The Army Of One

Lotor decides that only he can defeat Voltron and arrives on Arus with an army of identical copies of himself, while the Force is secretly preparing a coronation party for Allura. The copies change into purple Haggarium forms, Voltron is overwhelmed on a gray tower, and Daniel, still affected by Haggarium, fights the real Lotor in the castle hall with his gold gauntlets.

Vince realises the real Lotor cannot bear another Lotor taking credit for the kill, and tells the team to throw the fight. It works, but Lotor releases a Predator Robeast from coffins as insurance. Pidge gives up the Green Lion to Vince, Daniel passes Vince his speed, and a supercharged Boomerang Shield finishes the monster. Allura returns to the ruined party, which becomes Vince's welcome to the Voltron Force.

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: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Maahox / Coran: Ron Halder Lotor: Mark Hildreth

"At this point, no one can help Lotor defeat Voltron except Lotor himself."

"I changed the alarm to an olfactory system with different smells for different kinds of emergencies." -- Pidge

"That's a lot of Lotors."

"Planning a party? How fitting." -- Lotor

"I'd never let those copies destroy Voltron! That honor belongs to me!" -- Lotor

"I'm Lotor! The glory is mine!" -- one of the Lotors

"Just throw the fight!" -- Vince

"Not to be argumentative, but that sounds a little completely and utterly crazy!"

"This had better not be for me." -- Allura

"I know giving up the seat couldn't have been easy."

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.

Who gets to land the last blow is a quieter question than whether it gets landed, and "The Army of One" keeps coming back to it. Lotor's problem in this episode is vanity of an unusually literal kind. The cold open has the line that no one can help Lotor defeat Voltron except Lotor himself, and Lotor, being Lotor, takes this as a design brief! By the time his black ship sets down before the gold archway, a rank of identical Lotors in gray armor is lined up on the grass. A pilot sums it up as "a lot of Lotors."

The idea underneath is that credit is the one thing a villain cannot share. The copies shout "For Lotor!" and then, as soon as there are enough of them to disagree, "For my glory!" "Your glory!" "I'm Lotor! The glory is mine!" The real Lotor, accused in the castle hall of not caring who gets slaughtered, even if it is him, a hundred times over, answers like a man who has been insulted: "No! I'd never let those copies destroy Voltron! That honor belongs to me!" Vince reads this correctly. His plan is "Just throw the fight!" It works because the one enemy who will not tolerate another Lotor taking the kill is the first Lotor. [1] Where another script would let Voltron simply outweigh the army, this one beats it with the ego of the man who made it. We are glad of it.

That sets up the second subject, which is who gets the Green Lion. Vince starts the episode as the jealous cadet, wishing aloud that he had an aunt about to become queen and a Lion to hand over. The script spends the rest of it quietly earning him the seat. He has helped the Lions build up a resistance to Haggarium blasters and has the idea that wins the middle of the fight. Daniel lends him speed over their telepathic link so that the supercharged Boomerang Shield can finish the Predator Robeast. Pidge's part is what lifts it, but he does not get a speech! When Vince says he would feel more confident if Pidge could trade seats with him, the team seizes on it. The closing exchange is practical rather than wounded: "I know giving up the seat couldn't have been easy." "No, but the team will be much stronger with you as the Green Lion pilot." We prefer an engineer who says he will be more useful in the control room to a hero nobly stepping aside.

The standout scene is the party, which is also the best joke. The Force has spent the day trying to keep a surprise coronation hidden from a princess who, they say, hates "froofy stuff," with Coran stuck on the thankless job of keeping her away. When Allura gets back to a party that has just been hastily patched up, she says, "This had better not be for me." The reply is a stammer, and the stammer becomes "Welcome to the Voltron Force." The coronation party turns into a promotion party in one cut. [2]

The weakness is that the army the episode is named for fades from the dialogue as soon as it has served the argument. Once Lotor is lured down, the copies are barely mentioned, but the Predator Robeast released from his coffins arrives as a second climax. The Force calls it the one Robeast they have never beaten, but the episode disposes of it with a single combination of Green Center, borrowed speed and a shield.

Daniel's Haggarium trouble surfaces briefly, as Lotor sneers that the stuff in his veins is making him reckless and Daniel insists he is in control. It is a good hook; we hope it comes back. The episode ends with Larmina in Blue, Vince in Green, Pidge at the console. It closes on a question about which of them will give up a Lion next.

1 ^ The subtitle track mangles several names here, rendering Pidge as "Pitch" (at 16:17, 16:59 and 18:07), Larmina as "Laramina" and Coran as "Koran". The plan itself is announced at 12:46 and acted on at 13:01.

2 ^ Allura is away from the castle for the fight and Coran covers for her return call at 11:15; her arrival at 19:21 and the welcome at 19:59 bracket the clean-up gag.

1. The Predator Robeast is a rematch the team has been dreading. They call it "the only Robeast we haven't been able to beat", and last time, in Predator Robeast, the Blazing Sword snapped and Green Center was ruled out with "Not without Vince!" This time they go green right away, with the Boomerang Shield from Inside the Music, and it is not enough: "Going green didn't work!" until Pidge and Vince swap seats.
2. "Welcome to the Voltron Force." is a rare line. In the first season those exact words are heard only at the end of Roots of Evil, here, and Deceive and Conquer, which aired on three straight Wednesdays (April 4, 11 and 18, 2012) and promoted Larmina, Vince and then Daniel to full pilot. Fans have pointed out that the three episodes each handle the promotion in a different way.
3. The title is a joke about Lotor's ego. He announces that "no one can help Lotor defeat Voltron except Lotor himself", produces an endless parade of Lotors, and then can't bear the thought of a copy getting the win: "That honor belongs to me!" The winning plan is to exploit exactly that, which is why it starts with "Just throw the fight!"
4. Lotor is already losing patience with Maahox in the cold open, which previews the next episode's firing. He grumbles "With you, nothing ever comes to fruition" and later admits "I need a little insurance." The insurance is a stack of Robeast coffins, and Lotor is smug about it after being warned that one of the copies might land the killing blow: "So it's a good thing I anticipated Maahox's incompetence."
5. When the copies change into "previous Haggarium forms", the purple, bare-chested, spotted Lotor is the mutated look he had back in Joyride To Doom. It is a nice bit of continuity, and a reminder of how far back this Haggarium business goes.
6. Pidge has replaced the Castle alarm with smells, so the Lotor warning is toasted marshmallows ("Pidge hates marshmallows."). The tinkering gets a second laugh at the climax, "You keep upgrading the system! No one can keep up!", and a pun to sign off: "I'll be able to upgrade things until the cats come home." The habit carries straight into the finale, Black, which opens on his newest upgrade.
7. The secret party is for Allura's coronation ("Every queen of Eris has to have a coronation. It's tradition."), and the prep work is a grind: somebody had to plant a garden of the official planetary flower, which is "surprisingly prickly". When Allura walks in and says "This had better not be for me", the stammered answer, "It's for... Uh...", quietly turns it into a welcome for Vince instead.
8. The closing line sets a roster puzzle: "Just one cadet left, and our three lions. So the real question is, which one of us is gonna give his up?" The answer comes a week later in Deceive and Conquer, where Keith hands Daniel the Black Lion, and gets walked back in Black.

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