Roots of Evil

Allura is torn between the Voltron Force and the duties of an Erujan ruler, and she keeps putting off a hooded farmer named Barmy who has come to the People's Forum. When a quake opens the ground under Barmy's farm, the Force finds a Haggarium-fed tree whose roots are burrowing toward the core of Arus. Daniel and Larmina, left to guard the castle, follow Barmy home and find the tree for themselves.

Daniel's eyes glow violet and his gold gauntlets flare in the tree's presence, which the team traces to the Haggarium he caught in the cocoon. Voltron fights the roots in Yellow Center and Blue Center forms while Allura leaves her Lion to save Barmy. Afterwards Vince and Larmina agree to keep Daniel's condition quiet, and Allura announces that she will become Queen of Arus and give up the Blue Lion.

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

Keith: Giles Panton Lance / Commander Cossack: Andrew Francis Allura: Ashleigh Ball Pidge / King Alfor: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Maahox / Farmer Barmy: Ron Halder Lotor: Mark Hildreth

"Soon's too late when the yim yams are ripe for reaping." -- Barmy

"My farm. Called Barmy's Farm. Because that's my name." -- Barmy

"But I can't be queen as long as I'm a member of the Voltron Force." -- Allura

"If I'd given that farmer the time he deserved, this never would've happened." -- Allura

"I can't believe that you abandoned Blue to save that farmer."

"I'd let him down too many times. I wasn't gonna do it again." -- Allura

"Allura, you can't help everyone. You can't be everywhere at once."

"Allura's not here right now. Please leave a message and I'll be sure to get it to her as soon as I kick this tree stump." -- Larmina, in the Blue Lion

"Wow. I sound like my aunt." -- Larmina

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.

Allura has two jobs and keeps failing at the smaller one in public. The People's Forum is, as she is reminded, an Erujan tradition in which the humblest citizen may seek help from the royal family. The person who steps forward is a hooded farmer named Barmy who has been trying to meet her for weeks. She tells him she will help him soon. He answers that "Soon's too late when the yim yams are ripe for reaping," which is the funniest line in the episode and also its plot!

The episode comes down to a person who is needed in two places and will fail somebody in one of them. The setup is generous to everyone. Allura is called to the control room before Barmy has finished explaining, but the script never pretends that call was wrong. Her father's hologram suggests that her people deserve a full-time queen rather than a part-time princess, and she answers that she cannot be queen while she is in the Voltron Force. Everything after that is an argument for letting her decide.

The cold open complicates her guilt in a way she cannot see. Maahox is already showing Lotor seeds laced with Haggarium; Barmy's own account, of a fella who showed up with what he called magic seeds, is the tree's origin story. [1] So when Keith tries to console her and she says, "If I'd given that farmer the time he deserved, this never would've happened," she is wrong about the cause and right about the kind. The seeds came from a stranger, but a farmer with a real complaint was put off at her door. She has decided that she will not be the person who turns people away. We watch the episode give her room to act on that.

What she does is the best beat in the episode. When the Lions are fighting in the roots, Allura leaves the Blue Lion to rescue Barmy herself, and someone later says it out loud: "I can't believe that you abandoned Blue to save that farmer." Her answer is short and has no speech attached: "I'd let him down too many times. I wasn't gonna do it again." The empty seat produces the second good scene. A nervous voice is asked to Form Blue Center, hesitates with "Wait! I'm not...", and then pushes her luck, calls Form Titanic, and covers her nerves with a joke: "Allura's not here right now." Larmina was told early on to stay and help Barmy, and she did not think that was fair; now she is the one holding the Lion! [2]

Elsewhere the episode is serviceable and sometimes fun. The Blue Lion's icy breath freezing a wall of roots is a well-staged piece of cave combat, and the old tunnels where civilians waited out the Zarkonian Wars give the setting some weight. Daniel's violet eyes and gold gauntlets, and the explanation that the tree's Haggarium is triggering flare-ups from his time in the cocoon, are handled with an appealing lightness. Yet "Major self-restraint" and the landscaping jokes keep the real danger at arm's length.

The one real weakness is the stakes. At 8:41 we are told the root system is burrowing toward the core of Arus and that the Haggarium would rip the planet apart. The threat is then closed by a single remark about a force field that should keep the roots from the core. Vince clenching his fist at 16:27 is the only evidence we get of how it was done. A planet-sized peril deserved a bigger finish, but that is hard to give in a slot that also has to fit a Blue Lion handover.

The ending settles Allura's question. Standing before a set of double doors, Allura says she will serve her people as Queen of Arus. Then she walks down the staircase of the hall of portraits toward Larmina, with a welcome to the Voltron Force for the new Blue Lion pilot. Someone is left asking whether one of them is next. It is a quiet way to retire a member of the Force.

1 ^ Barmy's story about the fella and the magic seeds arrives at 5:54, a good while after the cold open's "these globes contain seeds laced with Haggarium"; the episode never says outright that they are the same seeds, but it does not need to.

2 ^ The subtitle track renders the order at 18:49 as "It's up to you, Alura", but Larmina is on screen in the Blue Lion cockpit at 18:55 and the speaker's own hesitation settles it.

1. Castle Doom is named for the first time in the cold open, where Lotor keeps Maahox on for "your aggravatingly complex construction plan for Castle Doom" and for finding a way to destroy Voltron. It becomes a point of friction in Deceive and Conquer, where Lotor sacks Maahox over it, and in Black it turns into a giant Robeast.
2. "Welcome to the Voltron Force" closes the episode as Larmina takes the Blue Lion, and the same line ends the next two: Vince gets it in The Army Of One and Daniel in Deceive and Conquer. The last words here, "So... I guess one of us is next?", are a cadet counting himself in, and in The Army Of One one of them grumbles, "I just always figured I'd be the first cadet to make Lion Pilot."
3. Allura's talks with her father make a three-step arc. In Clash of the Lions she tells him, "I feel like I've abandoned them, Father." Here, after "Yet another day has passed with my failure to address the needs of the Erujan people," he suggests "a full-time queen instead of a part-time Princess", and in Black he says goodbye: "Now that you are queen, my time with you is over."
4. The cold open answers a worry that has been building since Crossed Signals, where Maahox warns "Your Haggarium supply is depleted." Now he offers globes of seeds: "Harvesting them will provide vast quantities of dark energy, which will make you even more powerful." Barmy's story, "this fella shows up and gives me what he said was magic seeds", fits, and in the last fight he is seen reaching into his seed sack just before purple pods start bursting.
5. Daniel's Haggarium infection shows up as glowing violet eyes, a look that returns in The Army Of One. The line explaining it, "Daniel was infected with Haggarium when he was cocooned with that spider thingy," most likely points back to the cocoon that trapped Voltron, and Daniel's mind, in I, Voltron.
6. Larmina's "What the heck. I'm gonna push my luck. Form Titanic!" is the only time any of the 26 episodes has someone call out that attack by name. Asked where she learned those moves, she answers, "Allura's not here right now. Please leave a message..." In Dark Blue it was Vince who stood in as the head of Blue Center, so that seat keeps getting borrowed.
7. The mind-link gag keeps going. Daniel's way out of a conversation is blocked with "You don't get to escape with your weird telepathy thing," and later Vince tells Pidge, "I just got a text message from Daniel." Larmina is in on the secret thanks to the closing question of Crossed Signals.
8. Two gags get a rerun. "I've got a career in landscaping if this whole... defending the universe thing doesn't work out" echoes "why don't we do some landscaping so we can see in here?" from Defenders of the Universe (and Lotor's cold-open grumble about gardening). Larmina's "Wow. I sound like my aunt" follows "My aunt always tells me that a good day starts with a good meal", and goes back to "you're sounding more and more like my aunt" in The Hunkyard.
9. Nicktoons aired this on Wednesday, April 4, 2012, three weeks before the April 25 finale. A fan commenter on a Voltron blog noticed that this episode and the next two each move a cadet into a Lion in a different way: Larmina is handed Blue, Vince swaps into Green, and Daniel inherits Black.

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