Defenders of Arus

Larmina is introduced as Allura's niece, and the cadets are fitted with Voltcoms, which hand out weapons based on how each of them fights. While Lance runs a combat class, Keith flees Wade's fighters in a damaged Black Lion with a tracking device hidden in it, guided by Pidge toward an asteroid field. Lotor is raised from the grave by the power of Haggarium, with Kala and Maahox at his side, and his first gift to Arus is a Robeast.

Lance and Allura launch the Red and Blue Lions on keys that Wade soon learns are fakes. Daniel takes the Yellow Lion, admits he does not know the weapons, and helps pin the monster with a trick from the classroom. Keith, out of power, reaches the others. Lotor then calls the Robeast a minor challenge meant to draw Voltron into the open, and the episode ends on a threat to Kala.

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

Keith: Giles Panton Lance: Andrew Francis Allura: Ashleigh Ball Pidge: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Maahox: Ron Halder Sky Marshall Wade: Garry Chalk Lotor: Mark Hildreth Kala: Tabitha St. Germain

"Unity is our core." -- Allura

"Cheap playground trick."

"It picks up on your natural talents and abilities, then adapts to strengthen them." -- Lance

"I was just gonna say it's magic."

"Hagar's power giving me life." -- Lotor

"Today is your re-birthday."

"What she lacks in personality, she makes up for in tactical brilliance."

"I don't know the weapons." -- Daniel

"But I can still fly." -- Daniel

"Unless you want cheap playground tricks." -- Daniel

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.

A school day is a decent shape for an origin story, and everybody knows how it goes: a tour, a seating plan, a test that nobody is meant to pass, and then an emergency that turns the test into a rehearsal. "Defenders of Arus" follows that shape faithfully, so the lesson of the first period turns out to be the plan for the second.

The tour ends at a top-secret classroom that one of the boys observes looks a lot like a classroom, and at a third desk, which belongs to Allura's niece. Larmina sits with her hands folded, unimpressed, and the episode lets her stay that way. We enjoyed that! Allura gives the class its theme, a team of five Lions that are strong alone and much stronger together, and the plain line "Unity is our core." She then activates their Voltcoms, which she calls a link to the Lions and, more importantly, to each other. Then she turns the class over to Lance. [1]

Lance's pop quiz is a fight, and the fight is short. Daniel will not hit a girl, Larmina announces that she will take them both on, and the boys are soon sprawled on the training floor, calling it a cheap playground trick and trading threats. What the quiz was really measuring comes out afterwards, when Lance tells them that the Voltcoms graded it. The device picks up on natural talents and abilities and then adapts to strengthen them, so the weapon each cadet receives is a verdict on how they fight. Larmina gets a glowing cyan staff and Daniel a pair of orange beams from his wrist that scorch claw shapes into the floor while he asks what to do with them. The cadets now wear equipment that has already decided what they are good at, but none of them knows yet what to do with the verdict. The Robeast fight becomes a test of improvisation.

Keith's thread runs underneath, and it is the quieter one. The Black Lion's weapons are down and Wade has hidden a tracking device somewhere in it. The pursuit is a dogfight conducted mostly by hologram, with Pidge talking him toward an asteroid field for a little game of cat and mouse. [2] Lotor, meanwhile, wakes in a purple ruin, raised "with the power of Haggarium" and amused that Hagar's power should be giving him life. Kala is introduced as short on personality but long on tactical brilliance and bloodlust, and Maahox as a master of experimental occult sciences. Somebody tells Lotor that today is his re-birthday!

The field fight pays the first period back. Lance and Allura take the Red and Blue Lions out on keys that Wade will shortly discover are fakes, Lance hurts his arm, and Daniel is left in the Yellow Lion with a console he cannot use. His admission, "I don't know the weapons. But I can still fly," is the turning line: he stops waiting for the weapons to make sense and flies. The next move comes from the same place; asked for a plan, Daniel says he has nothing unless anyone wants cheap playground tricks, and Lance calls him a genius and has him knock the Robeast off its feet.

What does not hold up is the physics of the fight. Power has to be moved from a Voltcom into a Lion, and then it works, but then the Voltcom is dead again and the team must try something else. Each rule arrives when the plot needs it and leaves just as quickly, so no tension builds.

Lotor's closing speech is the better pitch. The Robeast was a relic and a minor challenge meant to bring Voltron into the open, and the real plan is to build monsters from the predators of nature and then give them a brain. The closing threat promises a commander that she will love what has been done to her. As the middle chapter it trades the pilot's mystery for a working team, and it leaves Kala's fate as the question the third part must answer.

1 ^ The fan subtitles render Kala as Carla, Maahox as Mayhox and Mayhawks, the Voltcoms as Voltcombs, and Arus as Arras and Ares. This review uses the standard spellings.

2 ^ At 9:12 the cadets are shown a "lion simulator" in the very stretch where Keith is dodging pursuers in a real Lion, a cross-cut that ties the two stories before the Lions meet.

1. Fans on the Voltron wiki point to a goof near the end: the Black Lion has just been described as having its weapon systems "completely down" and has "lost power", yet it still lands safely and gets a shot at the Robeast's head, where the wiki says it should have come down like a meteor.
2. The word Voltcom is new in this episode, and it never comes up in the first one. Nicktoons described the Voltcoms as wrist devices that work as keys to the Lions and produce weapons matched to each cadet, and Lance's version is that it "picks up on your natural talents and abilities, then adapts to strengthen them." Daniel's first reaction to what his gives him is "What do I do with these?"
3. This is the middle chapter of the three-part premiere, and Nicktoons ran all three together on Thursday, June 16, 2011 as a 90-minute movie, so the first Voltron fans saw this episode without an ad break. The first stand-alone weekly episode, Coran, Coran, followed a week later.
4. Kala threatens to destroy Maahox in the cold open if his experiment fails again, and he smiles all the way through it: "It is my faith in your conviction to squash the life from me that has me beaming." By the last scene he is the one making promises, "Don't fight it, dear Commander. I promise. You'll love what I've done with you." She is the spider in Defenders of the Universe, and she comes back for him in Deceive and Conquer.
5. Lotor is raised from the grave by Haggarium, and Maahox calls the day his "re-birthday". When the name comes up, the question is whether it means the witch, and the answer is that it is "the very essence of" her. Fans of the original will know exactly which witch that is.
6. Wade's "Lotor is dead!" in New School Defenders lasts one episode. Wade's reaction to learning that the Red and Blue Lions have woken up is the payoff for the pin swap: "Because the keys... Fakes!"
7. "Cheap playground trick" is first said in the training room, right after somebody ends up on the floor. It comes back later as Daniel's own contribution to the battle plan: "Don't look at me for strategy. Unless you want cheap playground tricks." Lance's answer is "You're a genius, Danny boy."
8. Lotor's gloating speech sets up what comes next. The Robeast he sent is "a relic from your days", and the next generation will come from "nature herself", from "efficient, savage predators". That is more or less the pitch for Predator Robeast.
9. The lion puns start early. Pidge sends Keith into the asteroid field for "a little game of cat and mouse", and Keith later says "It's time for this cat to chase the mice."

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