Defenders of the Universe

Sky Marshall Wade asks the Galaxy Alliance Council to take the Voltron Force into custody and destroy the Lions, then seizes the Castle of Lions with an army of Waderoids and holds Keith, Lance and Allura. Daniel and Vince slip out of their history lessons into a crypt, where Larmina ambushes them, and Daniel and Larmina are soon helping Hunk free the prisoners while Drule ships raid the city.

Pidge struggles to repair the Black Lion, which Wade's research has wrecked. In a canyon, a spider Robeast powered by Haggarium weakens the Lions, and Wade unleashes a giant black lion that the Robeast wraps in webbing. Vince flies the Black Lion until Keith takes the controls, the Lions combine into Voltron, and the Blazing Sword finishes the monster on a second try. Lotor turns on Maahox, and Wade ends slumped in a chair.

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 / Coran: Ron Halder Sky Marshall Wade: Garry Chalk Lotor: Mark Hildreth

"I don't care about the Alliance. I care about power, money. And as long as Voltron is out there, my profit margin is unacceptable." -- Sky Marshall Wade

"Voltron, meet the future!" -- Sky Marshall Wade

"What's the only thing that preys on lions?" -- Sky Marshall Wade

"A bigger lion." -- Sky Marshall Wade

"Follow someone who grew up here." -- Larmina

"Just because you're back for five minutes doesn't mean you're suddenly in charge." -- Lance

"But even if he understood all the mechanics and programming, Voltron is bigger than those simple things."

"It's like antimatter to the mystic power behind Voltron."

"Well then, release the catnip."

"Not the most noble move, but pretty effective."

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.

There is a cheerful honesty in a villain who finally admits that the speeches about safety were always about margins. Sky Marshall Wade opens "Defenders of the Universe" selling the Council on the destruction of the Lions and on a defense system the Alliance funded. By the middle he says aloud what the scheme was about: "I don't care about the Alliance. I care about power, money."

The admission is the point of him. Wade treats Voltron as a competitor's product, something to be dissected, outsold and replaced by a bigger version carrying the same label. The Waderoids, black spider-like machines with glowing green nodes, are his budget model. The giant black lion with red eyes, introduced with a riddle about what preys on lions, is the premium one. The Black Lion, lying in a repair hangar with its programming wrecked by his research, is the evidence that he never understood the original. In that hangar the verdict is that Voltron is bigger than those simple things. When someone offers "Magic?" the answer is "Something like that." But the script then deflates the side project: the spider Robeast turns out to be the larger predator. It starts cocooning itself around Wade's lion.

The human scenes are better than the machinery around them. Keith and Lance argue in the hangar about whether to scout Planet Doom, Lance's arm in a sling. Allura steps between them to say that the one thing they can all agree on is the need to work as a team. Lance's "Just because you're back for five minutes doesn't mean you're suddenly in charge" lands because it is petty in an entirely recognisable way. [1] Down in the crypt, Daniel and Vince borrow Voltcoms to explore the royal tombs, and Larmina ambushes them doing a haunted-tomb voice. Her turn is the sweetest bit of character work in the episode. She admits the joke, says she respects the attempt at mischief, announces "we're a team now, so I want in," and offers to lead them, since she grew up here. We would have followed her too!

The thread back to the first chapter is speed. The premiere's narrator wanted life to pick up some speed. Here, as the cadets head for a hostage rescue, somebody remarks how slow things were before they showed up, and somebody else answers that things are definitely picking up. A cadet whose Voltcom has given him quick feet tries a stealthy run, fails, and asks whether the gift will come in handy at some point; it does a moment later.

The weakest stretch is the one in the middle of the city. Drule ships arrive over Arus while the heroes watch from a balcony, and a villain calls for the catnip to be released. The raid gets a few shots of rubble and a fallen figure in green cloth, but it drops out of the story once the Robeast appears. [2] Wade's own fate gets less. He is last seen slumped in a chair with Coran beside a console, and one closing remark about a just hand has to stand for the collapse of his plan.

The finale gets the structure right. The Robeast's Haggarium is described as antimatter to the mystic power behind Voltron, so the Lions weaken and only the Black Lion seems untouched. Vince, who a moment earlier was not sure he could fly it, gets it to the canyon. Keith takes over, and the cadets stand behind him in the cockpit as the Lions combine. The first call of "Form blazing sword!" fails in the webs, but the second succeeds, and the victory belongs to a cockpit full of people the Sky Marshall never put on his balance sheet!

Placed last of the three chapters, it settles the board. Keith, whom we last saw running from Wade's fighters, is back with a team that argues in front of him, Wade is out of the game, and Lotor is snarling that Maahox's ineptitude has made a mockery of his return.

1 ^ The reconnaissance mission to Planet Doom is raised at 2:49 and argued over; one line at 5:11 says the debate is not over, and it is not mentioned again after that.

2 ^ The fan subtitles call the raided city Arras and Ares at different points; it is Arus.

1. Neither of the first two episodes has a formation sequence, so this is where the call "Activate interlocks!" is first heard. The three cadets stand behind Keith in the Black Lion as the Lions combine, and the call is heard again and again afterward, right up to Deceive and Conquer.
2. The first "Form blazing sword!" fails ("It's not working!") and the webs get the blame ("They're weakening Voltron"), so the Lions fight "the old-fashioned way" until the second call lands near the end. The sword works at once in Coran, Coran, and in Predator Robeast the line is "The Blazing Sword just broke?"
3. The Waderoids, Wade's black-and-green robots with glowing green nodes, make their first appearance in the season here. Wade runs the takeover from a cockpit rather than showing up himself, and somebody sums it up with "Wade's here. Well, sorta." When he finally turns up in the flesh in Wanted and Unwanted, he says he "had to be here in person to see your face." The Hunkyard opens with Voltron already fighting one.
4. Wade is blunt about his motive: "I don't care about the Alliance. I care about power, money." His complaint about Voltron is that "my profit margin is unacceptable." Clash of the Lions offers a much more personal explanation, in which Coran says Wade, "Having been rejected by Voltron," has spent his life building a war machine to prove he is better.
5. The spider Robeast is Kala, but the episode says so only in passing: she "seems to be taking quite well to her new form". The setup came in the cold open of Defenders of Arus, and in Deceive and Conquer she is called "my first Haggarium-powered creation" and goes after Maahox.
6. The villains keep the cat jokes coming. They "taunted the kitties to come out and play", somebody orders "release the catnip", and Wade answers his own riddle about what preys on lions with "A bigger lion." The habit started in the previous episode with "a little game of cat and mouse", and it carries on in "Here kitty kitty" in Joyride to Doom.
7. The cold open is a session of the Galaxy Alliance Council, where Wade moves that "we take all members of the Voltron Force into custody and immediately destroy the Lions." I, Voltron is the only other episode where the Council comes up at all, and there Wade is the one on trial.
8. This is the last chapter of the three-part premiere movie that ran on Thursday, June 16, 2011. The weekly run that followed took until April 25, 2012 to finish, with breaks of more than two months and then three months along the way.

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