Does Shiro Get the Black Lion Back Season 3
So, recently I watched the third season of the newest Voltron show. For those of you who don't know what Voltron is, it's a series about a group of 5 young cadets. These cadets pilot robot lions, which they can fused into a giant humanoid robot known as "Voltron". Throughout the various incarnations of the series, Voltron has done battle against various foes including the Galra and Drule empires.
This newest Voltron show is actually a reboot of the original series, taking many of the same elements and putting a new spin on things. Generally, I enjoyed this series and loved it to death! However, after I finished season 3, well… I started to lose interest in the series. Now, I get that a lot of people really liked season 3, and I can respect that. However, I just could not get into it.
To fully discuss why I didn't like this series, I'll have to drop some MAJOR SPOILERS. This spoiler warning is necessary, since I'll be spoiling all three of the currently available seasons for the show. You've been warned. Before I get into the plot, let's talk about the good. The animation, music, and voice acting are still top-notch. It's good to see that the production value hasn't declined, especially after Netflix started cutting down the episode count.
WARNING: INCOMING SPOILERS
Another good thing was the introduction of the new villain: Prince Lotor. I liked him a lot more than the original bad-guy, Zarkon. This was mainly due to Lotor feeling more fleshed out and more unique. He also brought with him a bunch of henchmen, who all have unique quirks of their own. Lastly, I liked how they changed up the current cast and had them piloting different lions. Well, I sort of liked this, but I'll get into that in detail a bit later.
So, why is this season so bad? Well, despite the show looking and sounding as amazing as ever, the characters and plot took a nose-dive. So, our story starts after the season 2 finale. Our heroes have defeated Zarkon, who is now stuck in a coma. Our heroes are now a lion short, as Shiro mysteriously disappeared after our heroes pushed themselves to the limit to beat Zarkon.
This seems like a good setup for a new season, right? Well, it starts out promising enough. Our heroes now have to find a new cadet to pilot the black lion. So, they all decide that it has to be Keith, who Shiro was training to be the new leader. So, Shiro gets the Black Lion, but who gets the red lion? Well, the Red Lion is given to Lance, while the Blue Lion is given to Princess Alurra. Right there, I kind of have to wave the red flag.
While its cool that they got new lions and had this little "changing of the guard" thing, I hate the fact that Alurra needs to be a cadet. In the original show, she was a cadet, but here it just doesn't make as much sense. I liked Alurra best when she was piloting and controlling the floating castle. In this show, the castle is like a second Voltron. It's a backup to Voltron, and also acts as a base of operations.
The thing is, by making Alurra just another cadet you've taken away the main thing that made her unique. Now she's just another pilot like everyone. Honestly, Coran should've been the one to pilot the Blue Lion. He has more knowledge of the universe, and seems to have a fair bit of combat experience. Plus, it would be great to see him molded from this bumbling assistant and into the proud warrior he pretends to be. Instead, it's just Alurra again, like in the original show.
The changing of the guard also introduces more problems into the show. For one thing, the intro does not change at all. Despite the change of cast, a new villain, and some altered character designs, the opening sequence remains unchanged. I get that its expensive to make a new animated sequence, but they couldn't have altered a few things about it? So much has changed this season, yet the opening sequence remains static. This is a small gripe, but it did bother me quite a bit.
The biggest problem that this new Voltron team introduces is the fact that they have to learn to work as a team again. The first 2 seasons were spent trying to mold the new Voltron team into a truly powerful force, a team that can defeat Zarkon and save the galaxy. For some reason, the writers thought it was a good idea to have the Voltron team learn how to pilot their new lions and learn to work as a team… Again.
This makes the past 26 episodes of them learning to get along and act as one pointless, since they have to learn how to do it all over again. They do manage to work as a team again, but all it takes is 1 whole episode. The episode itself is pretty bland on its own, the episode is just the team bickering and ending up getting separated. They all get lost and have to find each other, while trying to work around their own weaknesses.
Sound familiar? Well, that's probably because the first few episodes of season 2 had this exact same plot. However, those episodes were more fun and interesting, while this episode was pretty boring and formulaic. The episode after this is slightly better, though still pretty bad. The fourth episode in season 3 was called "Hole In The Sky", but a better name would've been "Hole In The Plot".
This is an episode that adds very little to the overarching story, and is more just a big in-joke. So, this episode revolves around Allura and the cadets ending up in alternate dimension. In this universe, the Alteans rule the galaxy and aren't nearly extinct. Allura is happy to see more of her own species, though it soon turns out to be a facade.
This episode goes pretty much how every alternate universe episode goes: The heroes go to an alternate universe where the supposed good guys won, but the good guys are now evil, and they have to escape. That's pretty much the entire episode. Nothing new or unique done here, just a bunch of bland writing. The one thing that this episode did that I liked, was bring in Sven from the original series.
You see, in this episode, we are introduced to this universe's Shiro: Sven. He's a walking parody of the rabid censorship that took place during the original series run. Sven was Shiro's name in the English dub, and this version even shares his infamous phony Norwegian accent. Sven even gets mortally injured, but claims he just needs to go to the "Space Hospital". This was a clever little reference to removal of Sven's death in the American version of Voltron: Defender of The Universe.
Still, Sven does not save this episode. While he was a funny and quirky in-joke, most people watching this would not get the gag. Without this background knowledge, Sven just comes off as an out-of-place Norwegian caricature with no real point in the show. Despite this episode coming off as pointless, it was probably my favorite episode in this season. Despite how generic of an episode this was, I'm always a sucker for alternate universe stories. This episode also introduces the magical Macguffin of this season: A giant meteor that can tear holes in reality. We'll talk more about this once we get to episode 6.
We now have episode 5, AKA "The Journey". This episode reintroduces Shiro, which I think is an outright horrible idea. Shiro should've been kept out of the show for at least an entire season, so we get more time to adjust to our new team. I felt like most of Shiro's story had been covered, like he had gone through his arc as a character. It would've been more interesting to re-introduce him into the cast much later one, once our new team had matured.
However, a measly five episodes after his appearance and he's already introduced. Tell me if this sounds familiar: Shiro wakes up on a Galra ship, and somehow mysterious gets off with little memory of how he accomplished it. Yes, that's right, they lazily copied Shiro's backstory from season 1. So, Shiro somehow escapes from the Galra and loses some of his memory AGAIN.
How did he end up on the ship this time? Why would the Black Lion seemingly teleport him? Why weren't the best soldiers in the galaxy guarding him? None of these questions are answered, at all. We never get a single explanation for any of this for the entire season. I get that you can only do so much with a 7 episode season, but the lack of explanation for Shiro's new escape from the Galra is utterly disappointing. If they were going to rehash backstories from past seasons, the least they can do is elaborate on them slightly.
Anyways, Shiro ends up on an ice planet, where he's captured by these two random aliens. After a fight breaks out and they befriend each other, the aliens help Shiro out. I actually kind of like these characters, despite their short screen-time. They were nicely designed and seemed like fun characters. The aliens then give Shiro their only ship, which he uses to escape the planet.
Shiro then proceeds to single-handedly board the ship, take out several robots, and even high-jack a fighter vessel. All the while, no one seems to notice him or even detect his presence until its too late. There is a part where Shiro blows up the hangar and then flies out, yet none of the Galra try to stop him. He murders at least 30 Galra, yet no one really pursues him or tries to chase him.
So, Shiro flies after Voltron and the castle. Before he can get there, they fly off and leave Shiro all alone. So, Shiro spends a solid week travelling and trying to find his friends. I'll be honest, I actually like this scene. You really feel Shiro's desperation, and it really shows how dedicated he is to getting back to the team. The whole scene reminded me a lot of that Voltron fan-film, which is something I thought was pretty cool.
Just when Shiro is about to die, he's found by the Black Lion. So… Why did it take the Black Lion so long to be aware of Shiro's presence? It seemed like the Black Lion only noticed Shiro's existence when he was about to die. One could make the argument that Shiro was just too far for the Black Lion to notice him, but there's nothing to imply they were within close proximity to him. Then again, that could be me overthinking things.
This leads directly into the sixth episode of season 3: Tailing a Comet. This episode starts by showing the Voltron team in action, before showing Shiro recovering from his near-death experience last episode. After Shiro awakens and is fully recovered, this leads to some controversy in the group. Now there are 6 cadets, and only five lions.
This leads to a scene that I found extremely annoying: Lance wanting to quit the team. You see, Lance feels he's a nuisance and that he doesn't belong on the team. This is yet another thing recycled from previous episodes. In season 2, Lance doubted himself, but was able to prove to both himself and his allies that he was a great member of the team. Here, we have Lance once again doubting himself once more.
Unlike the first time, this scene really amounts to something. Keith tells Lance he is a worthwhile member of the team, Lance agrees, and this is never brought up again. This scene is overall pointless, and does nothing with what it was trying to set up. Anyways, with Shiro back, our team gets ready to set out.
However, Shiro can no longer pilot the Black Lion, so now he's just backup. They go out on this mission to take out Lotor, who's attacking one of his own bases for personal reasons. The team then goes out on a mission to stop Something I forgot to mention earlier was that Lotor stole the meteor from episode 4. So, you're probably thinking Lotor will do something unique or interesting with this meteor. After all, it's made of the same material as Voltron! Well, he makes a ship with it. Yeah, that's all he does with it.
He's got an all-powerful meteor made of the same material as the strongest machine in the galaxy, one that can rip open holes in dimensions. Instead of building some kind of all powerful doomsday weapon, he builds a ship… Why? It's a really lame looking ship as well. You can tell that the ship was meant to transform into a giant robot just by looking at it! Sure, it doesn't do it this time, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume they'll do that next season.
Lotor decides to use this (supposedly) all-powerful vehicle to steal a piece of the "Teladuv", which was a weapon used to battle Zarkon at the end of season 2. Our heroes manage to destroy the Teladuv, but not before bickering for a solid two minutes. Look, I get that Keith is the headstrong one, but does he really need to always argue before doing anything? I get that he's a leader in training, but has none of the past 30 or so episodes taught him anything about logic?
The worst part about the episode involves the ship itself. Somehow, the Galra are able to build this ship off-screen in the span of about two episodes. Not only that, but they optimized it with weaponry that would be deadly to Voltron. They did all this in an extremely short span of time. Even Allura is confused that they were able to build the ship so quickly. This wouldn't be so bad if we got some sort of explanation, but they just leave this plot-thread swinging just so they can have more reveals next season.
So, then comes our last episode. I'd say this is probably the weakest one in the entire season, if not the entire series. I'm talking about "The Legend Begins", and it's just as generic as the title would imply. So, this episode starts with Coran finally deciding to tell the Voltron crew the ENTIRE story. Why did it take him this long to actually tell it? Who knows. You could have easily put most of this episode at the start of season and it would have barely changed anything.
So, this episode shows how the Voltron team came together, how they started as friends and became warriors, how the war started, and how the lions were created. Normally, you'd think a 40-60 minute episode would be enough to cover this sub-plot. Unfortunately, they cram this entire story into about 22 minutes and it feels rushed.
This was meant to be the season finale, and ends up being just a backstory episode that details a lot of things the audience already knew. The episode revolves around Coran detailing how the Voltron lions came to be, how Alfor and Zarkon started off as allies and friends, and how the original team of cadets united.
Sadly, the episode does not handle telling its backstory that well at all. For one thing, we are introduced to three allies of Alfor we never heard of before. These three aliens make up part of the team, but they lack any real personality or defining character traits. We are given a rough outline of who they are, yet are told very little about them. In fact, some of them seem to just be ripoffs of our current team.
I get that it's supposed to echo how similar the team of old is to the new team, but it comes off as repetitive. Especially when the Blue Lion's cadet has the exact same reaction to piloting the lion for the first time as Lance does. Anyways, a lot of the episode is spent detailing Alfor's friendship with Zarkon.
It depicts how they were the best of friends, but how Zarkon and his Altean apprentice began work on a deadly experiment. Eventually, this leads of Alfor creating the lions. This is probably the most disappointing part of the entire season thus far. We don't see the lions getting built, we don't see any detailed explanation on how they were constructed, and the first Cadets are shown mastering their lions in zero time flat.
What's worse is that the Lions have chipped paint jobs, despite just being made. While it's true that the current lions have paint damage, that could be attributed to them just being extremely old models and dealing with erosion over the years. The problem here is that the lions are supposed to be brand new, yet they don't look that way at all. I get that they had to re-use the CGI models due to budget costs, but it just comes off as extremely lazy.
Eventually, the Voltron team have to unite to stop the destruction of Zarkon's planet. However, they are not able to stop it. Worse still, Zarkon uses the dark Quintessence energy in an attempt to save his Altean wife's life. This backfires and kills both Zarkon and the Altean. The Dark Quintessence then resurrects somehow, also granting the pair immortality in the process.
With Zarkon and his Altean wife (who now goes by the name "Haggar) learning of the death of their planet, they decide to blame Alfor and begin a long war. Now, you may think this huge war would get a lot of screen-time. After all, this war is one of the biggest events in the entire timeline, leading to the scattering of the lions and the defeat of the Alteans. Sadly, this is all shoved into about 30 seconds.
This was the biggest downer for me, as this was always the part of the show's backstory that interested me the the most. With that, Coran finishes the somewhat pointless backstory. All in all, we don't learn a whole lot from this backstory we didn't already know. The big thing we learn is that Zarkon and Haggar are immortal because they are alien zombies powered by space magic, essentially.
Some plot elements do come out of this episode, such as our heroes being able to piece together Lotor's motives based on the info they are given. Also, Haggar is (conviently) having the same flashback at the same time. She regains her memories and awakens Zarkon, using the aforementioned space magic. Keep in mind, the last few things I mention happen in the course of about a minute. It's like they awkwardly squeezed small plot elements into the last bit of the episode, in an attempt to make the episode seem important.
Yeah, that's how the season ends. On an episode that is just pure backstory, with nothing much else to back it up. I get why this was done. The last two seasons both ended on epic confrontations, so it only made sense to give season 3 an epic ending. Since they didn't have enough time to resolve Lotor's story arc, they put this in here instead. I wouldn't really have a problem with it, if it didn't feel so pointless. I felt like I was watching a shortened version of the series' pilot all over again, just with less charm and quality to it.
I think that's this season in a nut-shell: It's still a fantastic quality product like the rest of the show, but it doesn't have the same magic to it. Elements feel reused, half of the cast gets little development, and the season is too short to get used to all the new changes. Again, I get why it was shortened. Budget cuts and all that, it's completely understandable.
In fact, I'm sure season 4 will probably make up for most (or at least some) of the shortcomings for season 3. Season 4 is probably the second half of 3, and will likely fix some of the issues I had with this. Now, was I overtly cruel in my assessment of the season? A bit. I think my main problem was that I went into season 3 with such high expectations, especially after how much I loved seasons 1 and 2.
I get to season 3, and it ends up just feeling like a generic kids action show. There's nothing wrong with that, since it is for kids. However, the show had such a good rhythm going. Yet, they do bland things with this season, like a generic alternate universe episode and a pointless backstory disguised as a season finale.
I do respect that people like this season, to each their own. I can be overly cynical with how I assess things, and my feelings on this season does not change how I feel about the show overall. I still love the show, and with a series that is planned to be 78 episodes long, there is bound to be slip-ups.
This season was sadly the victim of trying to bring too many new things to the table, while having a short run-time. The Castlevania anime's first season was short as well, but I never felt like they were going through the motions. Anyways, those are my personal thoughts on how I felt about this season.
I'm going to keep watching, and possibly go back and watch both 3rd Dimension and Voltron Force while waiting for season 4. Though I hear Force isn't the greatest, I want to at least give it a shot. The last thing I'd like to say is: While I did find season 3 to be a bit bad, at least it wasn't as bad as "Voltron: Fleet of Doom". *Shudders*
Does Shiro Get the Black Lion Back Season 3
Source: https://syrupwithasideofwriting.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/the-ultimate-disappointment-voltron-legendary-defender-season-3-review/