Secret of the White Lion/Secret of the White Lion

Secret of the White Lion

We open on Castle Doom.  Zarkon is apparently cussing out his fool robots in his sleep.  Haggar enters the throne room with not-so-simple white lion.  Haggar is going to give Allura nightmares and lure her out with the lion.

Nighttime on Arus.  The space mice are asleep on Allura's chandelier.  The princess is dreaming about Zarkon's robots shooting at her.  She returns fire, using a pistol for the first time.  Then she's fa-a-alling, and has a vision of her mother standing in front of a disco ball, who lets Allura babble on.  And Allura get's the idea to seek out the white lion.  Who is her father incarnate.  She awakens, and hears a lion roaring.

She runs out to the balcony in her pajamas and hallucinates the white lion with her father's voice.  She then flees the castle (and two guards try to stop her, and totally cop a feel).  She runs into the foggy woods and finally sees the lion in the desert.  (Arusian geography would drive me nuts if I paid attention).  He leads her to a waterfall.  Haggar and her cat look on.

Nanny . . . shows up.  The guards explain that the princess ran off into the woods where there are sounds of giant beasts.  Nanny pushes the alarm and awakens the team.  Who come out of separate rooms again this time.  Hunk suggests that maybe the princess is jogging.  But who exercises this early?  Rabbits? Pidge suggests.  Yep.  Grown-ups wrote this stuff.

The team launches.

Did B.J. Ward have a cold during this episode?  All of her voices (Allura, Haggar, the other one) sound a little off.

Princess pets the white lion near the waterfall.  Lance lands and aims his weapon at the lion.  Allura tries to convince him that its her father.  Lance goes sliding down the side of the cliff, trying to shoot at the lion.  However, the lion is far more accurate in shooting glowing red web . . . stuff out of its mouth and Lance is all tangled up.

The rest of the team lands.  Keith also heroically slides down the cliff.  Pidge lands behind the lion and gets caught in the lion's "net rays."  So does Hunk.  Keith tries to run back up the cliff, but the lion cuts him off.  Keith hides, so the lion charges back down the cliff at Allura, who mutters "father . . ."  Despite the team's urgings, she stands her ground and the lion roars in her face.  She passes out.

Haggar cackles, and erects a cross form the princess and ties the other three captured Voltron Forcers to stakes.  Interesting . . .  She taunts Keith.  Then she turns the Lion into a robeast.  This guy's design is a little better than Gagarl's.  Spiky shoulder pads and a scimitar-looking thing he is going to decapitate Lance with--until Keith shoots it.  The two fight around the cliff.  Then the blue lion appears, nosediving into valley.  Nanny and Coran are at the controls.  Nanny accidentally launches water from the lion's mouth, washing Haggar and the princess into the river.  The robeast goes to rescue Haggar.  Keith produces a knife from his utility belt, dives into the river with it clenched in his teeth, and rescues the princess.

The rooster frigate appears and levitates the beast with Haggar in his arms using a tractor beam thing.  The beast goes skydiving and Yurak hits him with the infra-energizer beam.  In other words, he supersizes him.  His armor gets a little more red, his shoulder pads lose their spikes, and he's more hunchbacked.

Allura goes to join the team in fighting the robeast, and Coran and Nanny have clearly not gotten the message.

They attack the robeast, who launches missiles out of the ports in his chest.  Allura volunteers to lead the attack to atone for her getting them in this mess to begin with, then she hallucinates her mother's face on the robeast and gets caught in his hair.  The team forms lion swords and goes to cut Allura free.  She forces back the hallucination and shoots the robeast with blue lion's shoulder missiles

They form Voltron.  I don't anticipate this taking too long. . .  The robeast is still struggling to its feet after Allura's escape.  Voltron forms blazing sword and . . . yeah.  It's over.

Later, at sunset, the team stand at the shrine where her mother is buried.  Not buried in the tomb?  Huh.  Aaand Nanny and Coran try to suggest they'll fly blue lion.  Gods.  Fortunately, Allura will continue flying blue lion.  They pad out the ending with some footage of the Golion formation used in the opening credits.  Now what could WEP have been making up time for?

Secret of the White Lion

There's no dialogue from Daibazaal here.  He's really just asleep (he and Raible have more in common than they realize.  Couldn't they just be friends, united by their common workaholism?)  Actually, the imlication is the Daibs has been up all night drinking, but, whatever.  He demands to know what that "fool lion" is doing in his throne room.  As far as cruel alien dictators go, he's got class.

Honerva promises him the heads and blood (Galra makes wine out of it) of those on Altea.

Fala dreams of Galra soldiers shooting her down, and she also sees the bodies of the others.  The doubts she express to her mother are the same ones that go through my head every morning when I finally get up.

Ohhh, the lion is her mother.  That's interesting.  WEP maybe thought her mother appearing as a male lion with a mane was too weird?  Huh.

So, Altean cross themselves, have tombs that are combinations of Egyptian pyramids and Parisian catacombs, and believe in reincarnation.  Only in anime.

Hys' lines are pretty much the same as Nanny's.

Kurogane refers to sitting under a waterfall as part of training.  He also suspects the lion's going to push her off he waterfall.  Even though, y'know, she and the lion are at river level.

The lion's roar sounds little like an . . . elephant?

This time, the cut between Fala's faint and everyone being crucified seems to imply the passage of far more time than in Voltron.  Which is getting to be pretty usual.

The lion's name is Lian.  And his roar in beastman form is terrible.

The team is actually worried blue lion is going to land on them or something.  Lian calls out "old witch!!" when he sees Honerva washed into the river.  He uses the same word Honerva uses when she's talking about herself in the third person.  Which is just about every time the subtitle has her saying "I."  And I definitely prefer Lian's half beastman form to his supersized design.

Lion weapons: black lion uses his shoulder bazookas, but with different ammunition.  Green and yellow lions both use shoulder missile launchers as well.  They also attack in "shotgun formation," with black lion drawing the beastman's attention and the others attacking him.  Sort of.

Lian actually speaks, taunting Fala that he'll "wring her in two."  So far only he and Bambara have spoken when giant.  Gagarl, while being formerly human, just made Kaiju noises.

We just get the standard theme song while Golion gattais.  I really do feel kind of sorry for Lian.  He was no match for Golion once the princess stopped hallucinating.  And he gets decapitated. 

Oh, Hys.  Just die.  Down an entire bag of Nutty Chews and choke to death.  Seriously.