#vld 7x03 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kcwcommentary · 6 years ago

Text

VLD7x03 – “The Way Forward”

7x03 – “The Way Forward”

The end of this episode gives us an explanation for the time skip, but there’s a big problem: That explanation contains a giant plot hole.

This episode is another absolute mess of direction. The writing doesn’t help either. Main characters are given nothing to do while side characters are given the spotlight. The pace of the narrative makes much of the episode feel like it’s spinning its wheels. Character motivations are erratic at best. Most of the episode is either uninteresting or confusing.

The episode starts with the Galra cruiser in space, letting the writers skip over having to think through the logistics of how where the last episode ended got us to the point that this episode begins. There’s a shot of a Galra cruiser main cannon sitting in a cargo bay. And then finally with the third shot of the episode, we’re given some context to be able to orient ourselves with the narrative: The Lions are disabled in the ship’s cargo bay. Somehow, slamming the Lions into the ground with a tractor beam at the end of last episode didn’t just pin them down but also totally knocked them out. Somehow, the Galra were able to remove the Paladins from the Lions since the Paladins have been put in the brig. How any of that happened is not explained.

Lance is the only one trying to examine their cell. Everyone else is just sitting or standing around doing nothing. I guess she’s supposed to be behind where the camera would be, but after a few shots of the whole group, suddenly in the reverse shot, Krolia is standing near the door. It was weird and made it look like she came out of nowhere, or like she had been forgotten to be included in the group in the previous shots. Lance kicks the walls, it hurts, and it’s played for humor. It’s not funny. “Will someone shut him up?” Krolia asks. How about Krolia shut up. I am not interested in her. Don’t introduce a new minor character, have the narrative give her time and prominence while not giving any to most of the main characters, and then have her demand one of the main characters to shut up. It’s obnoxious.

“There’s only one guard patrolling out there,” she says. The visuals don’t match the dialog because the guard isn’t patrolling, he’s just standing there guarding the cell. Patrolling and standing guard are two significantly different activities.

Hunk then asks, “What happened to Coran?” Sadly, I hadn’t even noticed that he was missing. Krolia says, “He must have managed to hide when we were captured.” Since Krolia had to have heard Coran yell that he was joining her to fight the Galra who landed on the Black Lion’s back last episode, that Krolia then came back in the Lion and never wondered where Coran was does nothing to make me like her. “At least we have one ally out there still able to fight for us,” Allura says. I don’t know if there were some technical difficulties recording Allura’s line, but the sound of her voice has an unusually high amount of hiss.

What happens next makes me angry. Pidge reacts, saying, “Are you saying our fate rests in Coran’s hands?” There’s a supposedly humorous camera zoom out from the group, several characters have a supposedly humorous dejected facial expression, there’s supposedly humorous deflated music, and Pidge follows up by saying, “I will help you look for that passage.” This moment is the show trying to be funny by saying that Coran is an incapable person and how absurd it is that they all have to rely upon him. This infuriates me. Coran has spent this entire series working harder than nearly everyone, taking care of all these people. He’s the one who was constantly making sure the Castle Ship was functioning, often with no one helping him. He has always been depicted as someone who is fundamentally reliable and capable. And now for an attempt at humor, the episode assassinates his character.

So, Coran getting trapped behind the door on the Black Lion last episode is paid off in this episode. I’m glad that it’s getting paid off, that it didn’t just happen for no reason last episode, but it still doesn’t work for me. Last episode, his getting trapped was played for humor, but it happened quickly and was never referenced again in that episode. I now wonder if Coran’s quick, “I’ll help too!” and his running off after Krolia only to get stuck behind these doors was added really late in the production of that episode. It felt so out of place then and had no narrative impact for that episode. It annoys me that there were four people on the Black Lion other than Coran, and none of them realized he was missing once he got trapped, none of them heard him hollering for help, and none of them thought to look for him.

I briefly want to talk about how big the inside of the Lions are shown to be now. We’ve had six seasons of these Lions, and while we could assume there was at least a little more space inside than just the cockpit, I don’t remember the show ever showing any of it. The fact that it was never properly established that there was all this space, all these rooms, until now when everyone’s having to live in the Lions, it honestly kind of feels like a retcon.

Coran trying to get out of the room he’s trapped in is played for humor. He’s given a long comedy monologue. It’s funnier than the earlier character assassination, at least. Unfortunately, I don’t feel prepared by the episode for a big humor scene like this. I really want to like it more because all the comical stuff Coran is doing in this scene is decently written, especially his freakout over the sound of the mice coming into the room, but I’m still offended by how the narrative through Pidge demeaned Coran in the prior scene.

The mice somehow open the doors. Given that they’re mice, they couldn’t have physically pried the doors open (Coran, being an Altean, would be really strong, so if the doors could be pried open then he would have been able to do so). The Black Lion has no power currently, so the mice couldn’t have opened the doors by hitting a button on a control panel. The episode does not explain how the mice opened the door. I don’t know why the writers think it’s okay to have things happen without explanation like this. I know the intention is that it be read as funny, but it just doesn’t work for me.

Also, the wolf is hanging out, laying right at the other side of the door. He’s not shown to be laying there in the establishing shots when the camera first starts outside the room before cutting to Coran inside. He’s also just laying there, like he’s been sleeping right there against the door. The space wolf is supposed to be the childhood dog Keith never got to have, but my experience with dogs suggests he would not just be laying there if he heard Coran yelling on the other side of the door and banging on it. The space wolf has also demonstrated way higher than standard dog level intelligence, having rearranged the passengers via teleportation and having attacked the Galra fighter pilots with teleportation last episode, so the idea that he’d just lay here against the door and sleep rather than helping Coran get out of the room is not plausible. Also, if the Galra went into the Lions and captured everyone in order to restrain them and take them to the brig, then did none of them see the wolf?

For that matter, when the Galra broke into the Lions to capture everyone, did the Paladins just let themselves be captured? The last we saw of the Paladins, they were all conscious, so it’s not that the Galra grabbed them while they were unconscious. I can’t imagine the Paladins would get captured without putting up a fight, so with Keith, Shiro, and Krolia here on the Black Lion, was there not a loud fight that Coran would have heard? Are we supposed to assume that he just stayed quiet during that fight? (I think that would be out of character for him.) Are we to assume that the space wolf would not come to Keith’s aid in that fight? Why is the space wolf sleeping here against the door right now instead of trying to find Keith?

So much of this does not make sense.

Also, the show giving this hero moment to the mice reminds me again, especially since we’re in season seven now, that the show wrote more investment and importance into the mice than they did Adam. The idea that the EPs and writers considered Adam to be of such importance that killing him would reveal how significant the invasion of Earth is just isn’t plausible considering how little time they gave him in the show. They solely derived that supposed importance out of him being Shiro’s same-sex “significant other.” In other words, the whole reason they chose to kill Adam is because he was supposed to be important to Shiro. They killed Adam specifically because he was gay.

Coran lifts himself out of the room. Uh… when did the other room have a lower floor than this room? Coran says the space wolf as injured, and he did apparently get injured off-screen last episode. The wolf had been with Pidge in the Green Lion, not here in the Black Lion, so when did he come into the Black Lion? I assume he was looking for Keith? Still, if he saw the Galra taking Team Voltron away in cuffs, wouldn’t he have come to Keith’s aid? If he’s here at the door because Coran is the only one in any of the Lions, why wouldn’t he have just teleported into the room to be with Coran? None of the wolf’s behavior makes any sense whatsoever.

Coran and the mice are outside Black. The mice attack the one singular Galra guard, causing him to freak out and drop his rifle. Coran then slips off of Black, falls, and lands with his crotch in the Galra’s face. Let me say that again: The show has Coran (accidentally, but still) smash his crotch into another character’s face. Getting hit in the face by Coran’s crotch somehow knocks the Galra unconscious, and Coran strips him and puts on his uniform.

Ezor is sitting by herself, looking sad, when Zethrid enters the room to report that they’ve got the Paladins and the Lions secure. Ezor says, “If Voltron survived, do you think that means Lotor is still alive?” Zethrid says that they’re going to find out, and Ezor expresses worry about what Lotor would do to them now if they did find him.

Zethrid then says, “I will always take care of you, Ezor.” She kneels close to Ezor and continues, “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.” We then get a little bit of context when Zethrid says, “We just took down a Galra cruiser, and we have the mighty Paladins of Voltron locked in our brig.” If we go by this line, then their being in control of this ship is a very new development for them. It makes me curious how they got the miscellaneous Galra who are fighting for them since the way Zethrid is talking about having to capture this cruiser suggests that Zethrid and Ezor are acting rogue and not as part of the Galra Empire. How did they get followers to help them run this ship and pilot all the fighter craft?

The moment has some romantic undertones, and they’re apparently supposed to be in a relationship here. The episode ending with the two of them seemingly blown up, especially given that the show in a few episodes blows up Adam, made this season look like it revealed four characters as gay and killed three of them by explosion. Of course, season eight has Ezor and Zethrid somehow survive being blown up without any explanation as to how they survived, but without season eight, season seven killing three out of four queer characters is infuriating.

And then Ezor gleefully says, “Let’s go torture some prisoners,” and Zethrid responds, “That’s my girl.” This bothers me on a whole different level. In the very end of the show, Ezor and Zethrid have joined Keith in the Blades of Marmora doing humanitarian work. While there’s a little content with Zethrid next season (and technically Ezor shows up weirdly for a brief moment but never does literally anything), the show does not give any reason for us to consider these two to be redeemed enough that Keith is working alongside. Ezor and Zethrid’s personalities here are villainous, talking eagerly about torturing people. That is not heroic, so it’s unearned for them to be reclassified as heroes working with Keith in the end.

Coran is sneaking through the ship, trying to fake a conversation with a couple of Galra. He doesn’t do well. Out of nowhere, Axca jumps out of a vent and attacks the two Galra.

Back at the cell (I’m surprised that the Galra are keeping all of the Paladins locked in one cell), two Galra open the door. And we see the butts of two characters walk in. There’s a dramatic fast pan of the camera to the shocked-expression of the Paladins that is unintentionally funny because the show thinks that there’s some big dramatic reveal happening here. It’s like we’re supposed to feel surprised because we’re shown the Paladins looking surprised, but because we already know that it’s Ezor and Zethrid, there is literally no surprise in this scene. This moment is given dramatic tonality, camerawork, and music, but there is no actual drama in the reveal.

Lance says, “Hey, you’re the ones Lotor shot into space.” So, we’re supposed to believe that somehow Lance, while in the Red Lion, was able to not just see that Lotor ejected people into space in 6x06 “All Good Things,” but that he could specifically see the identities of who those people were? This is not believable.

Hunk, trying to see if being diplomatic will help, says to Ezor and Zethrid, “I’m glad you survived.” Ezor responds, “I’m glad you survived too. It’s no fun torturing a dead person.” (And again, we’re supposed to forgive them by the end of the series.)

Zethrid demands to know, “Where have you been all this time, and what happened to Lotor!?” Shiro’s confused, and Ezor says, “We’re talking about your little disappearing act.” Zethrid asks, “How did you survive that explosion?” Hunk counters with, “Don’t you know, you were there.”

Hunk does bring up a good point, how did Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid survive the expanding tear in reality and the explosion used to close the tear in 6x07 “Defender of All Universes”? They did not have any ship, at most having a jetpack built into their suits. They couldn’t have gotten far enough from it all to have escaped.

Keith tells them that Lotor is dead in the quintessence field, and Ezor says, “Yeah, that doesn’t really add up, why aren’t you dead?” How does that not make sense to her?

This is apparently supposed to feel like some really tense moment in the episode, but the pace of the episode feels stalled, like the episode is stuck in mud spinning its wheels. Zethrid asks the same questions again.

Meanwhile, Axca and Coran are continuing through the ship without any explanation as to what they’re doing, what their goal is. They’re both hiding behind some of the ship’s structure, but Axca acts surprised to see Coran when she turns around. He asks her what she’s doing here. She says she picked up the signal Team Voltron was sending to Earth and assumes that that’s how Ezor and Zethrid were able to find them. That makes a better explanation for these Galra ships showing up last episode than how last episode leaves us to think they were hanging around waiting. Coran asks Axca why she’s helping them, and she responds, “We don’t have time for that now.” This is such fake drama. She might not have time to explain everything but explain something at least. Something as minor like, I thought Lotor was different than most other Galra, that he could change things, but I was wrong, if things are going to change, Voltron has to make it happen. Having a character say they don’t have time to explain anything doesn’t create tension.

Axca wants to break the Paladins out and help them get away. The show continues to have the Lions be conveniently low-powered to justify not using them as the super advanced technology warships that they are. Axca says they need to create a distraction and establish an escape route. Coran points out the giant cannon that was shown in that conspicuous, yet oddly located, shot at the beginning of the episode. Somehow this cannon, despite just sitting in the hangar, is functional. This isn’t a hand weapon, this is a major cannon that would have to be hooked up to specific ship’s systems in order to function. Those systems would not be in the hangar. This is totally contrived.

Somehow if they blast a hole in the hangar door, it’ll cause other doors to seal, and keep the Galra from being able to get to any fighter craft. Axca tells Coran to free the Paladins, find their helmets and weapons, and that she’ll blow open the hole so that “you and your Lions will be sucked out into space.” I don’t know why this misunderstanding so persistent in the writing of space shows, but the pressure differential does not result in being “sucked out into space,” you are blown out. I know most people don’t care about the difference, but there is very much a distinction.

Zethrid picks Pidge for their “first victim,” to use Ezor’s words. Lance screams and is animated to look in a way that is really jarring. I’m not saying that he can’t come to Pidge’s defense, but the tonal shift that happens is too severe and too sudden. Ezor knocks Lance down easily. No one else really does anything. Keith takes half a step forward, but that’s it. Shiro does literally nothing, despite our having seen how fiercely he’ll fight to protect his people before, like way back in 1x07 “Tears of the Balmera” when he fought Sendak while having both his hands tied behind his back.

Ezor uses her sock head to lasso Pidge and pull her to her. I still really do not like Ezor’s design.

The Galra that Coran knocked out with his crotch regains consciousness, sees that he’s in his underwear, and alerts the ship to “an intruder in hangar one.” There’s a shot of the hangar, and the Lions are rearranged in the setting to now be directly next to the cannon. The shot of the cannon at the beginning of the episode did not include the Lions, so this is an animation inconsistency. Similar to last episode, this one also feels like it was poorly directed. It shouldn’t be surprising then that this episode is the first solo directing work that Rie Koga has done for the show.

Galra show up almost immediately and start shooting at Axca. Why they think she’s the intruder, despite her being Galra, I don’t know. The writers wanted her to be attacked, so she’s being attacked. I guess it’s nothing more than that. This show has never been one that was good at having characters behave logically.

Coran, lacking a helmet, uses the Altean shapeshifting ability to turn his skin purple. A door opens and someone in a full suit that looks like a person-sized Robeast runs into Coran. This show has not given us any kind of explanation as to who all these people are, why they’re following Zethrid and Ezor. So much of what’s in this episode feels so out of place. Coran tries to punch the guy in the suit, hurts his hand, and they walk down the hall and doors shut behind them. Are the doors that shut supposed to be the same doors that opened? The doors that opened were to the side of a hall, looking like doors to a room, but these doors that close are in the middle of a hallway. Again, I don’t know if these poor logistics are the result of bad directing, bad storyboarding, or both, but the episode lacks clarity and precision.

Between fighting Galra and pushing buttons on a display on her wrist, Axca does whatever. The cannon powers up and begins to blast and then the episode cuts to Ezor still holding Pidge by the collar when the ship announces a hull breach in the hangar.

The plan was supposed to be that Axca would have the cannon blast open the hangar once Team Voltron were in their Lions so that they would be “sucked out into space.” No one is in any of the Lions, so why is she blowing stuff up now? Did the writer forget what he wrote Axca to say in her describing the plan?

Ezor, Zethrid, and the other Galra run out of the cell to handle the hangar issue, the cell door slamming shut behind them. Krolia gives everyone their plan: Wait by the door to overwhelm the guard the next time the door opens. It feels absolutely contrived because of course that plan is being established to be undermined. I thought maybe the door would open and it’d be Coran and they’d all jump him, but no, the door opens and it’s the mice. Somehow the mice knocked out the guard and opened the door. When the show writes the mice as being more competent than literally everyone else, something is wrong.

The show spends too much time having the mice tell Allura what’s been happening and her translating for everyone. Everyone just standing around in the hallway watching Allura talk to the mice is totally unreasonable given the situation they’re all in. The mice even tell Allura that Axca is helping them, and that gets Keith’s attention.

Coran is being beaten up by the guy in the armor, who is knocked out by a single punch from Allura, who used her shapeshifting to grow larger. Everyone standing around with a smile on their face while she returns to normal size is so weird. They are all trying to escape imprisonment, but they look like they’re about to wish Coran happy birthday or something.

Keith asks Coran where Axca is, and Coran replies, “I don’t know. Where am I?” He’s bruised and one of his eyes is swollen shut, and clearly he’s having cognitive difficulties. Shiro responds to all this by asking Coran, “Are you okay?” Clearly he isn’t! What is this writing?

Ezor and Zethrid are running down a hallway and look out a window to see the Lions have been blown out of the hangar. Axca scoots through the door into the hall just as it closes. The force of the air is enough to blow the large, metal warships that are the Lions out into space, but Axca is somehow able to move against that force in order to get through this door? That’s not how physics works.

There’s no explanation for why Zethrid and Ezor don’t like Axca now, even though they were all treated the same by Lotor the last we saw them. Ezor explains Axca’s behavior as being motivated by being attracted to Keith. It would be nice if male writers would write female characters without their actions being motivated by being attracted to a guy. Ugh.

This is another moment that reminds me, like several before, why I don’t like these characters. Lotor’s generals were introduced and for several episodes were really interesting. The fact that they’re half-Galra, and thus were subject to discrimination by Galra who believed in Galra-supremacy, was interesting. The fact that Axca, Zethrid, Ezor, and Narti were all female was interesting. But then, these characters got lost in a constant shifting of loyalties. Who they were willing to work for or against changed at the flip of a switch. It made them fundamentally inconsistent, their motivations being effectively nonexistent since they changed at any given moment. There is no core to who they are.

There’s a shot of the Paladins’ helmets and bayards, and the shot includes an animation error. There’s a pink bayard on the table. Allura, despite wearing pink in her Paladin armor, weilds the blue bayard. The bayard that’s colored pink should have been the black bayard. This animation inconsistency shows the absurdity of having Paladins wearing armor with colors that do not match their respective Lions.

Lance, who’s supposed to be looking after Coran per Lance’s own earlier statement, joins Keith and Pidge right at the open door to this room that has their helmets and bayards and two Galra. Coran, who still is exhibiting unusual behavior from being hit by the big Galra earlier, yells at these two Galra. Why Lance stopped and no one else stepped up to look after Coran is senseless. Characters are not behaving like normal, rational people in this episode.

Keith, out in the hallway, closes his eyes and the black bayard starts to glow red. Why does the black bayard glow red? Why red? If Keith is supposed to be the Black Paladin now, why didn’t the black bayard glow purple, which is the color of glowing for things associated with the Black Lion and being the Black Paladin? It makes it feel like the show has abandoned its lore entirely. The black bayard disappears and teleports to Keith’s hand, and he uses it to take out the two Galra.

The show had written Keith to have left the Paladins. He was not a Paladin at all, let alone the Black Paladin. And then he shows up in season six, the clone is triggered by Haggar, and suddenly Keith is the Black Paladin again. There show doesn’t do anything to have Keith or Shiro discuss this. The show completely unceremoniously rips being Black Paladin away from Shiro and gives the position to Keith. It’s offensive.

Keith tells Lance to “lead the way, keep the team together.” Lance questions him, and Keith says he’s going help Axca. Why are they going in separate directions? One, Keith has no idea where Axca is. The best assumption he could make right now would be to think she was near the hangar and is responsible for blowing it up. Since that’s the same direction that everyone has to head in order to get to the Lions, why is Keith going the opposite direction? This episode’s logistics make no sense.

The Paladins all put on their helmets. Somehow Shiro now has his black helmet, despite it not being on the table with the other helmets earlier. Krolia also has her helmet despite it having not been on the table earlier too. Coran and Romelle put on some conveniently nearby space suits. They open a door and jet out into space toward the Lions.

The show has Lance, at the direction of Keith, leading the group now. This infuriates me because its more of the show taking absolutely everything from Shiro. They’ve turned him into a background character. He was one of the two main characters of this show’s first two seasons, and now he’s given less to do than the mice. The EPs wanted to kill Shiro, and while they weren’t allowed to permanently do so, they’ve effectively done so by having him just standing around doing nothing. Again, it’s infuriating.

Some Galra follow the Paladins out into space, shooting at them.

Keith comes to Axca’s defense. Zethrid and Ezor taunt them, reducing Axca to being sexually attracted to Keith. Keith screams, “Can’t we just fight!?” For a situation that’s supposed to feel tense, it only feels silly and ridiculous.

Rather than continue on as fast as they can to get to the shelter of the Lions, the Paladins stop and turn to engage the Galra following them. Hunk wraps a rag or a scarf or some piece of cloth around the helmet of one of them to block his vision and keep him from being able to see to shoot them. Hunk then kicks the Galra into another Galra and then shoots at several Galra with his bayard.

The Galra scatter because apparently Hunk can’t hit them when they’re right in front of him. Krolia jets up behind one of the Galra, pulls a jetpack-style engine off his belt (seriously, rather than have jetpack engines built into their suits, the Galra are using belt clip-on engines), and the show uses an old sound effect from the Jetsons cartoon as he for some reason blasts away from Krolia. Her taking one of his clip-on engines from his belt causing him to then be thrust away from her makes no sense whatsoever.

Pidge gets to the Green Lion.

Zethrid, Axca, Ezor, and Keith continue to fight. There are no emotional stakes to the fight though. The point of contention between these four characters is nothing more than Zethrid and Ezor want to make fun of Axca for her being attracted to Keith. This fight is meaningless.

Zethrid shoulder-checks Keith hard enough to cause Keith to collide with Axca and the two of them to tear through a metal wall, which is absolutely ridiculous. Inside this new room are canisters of something that Keith and Axca look at and automatically know what’s inside. The canisters are explosive. Keith communicates with the Paladins and tells them to shoot his location. Keith grabs Axca, jets past Zethrid and Ezor just as the Lions�� blasts tear through the hull. The canisters are ignited, and there’s a huge explosion. Ezor and Zethrid should be dead. That season eight reveals that they’re not makes it feel like the show is just jerking the audience around.

Keith and Axca jet to the Black Lion. Voltron flies away and lands on some planet that is nearly physically touching another planet while sitting on top of the edge of a disc of clouds. What in the world is this design? The Lions have landed on one of these two planets, and there are broken metal buildings nearby. The Lions can’t sit like normal because they have no power, but of course we have to ignore that they were just shown having the power to spare that four of the Lions all blasted Keith’s location on the Galra ship. It doesn’t feel consistent at all.

Team Voltron is staying inside a cave with a sheet for a door. As I said in my commentary for 7x01 “A Little Adventure,” in 3x07 “The Legend Begins,” Alfor says that the Lions have “an endless supply of power.” The premise of these episodes that the Lions have little-to-no-power is inconsistent with what the show has established about how the Lions function.

“We should probably give them some time to recharge before we head back on our way,” Shiro says. Like last episode, the only thing this episode gives Shiro to do is to state the obvious. It’s infuriating.

Lance says, “Wow, a lot of things really changed over the past few weeks.” There’s nothing that’s presented itself as so different for him to make this comment. The script only has him say it so that the show can have its manufactured surprise moment in fully declaring the time skip. “Weeks!?” Axca asks, so taken aback by Lance’s comment.

Axca says that she, Ezor, and Zethrid made it “to cover on a meteoroid. There we saw both Voltron and Lotor disappear. Eventually, Voltron re-emerged alone. But then, there was an explosion and after that, nothing. That was three decafebes ago.”

Pidge says, “That explains the discrepancy in the star charts in our Lions.” No, it doesn’t. Yes, stars are constantly moving throughout space, and yes, they move really fast, but the amount of time that has passed has not been enough to make their star charts be significantly off.

Pidge then says, “I thought they were off because of our interdimensional jumping, which I guess they were in a way because when you think about it, that must have been the cause of the time slippage between our experience and that of the rest of the universe.”

Here’s the plot hole. Pidge is saying that time passed slower for them during their fight in the rift than it passed for everyone outside of the rift. Coran, Romelle, Krolia, and Shiro’s unconscious clone were outside of the rift. If the universe outside of the rift experienced more time than the Paladins when they were in the rift, then Coran, Romelle, Krolia, and Shiro’s clone should have lived the same extra three years that Axca, Zethrid, and Ezor have.

The show wanted this time skip to make the invasion and fight on Earth happen. But in the process of setting up the time skip, the EPs and writers failed to track the logistics of the battle with Lotor. Through Pidge, the show gives us this explanation for the time skip, but that explanation would mean that Coran, Krolia, Romelle, and Shiro’s clone would not have skipped time like the Paladins do.

Axca tells them that she worked with Ezor and Zethrid to take over a Galra ship that came to investigate Lotor’s last known whereabouts. Is this supposed to be the cruiser they were just on? Is it supposed to be the same cruiser that Zethrid referenced earlier when she told Ezor, “We just took down a Galra cruiser”? Did this taking of the cruiser “just” happen like Zethrid said, or did it happen three years ago like Axca says here?

Lotor’s death created a power vacuum in the Galra Empire. The Paladins knew this would happen since Lotor had been fighting specifically to keep it from happening. The Paladins were so much more interested in fighting and killing Lotor because of his Altean colony that they didn’t bother thinking about the consequences taking out Lotor would have on the universe.

Axca continues that Zethird and Ezor wanted to seize what power they could in the crumbling of the Galra Empire. Axca says, “I knew I had to find my own path.” It’s cliché and does not make her an interesting character. She turns to Keith, “…and it led me to you.” All this set-up for them to have a romance only for it to not happen makes it look like the EPs and the writers of this show wrote the story without any sense of cohesion, direction, or purpose.

Axca then complains about Lotor, “He preached unity, but in the end, he only sought power.” As Lotor said multiple times, the power he wanted was to find a source of quintessence that did not require killing life. Wanting power isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and Lotor was very specific about the power he was trying to acquire. The show then redefining that power to dictatorial rulership is a total retcon and character assassination of Lotor. Allura says, “I fell for Lotor’s lies as well.” The show has never even once identified what Lotor ever said that’s supposed to be a lie.

Pidge then wonders what’s happened on Earth in the past three years that she can’t get in touch with Sam or Matt. Allura ends with, “If Ezor and Zethrid became warlords in that time, what else has changed?” The ominous end of the episode doesn’t feel earned because Ezor and Zethrid do not feel any more threatening than they did before.

This episode was exhausting to get through. Too much of it made little sense. The episode engages in character assassination of Coran and continued character assassination of Lotor. The motivations of Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid continue to change depending on the wind. Most of the main characters are given nothing to do but stand around. The episode is significantly reliant on the mystery and reveal of the time skip, but that reveal does not have enough emotional weight. And the explanation the episode gives us through Pidge has a giant plot hole in it. The writing and the direction of this episode continues a clear decline from the previous seasons, which is saying something.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 7 #vld 7x03 #commentary

20 notes · View notes