Voltron: Legendary Defender “The Black Paladins”

Well, if Voltron: Legendary Defender was waiting to crank up the heat, we got it now.  There’s, like, stuff actually happening now and everything!  It’s, like, exciting!

I think I am a bit more pleased now than I was before.  They can stop pretending Lotor is nice now.

In fact, we can stop pretending a lot of things, but mostly, we can watch Voltron kick some ass.

Or not.  It’s those fast ships made from that strange meteor.  Two are being piloted by Lotor’s former generals.  One is being piloted by Shiro.  And even with all the power of Voltron and Keith back in the Black Lion, that still doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to stop those ships.

Especially when the three ships, after knocking Voltron around a bit, opt to make a break for it through a rapidly closing wormhole.  And while Voltron is too big and too slow to get through, Keith does have a plan:  separate into the separate Lions, an action that will give the Black Lion enough of a push to get through the wormhole and try to get Shiro back.

That works!

It also means Keith is alone against a lot of Galra forces.

But he’s fast and can zip around, even knocking out one of those comet ships before coming to a landing at the spot where Shiro’s trail ended.  And here’s where we get some screwy twists that may or may not explain everything.

For one thing, Haggar turned back into her original form of Honerva, but Haggar is easier to spell and remember, so I’m going to keep calling her that.  Also, Lotor still doesn’t want anything to do with her, but it turns out one of his former generals was never a former anything, and the other two switch back to Lotor’s side once he scares Haggar away with a well-aimed laser blast.

But the real problem is Shiro, and Keith finds him.  Keith isn’t getting any back-up on this one.  Shiro left a virus behind in the castle that could have killed all the others, even getting past Pidge’s initial countermeasures, if Pidge hadn’t thought to make some “just in case” countermeasures to the weird programs in Shiro’s artificial hand.

That’s some Batman-level planning right there.

Point is, Keith is alone.  Shiro’s arm has a ton of fancy weapons setting.  Keith only has his Blade of Marmora blade, and Shiro, well, he seems to really want to take Keith out whereas Keith only wants to stop Shiro and get him help.

Did I mention this fight takes place in a chamber full of Shiro clones in various tubes?

And it’s going down into a planet’s atmosphere in the most explosive way possible?

Because it is.

Now, before everything ends, and also before Keith remembers how he met Shiro as a very understanding instructor at the academy, Keith manages to severe Shiro’s robo-arm…and that seems to snap Shiro out of whatever Haggar did to him.  So, that’s good.

Too bad both men are probably falling to their deaths.

That is not so good.