Five Forged

Pidge tests a fix on the Black Lion's broken nexus and finds Haggarium spreading through it like an infection; the Lion could be lost within days or hours. The five Lions then fly off on their own to the Forge on Ariel, and the team follows them into the Path of Lions, the mines where Voltron was first forged.

An inscription warns that only the worthy will pass the trials, and the Krelshi spirit guarding the place tells Vince again that he is not ready, so he waits outside with Daigo. Inside, the team works through a Balto circuit puzzle, a hall of towers and hammers, and a fistfight against robots while their Voltcoms are jammed, and finds the workshop where Voltron was made. A fifth trial, a test of unity, ends only when Vince walks in after them. The blacksmith who forged Voltron repairs the nexus, and Voltron forms.

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

Keith: Giles Panton Lance: Andrew Francis Allura / Daigo: Ashleigh Ball Pidge / Kalon: Sam Vincent Hunk / The Smith: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent

"Science isn't about being sure, Vince." -- Pidge

"It's why we call them experiments." -- Pidge

"Back to the factory for service, huh?"

"Smart lions."

"Anyone unworthy will bring disaster on the entire party."

"Who knew you actually listened in class?"

"It's the human element of Voltron that's being tested here!"

"A union of five planets."

"And one I am pleased to see young Cadet Vince values more than his own self-doubt." -- The blacksmith

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.

Readiness is a cruel word to hand a cadet who has spent a season trying to belong. A Krelshi spirit told Vince on an earlier visit that he was not ready, and at the mouth of the Path of Lions it tells him again: "Same thing as last time. You are not ready." So the cadet who knows the Forge best, who has been through its hidden door with Larmina, spends the middle of the episode on a rock outside, yet everyone else goes down to be tested.

The first act is better than it needs to be. Pidge's line about experiments sets the mood, and then the Lions leave for Ariel on their own and park themselves at the Forge. Someone on the team calls them "Smart lions", and good for them! The joke is also the premise, since the machines know where they need to be repaired and the people have to catch up. The inscription the team translates is written like a hazard sign. It has its sacred ground and its promise that anyone unworthy will bring disaster on the party.

The promise is what the episode turns on. The warning asks the team to judge worth in advance, but the structure of the mine is built to show that nobody can. The circuit puzzle belongs to Balto, so Pidge is the expert, and Pidge is the first to go down. The cadets inherit the job and carry it off, to a chorus of "Who knew you actually listened in class?" The tower hall and the robot fight are tests of the other planets' strengths, and the workshop's art explains the design: a union of five planets, each bringing its own gift to Voltron. Then someone notices that the four trials leave one planet out. The missing one is Arus, and we find that Arus's trial is the one that cannot be passed from inside the party.

Vince is the proof. Outside, he gives the plainest speech of the episode, calling himself useless and asking what he can even do. Daigo offers the consolation that he may be held in reserve for a more special role. It is the sort of thing people say, yet the script lets it be literally true. When Vince hears something go wrong in the mine and runs in anyway, he has disobeyed the warning that protected him. The blacksmith's verdict is that the fifth trial was always one of unity, and that Vince values it more than his own self-doubt. [1] Readiness, on this reading, is something done rather than something granted by a spirit beast, and it is a generous thing for a show to say about its newest pilot.

The weakness is in the middle. The Black Lion's clock is stated, with days or hours remaining, and then barely consulted. The forge hall and the Voltcom fistfight are over in a few cuts and cost the team nothing beyond Pidge being carried under Hunk's arm. The trials are a lore tour dressed as a gauntlet, and Allura and Pidge deliver the lore as they walk, which robs the walk of any danger. A warning about disaster also needs the party to feel at risk of one; the middle trials rarely manage it.

Still, it does what a late-season cadet episode should, because it takes the character who has been waiting longest and makes the waiting the point. The blacksmith's scene is short, warm and a little wry about its own limited role. Voltron forms at the end with no named weapon, only the forming call. [2] After a season that has mostly used its cadets for comic friction, we finally get the show agreeing that they belong in the robot!

1 ^ The blacksmith is credited on the closing card as "The Smith", voiced by Ty Olsson, who is also listed for Hunk. The subtitle track places the blacksmith's verdict at 19:03.

2 ^ The line is "Ready to form Voltron!" at 20:23; the subtitle track then shows the interlock and thruster calls and no weapon name.

1. Vince has been to the Forge before, and the Krelshi gives him the same verdict. When he is asked what it said at the temple door, the answer is "Same thing as last time. You are not ready." The last time is Lion Riders Return, where the noise a Krelshi made when it took Vince was read as "I wasn't ready", and the recap of that visit here, "one of those electric-y, spirit-y, Krelsh-y things", is a small treasure.
2. The title is a head count: five Lions, five planets, five trials. The team ticks them off as Balto ("That style is unique to Balto", Pidge's home world from Brains), Ariel ("the raw metal was mined from here on Ariel"), Earth ("the human element of Voltron") and a fourth source of Voltron's energy that nobody can name. Hence "That's still only four trials for five planets", and the missing one turns out to be the unity test, which the blacksmith calls "The fundamental essence of Voltron."
3. Pidge's tinkering with the Black Lion's nexus is this stretch of the season's slow burn. He pulls it out in "Rogue Trip" and the Lion bolts, a Haggarium leak is traced to "penetrating the Nexus through that hole" in "Inside the Music", and in Gary something sneaks in through the same gap. Now the opening scene has Black's trouble setting off a security alarm and the five Lions heading to the Forge on their own, with "Keith, I do believe your Lion is a bad influence on the other kids."
4. Pidge is the one person who recognizes the first trial ("I know this pattern. I can fix this.") and he drops out within seconds, then spends much of the episode under Hunk's arm. The expert who could solve it is the first casualty, which leaves the cadets with "We've been studying under Pidge for months." and a payoff of "Who knew you actually listened in class?"
5. Two episodes after the Voltcom lectures in Ghost in the Lion, here the Voltcoms are the thing that fails: "Our Voltcoms are dead?" gets "It's a jamming signal." and "They're blocking our Voltcoms!" It is what turns the third trial into "Good old-fashioned fistfight!"
6. Check the cockpit strip when Voltron forms: seven comic panels (Hunk, Keith, Daniel, Vince, Pidge, Lance and Larmina) for five Lions, none of them Allura. The Voltron strips in Gary use five panels, and Ghost in the Lion has six, so this is the biggest strip of the three.
7. The pep talk before the trials has two halves: "If anyone's worthy to pass, it's you" is for Vince, and then "even if you fail, I'm sure the punishment will be over quickly" is for Daniel. A few minutes later comes the best review of the inscription: "What is it with mysterious ancient writing?" followed by "It's all ominous warning." and "Zero specifics."
8. The blacksmith has a very short shift. Asked if he is the one who forged Voltron, he says "I had my part.", and his answer to "I have so many questions" is "I'm afraid I have a very limited role and not much time to do it in". It is an oddly self-aware line for a one-scene guest.
9. Five Forged aired on Wednesday, March 7, 2012, a week after Gary and the second episode back from the winter break. The inscription is read out in pieces, "The path of lions" and a "den of" something that needs a second opinion to finish ("Creation"), before the translation lands: "These mines are where Voltron was originally forged."

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