them is always subject to a greater amount of inconsistency because one moment doesn’t grow out of the previous moments.
Merla speaks her concerns to Honerva that the Alteans on the Atlas will die. Again, why was Merla not concerned about their deaths before now? Honerva maniacally yells, “Their lives will be sacrificed for their savior.” The pyramid gets its needed energy, the sigils rise and an even larger sigil is created by a beam of purple electricity sparking directly upward off the top of the pyramid. Merla uses her Robeast to fire a chest cannon blast at the pyramid, which seems to affect the pyramid and its sigil generation. On the Atlas, the Alteans fall down and the Atlas loses power.
I guess Allura had just been laying unconscious during all this? It would have been cool, since Allura was affected too, if she had used the connectivity caused by the entity to psychically fight against the Alteans. It would have been cool if she had stopped them, not Merla. That way, Merla’s reaction and action would not be totally out of character for her. It is so wrong that everyone on the Atlas just stood around doing nothing, Shiro did nothing, they all just let the Alteans do what they did. Their inaction was all contrived so that Merla could have her moment of turning against Honerva. The show thought the plot twist of Merla’s turn was worth more than having the heroes of the story actually act heroically. They wrote the heroes to become total, unrealistic bystanders all in the service of executing a narratively unnecessary plot twist. It’s so annoying.
Allura regains consciousness, hearing Hunk calling for help. How does the room Allura’s in have power when they lost all power on the bridge? How does the ship’s communication system have power to receive Hunk’s communication when the bridge has lost power? Allura opens a wormhole. There’s a shot from within the bridge, which reminds me that the bridge has windows, so a few moments ago, the bridge should not have gone completely black the way it did. Even if they lost power, the light from outside the ship should have still come through the windows just like it’s doing now in this scene.
The Yellow Lion comes through the wormhole, bringing the Balmera with them.
Honerva sees the Balmera and sends blades from her mecha’s wings to attack it. Those blades stab the surface of the Balmera and draw power from it to the pyramid. There are some really large crystals shown on the Balmera, so how is it that they didn’t have one large enough to power the weapon upgrade for the Atlas? I guess this is just the animation not matching the script?
Keith orders the Paladins to attack. The Lions, for some reason, are at the Atlas when Keith gives this order. They had been attacking the Robeasts near the pyramid – they were supposed to have moved beyond the Robeasts further toward the pyramid, but that was dropped – and now they’re at the Atlas instead of where they had been fighting the Robeasts. They have to make their way all the way back to the pyramid where they had already been. Even with Merla stopping, why would the other two Robeasts stop attacking the Lions to let them return to the Atlas? Even if there were no Robeasts, why had the Lions come back to the Atlas at all? The logistics make no sense whatsoever.
So, the energy drained from the Balmera zaps Sincline and Honerva’s mecha. The two Robeasts move to attack the incoming Lions. Those Robeasts were knocking the Lions around easily earlier, but now the Blue and Green Lions easily knock the Robeasts aside so Black can mouth-blast at Honerva. The capacity of the Lions/Voltron for battle in this series has always felt unbalanced and managed by whatever conveniently hit whatever emotional or plot development beat a moment was scripted for.
Honerva’s mecha uses the rest of its crystal wing-blades to block Black’s mouth-blast. The Yellow Lion joins the fight but is blasted by Honerva. Honerva sends her remaing crystal blades to attack the Black Lion, hitting it multiple times. Merla moves to attack Honerva, who blasts Merla and blows her up.
Then Honerva merges her mecha with Sincline. It has crystal wing-blades like Honerva’s mecha did, but she didn’t seem to recall her blades from the Balmera, so did this merge just create new blades? The blades form a circle that spins. And the episode ends.
While this episode is less confusing than the previous two, it’s still not clearly written. There’s too much that’s set-up that doesn’t pay off, too much that’s inconsistent with what’s come before. Inconsistency seems to be the theme of this series’s production.
