Ghost in the Lion

Someone steals the Blue Lion off Lake Arus Beach in front of Lance, bypassing the Voltcom remote start and taking Allura's key. Pidge's backup beacon sends the Lions, with Daniel riding along in the Red Lion, to Planet Krydor, a frozen world. Allura, defying an order to stay in her Lion, goes out on foot and finds the thief: Sven, the original Blue Lion pilot, infected with Haggarium and promised a cure for himself and his baby son if he delivers the Lion.

Maahox changes the deal, takes the baby as the real prize and ties up the Blue Lion, and Lotor arrives with a Mastodon Robeast. Lance gives Daniel his Voltcom energy to thaw the Red Lion, and Sven joins Voltron in the Blue Lion. When the infection turns the Lion against him he hands it back to Allura and stays to fight while the others carry the baby home.

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 Lotor: Mark Hildreth Maahox: Ron Halder Sven: Alan Mariott

"Blue, I'm the lifeguard on duty here, and you've already broken five of my seven beach rules." -- Lance

"It's almost like the castle of lions already knows this person."

"She probably didn't want a Voltcom tan."

"Besides, I've been spending so much time enhancing Haggarium's power." -- Maahox

"Finding a cure seemed a bit like a conflict of interest." -- Maahox

"Besides, this way you'll always remember me as cool." -- Lance

"You're the true pilot of Blue Lion." -- Sven

"I'm too far gone. This is my home now." -- Sven

"It's a team, Lance! We go!" -- Keith

"He fights with the heart of a lion. And the accent of a viking."

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.

The Voltcom is a joke, a clue and a solution in this episode, and the script gets an unusual amount of mileage out of making it all three. The joke comes first, with Keith, riding behind Daniel on a jet ski before the Blue Lion is even stolen, delivering the day's lesson that a cadet never takes his Voltcom off. Someone later observes that Allura probably did not want a Voltcom tan. By the time a character sighs "So many Voltcom lessons today", the episode has noticed what it is doing.

Then the joke turns into evidence. The thief has blocked every identification tag, and the Castle of Lions behaves "almost like" it already knows him. He has also bypassed the Voltcom remote start sequence and taken Allura's Blue Lion key, which she left behind along with her Voltcom. "This dude is old school," someone says, and the description fits a pilot from before the gadget. In a series about a new generation inheriting the seats, that points back at an earlier one.

The earlier pilot is Sven. Once he appears he is written with more care than a man who spends the middle of the episode ambushing and freezing people has any right to. He is infected with something Haggarium-based and says he had no choice, but his loyalty is split between a cure and his baby son. [1] Maahox is the right villain for that arrangement, and he gets the best line of the episode, delivered as a cheerful excuse: "Besides, I've been spending so much time enhancing Haggarium's power. Finding a cure seemed a bit like a conflict of interest." The deal for the Blue Lion was never going to be honoured; the real prize, he explains, is the baby. [2]

The scene that makes the episode, though, is a small one. The Lions are failing in the cold and the Red Lion cockpit is growing frost around Lance and Daniel. Lance, whom Sven has called a hothead, announces that he will transfer his Voltcom's energy into Daniel's, and Daniel points out that Lance will freeze instantly. Lance says he is not giving him a choice, and adds: "Besides, this way you'll always remember me as cool." Daniel, shivering, replies that he will remember him as lame. It is a joke made at the one moment when a joke is the only thing that makes the gesture bearable. The episode has spent its first act bruising Lance's ego on a beach, and here it lets him pay that back without a speech, and good for Lance!

From there the episode is rigged to say goodbye. Sven rejoins the Blue Lion and Voltron forms. But the Lion starts to reject him because of the infection, and he hands the seat back to Allura: "You're the true pilot of Blue Lion." Told that they might be able to treat him on Arus, he answers, "I'm too far gone. This is my home now." Keith does what a commander has to do and overrules an objection: "It's a team, Lance! We go!" The final scene is as warm as a farewell can be, with the baby delivered to the nanny who raised Allura and Sven added to the Castle's Hall of Heroes. Even so, our last look at Sven is two small figures fighting on a frozen cliff.

The weakness is the villain's half. Lotor arrives in the snow and is told to leave the planet as "Prince Lotor", which gets him to insist that he is King Lotor. The Mastodon Robeast is introduced with an elephant joke and given almost no fight before the plot moves on to Allura inside a tank and Sven on his ledge. Everything with real stakes has happened by the time the Lions combine. Voltron here is a delivery system for a goodbye. It is a fair trade, but it is not a fight! [3] Sven is still given an ending rather than a reset, and yet when someone says as the Lions form that the original Voltron Force rides again, we think the episode has earned the line.

1 ^ Nobody in the dialogue says "ghost", despite the title. The nearest we get is a translucent figure shimmering in an icy corridor at 8:46, just before Sven's bearded face appears at 8:49.

2 ^ The pursuit reaches Krydor at all only because a backup tracking beacon had gone unnoticed by the thief, a detail mentioned once, at 5:40.

3 ^ Keith's order to stay in the Lions, "No exceptions", is given at 7:05; Allura is out of hers on foot by 7:19.

1. Sven is a one-episode guest this season, though he gets name-checked earlier. In Rogue Trip a kid's Voltron collection includes "a fantastic duplicate of Sven's uniform", which draws the reply "It's not a duplicate. It's the real deal." Here the real Sven finally turns up.
2. This aired on Sunday, November 27, 2011, Thanksgiving weekend, and it was the last new episode for 94 days. The next one, Gary, did not arrive until Wednesday, February 29, 2012, which is leap day. It is also the lone Sunday entry in a run that was otherwise Thursdays before the break and Wednesdays after it.
3. The ending closes a joke that has been running all episode. Someone says "I'd recognize that goofy accent anywhere" the moment Sven speaks, a briefing on Krydor mentions "a bunch of Viking-like people" who used to live there, and the last scene rounds it off with "He fights with the heart of a lion." followed by "And the accent of a viking."
4. In the first scene after the titles, a cadet argues that the rescue "has to be worth some solo flight time in the Black Lion" and is told "We'll negotiate later." Before the team leaves for Krydor comes "I'd like to reopen negotiations", which earns a seat in the Red Lion as backup for Lance and nothing more. By the finale, Black, Daniel is flying the Black Lion for real.
5. Sven's arrival makes for a crowded Voltron: the cockpit panels show six faces (Hunk, Keith, Pidge, Lance, Daniel and Sven) for five Lions, because Daniel is still riding along with Lance. Before the combine comes the warning "If you take one wrong step as Voltron, Hunk will kick that blue leg right off." and the reply "You got that right."
6. The order is to "stay in the Lions the whole time" with "No exceptions", and Allura is out on foot within seconds, which earns "She's always had her own interpretation of no exceptions." She does it again in Roots of Evil, where someone complains that she "abandoned Blue to save that farmer".
7. When Sven calls him "Prince Lotor", Lotor snaps back "I am King Lotor!" It is the only time we found anyone in the season's dialogue calling him a prince, and the opening narration insists on "The Drule King Lotor has returned" anyway.
8. The Voltcom lectures pile up: "Another reason to never leave your Voltcom behind", then "This is why you have to remember to recharge it every night", and finally "So many Voltcom lessons today." The charging station already got a mention back in Defenders of the Universe, where someone asks why there are "voltcoms missing from the charging station".
9. Mid-battle, someone asks "Where's Allura?" and is told "I don't think he can hear you, Hunk. He's on an elephant." The correction arrives right behind it: "It's actually a Mastodon Robeast."

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