Clash of the Lions

The Voltron Force plans an assault on Sky Marshall Wade's Galaxy Alliance compound. Allura refuses to take part in what she calls revenge on her behalf and walks out, and the others go anyway with the cadets in tow. Coran tells the cadets that Wade trained at the Flight Academy hoping the Lions would choose him, and that they did not.

Once the Lions form Voltron, a Corite charge from Wade lets him seize it, and he marches the cyan-faced robot toward a city while his Waderoids hold the old Academy. Vince clings to a leg joint and plugs in. Daniel and Vince call in Manset and the Lion Riders, and Vince works out that the Corite has grown a new skeleton inside Voltron, and the team pries Wade out and arrests him. Allura and her friends agree the Alliance is united but doubt the price, and Pidge points to a hole in the Black Lion's piece of the Nexus.

Voice cast, as credited on this episode's closing titles (role, then actor).

Keith: Giles Panton Lance: Andrew Francis Allura: Ashleigh Ball Pidge / King Alfor / Kalon: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Coran: Ron Halder Sky Marshall Wade / Manset: Garry Chalk

"They didn't build Voltron, it was handed to them." -- the cold-open monologue

"Every piece of metal I wear, I earned." -- the cold-open monologue

"We protect, we don't assault, and certainly not for revenge." -- Allura

"Having been rejected by Voltron, Wade has spent his life building his own war machine, desperate to prove he was better than the defender of the universe." -- Coran

"Life lesson, rookies. You don't move up in this world by accepting rejection." -- Wade

"Pidge, I really need you to say something scientific right now."

"But the spirit of Voltron is forever evolving." -- King Alfor's hologram

"Business cards, Manset? Tell me the galaxy's best smuggler hasn't gone legit."

"I guess we'll find out."

Transcribed from the episode's subtitle track, which we checked against the audio, with misspelled names corrected. Speakers are named only where the dialogue or the picture makes them clear.

Nothing in the cold open is on the heroes' side. A voice sneers at the knights in shining armor, at the fact that "they didn't build Voltron, it was handed to them," and it closes by promising that men of honor can never stand it when someone fights dishonorably. The speaker is evidently Wade, going by what follows [1]. What he delivers is the best argument anyone makes against the Voltron Force in this episode, which is an odd thing to put in front of a story whose business is knocking him down.

The writing's cleverest decision is to let that argument work before answering it. The Force opens by planning to hit Wade "where he lives," but Allura, the supposed beneficiary, refuses to be part of it: "We protect, we don't assault, and certainly not for revenge." The others go anyway. Wade has arranged the day around that reaction, and once Voltron is formed, a Corite charge hands him the controls. Someone on the heroes' side admits that he played them, and asks which of them has to tell Allura she was right.

The question underneath is whether a thing you were handed counts for less than a thing you earned. Wade says yes in his opening speech and practices it literally, announcing from inside the stolen robot, "Life lesson, rookies. You don't move up in this world by accepting rejection." Coran has already supplied the other side. Wade went through the Flight Academy hoping to catch the Force's eye, and the Lions "seem to sense who is worthy of piloting them." Wade was not. Coran's verdict, that few things are more dangerous than true love given way to unchecked rage, is generous to a man about to march a giant robot at civilians.

The answer comes from the people with the thinnest claim. Pidge, the team's technician, admits he has nothing when asked how Wade is doing it. Vince hitches a ride on Voltron's leg and plugs in. Later, eyes glowing white in a dim room, he works out that the Corite has grown a physical skeleton inside the machine: "And if he put it in, we can take it out." Daniel and Vince are also the ones who call in Manset's ships and the Lion Riders! The script never argues that the cadets earned their seats the way Wade means, but it lets them fix the problem.

The scene that justifies the episode sits in the middle of the fight. Allura stands on a stone ledge beside a blue hologram of King Alfor. She says she feels she has abandoned the others and asks whether backing their mission would abandon the nature of Voltron itself. Alfor turns the question round: what is the nature of Voltron? To defend the universe, she says, and he agrees, then adds that "the spirit of Voltron is forever evolving." [2] It has no fighting in it, yet it hands the closing minutes their best line, when the phrase comes back with an "I'm told" in front of it.

The weak point is the machinery of the takeover. Coran's story is that the Lions sense who is worthy and that Wade was found wanting. The episode then shows those Lions fighting as an organized unit in his service after a single charge, and a character asks the obvious question on screen. The answer arrives when Vince reads the hardware, but it sidesteps loyalty altogether. A half hour slot with a fight to fit and a Nexus thread to plant explains the shortcut; even so, the Lions cannot be judges of worth in one scene and hardware in the next.

As a hinge in the season it works! Wade's war is over by the last scene, and Manset hands out business cards. Pidge ends on a hole in the Black Lion's piece of the Nexus that is releasing data nobody can read. The Force keeps its robot and loses its certainty, and we would take that over a clean win.

1 ^ Nothing in the cold open names the speaker, and the monologue runs from 0:03 to 0:53 before the titles. It is the claims ("Every weapon I fire, I designed") that point to Wade, and the grievance fits his later line about finding a way to take what you are refused.

2 ^ The Alfor scene runs from 10:59 to 11:31 in the subtitle track. The fan subtitles are unsteady on the Corite, which turns up as "chloride" and "Korite", and on Coran, who becomes "Koran"; this guide uses the spellings the dialogue supports.

1. Nicktoons said from the start that Voltron Force would run 26 episodes, which makes Clash of the Lions the exact midpoint. It aired Thursday, August 25, 2011, and then the show vanished for ten weeks until November 3, so anyone watching live had a long time to chew on that closing scene.
2. The word Nexus turns up for the first time in the last scene, with someone describing something in each Lion's chest that is "like a heart slash hard drive" and a reply of "Kinda like a Nexus." None of the first twelve episodes uses the word. It becomes a plot driver right away: the hole the Corite charge leaves in the Black Lion's piece is what lets Haggarium leech in during Inside the Music.
3. Callbacks to Lion Riders Return do a lot of work here. That is where we learn Corite is "found only on Ariel", and here Wade's weapon is a charge from "the heart of the planet Ariel". The same episode's loyalist video game is how Daniel and Vince end up calling in the Lion Riders as backup after "We've got to get to that video game."
4. Allura's walkout shows up in the formation sequence: the seven-way split panel has Hunk, Keith, Daniel, Vince, Pidge, Lance and Larmina, and no Allura. In The Hunkyard someone grumbles about "Five lions and eight pilots", and this time the math is short, with Larmina and Daniel sharing Blue and Vince hopping in with Pidge.
5. Whenever Wade has hold of the controls, Voltron's face glows cyan. Elsewhere in the season the head's eyes light up yellow, so it is a handy visual tell that this is not our Voltron.
6. Fans on the Voltron wiki say the classic 1980s Voltron theme plays over the forming sequence. Worth an ear the next time the five Lions come together.
7. Wade's pre-title speech ("Every piece of metal I wear, I earned. Every weapon I fire, I designed.") reads very differently once Coran explains that the Lions sense who is worthy and "Wade, to his undying fury, was not." The grudge is there from the first line, and we just do not know it is about being turned down.
8. King Alfor's line that "the spirit of Voltron is forever evolving" is planted mid-episode and handed back by Allura in the last scene. It comes around again in the second-to-last episode, Deceive and Conquer, as "It's always been Voltron's nature to evolve."
9. Manset's backup arrives to the question "What's that smuggler smuggling here?" and he closes the episode with "Anything, anywhere." when someone asks if the galaxy's best smuggler has gone legit. In Dradin, Baby, Dradin he says "I've been really trying to go legit."

Voltron Force, the 2011 continuation, in which the 1984 pilots take on cadets.