Return of Coran's Son/Reunion with the Phantom

Return of Coran's Son

The five lions are streaking back towards Arus.  Pidge and Hunk are hungry.  Hunk suggests a race home.  Every jumps in on it.  So they . . . split up?  Meanwhile, a cloaked figure watches blue lion fly by.  Allura sees a mechanical failure in blue lion, and then she crashes.  The team continues their race into castle control, and Coran and Nanny are displeased that the princess isn't with them.  They scan, um, aparently she crashed on an entirely different planet.  Anyway, the monitor shows some dude helping the princess out of her downed lion.

The stranger removes her helmet as Allura regains consciousness.  She pulls her gun on him.

The team, Nanny, and Coran land at the crash site in an ornithopter.  The stranger is about to leave, but they ask him for his name.  He introduces himself as Garrett, a former Arusian.  The damaged joint of blue lion explodes and he evades it with some acrobatics that impress everyone.  Coran invites him back to the castle.

They're all have dinner when Coran gets thoughtful and asks Garrett who his parents were.  Garrett gives him some story about his father working in the castle and sending Garrett and his mother away during Zarkon's attack.  They fled into the mountains, but Zarkon captured all but Garrett.  coran remembers the day Zarkon attacked and he sent his wife and son away.  He gave Garrett a necklace with the Arusian coat of arms. 

Coran sits in his study and drinks while looking at an old portrait of his wife.

Garrett is training on some sort of lion simulator.  Pidge is watching.  Coran comes up behind them and sees an old scar where his son was struck on the arm during Zarkon's attack.  Keith breaks in and announces that blue lion is repaired and ready to start Garrett's training.

Garrett does some aerobatic stunts in the lion--strafing targets, power dives ending with flips--y'know, the usual.  Naturally, Garret is awesome.  And the pendant Coran gave his son 15 years again falls out of Garrett's uniform.  He also rolls up his sleeve to show his scar.  Coran and Garrett get all teary-eyed.

This couldn't possibly end badly.  They all go to church.  Garrett dedicates himself to protecting Arus. 

On Doom, Haggar is watching this whole seen, and Zarkon is angered that they have a new ally.  But then Lotor and Haggar reveal that Garrett is a clone.  It was all a sinister plan. 

Coran and Garrett are armwrestling when Garrett uses a ring to poison him.  Garrett gets himself in castle control and leads the team on a wild goose chase after "robot" fighters.  While they're occupied, Lotor enters Arus orbit with a new robeast.

Garrett sends a transmission to Mura, and allows a rooster frigate to enter their airspace and steal the great big cannon--the Pulsar Cannon--they'd built for Doom a few episodes ago.  Lotor's plan is to install the cannon on Arus.  He launches the robeast again the lions.  They form Voltron.

Voltron throws the electro-sabre at the robeast, who responds by firing missiles at him--hey, did Shoji Kawamori design this one?  Both the lion head attack and the blazing sword fail to damage the robeast through its sheilds.  Lotor's fleet installs the pulsar cannon on a mountain facing the castle.  Guards enter castle control to confront Garrett, who just shoots them.

Voltron carries the fight into the atmosphere, and calls castle control for help.  Garrett just taunts them and tells Keith the pulsar cannon will give them the energy boost they need.  Coran, Nanny and more guards pound on the door, but Garrett reveals his nature as a clone--whose going to replace Arusians with a race of Doom clones.  Coran doesn't take the news well. 

Voltron takes a glancing shot from the pulsar cannon and crashes.  The robeast lands and reveals its right arm is a chainsaw.  Then Optimus prime tells us all this excitement is to be continued.

Reunion with the Phantom

This episode pretty much goes the way the Voltron ep goes.  There's not a lot of edited violence, and the dialogue was pretty straightforward.  There were only a few key differences.

The narrator explains that the lions are returning from defeating a mecha beastman.  They split up to try to find the shortest-and fastest way back to Gradam.  Blue lion's engine output and control balancers fail and Fala crashes.

After seeing Saint do his acrobatic dodging trick, Raible tries a recruitment spiel--that's why they bring him back to the castle.  During Saint's narration of the fall of the castle, the music is a piano rendition of the usual "sorrowful" bit that's usually played when stuff like this is happening.  When Raible is remembering sending Raiza and his son away, the usual arrangement of the same song plays.

Oh, yeah, Garrett is called Saint here, and Raible's wife is named Raiza.  And, in his quarters, Raible is pretty obviously into the castle's wine store . . .

Saint poisons Raible during the arm-wrestling contest with a trick ring.  I didn't know Galra had Renaissance Festivals.

Saint calls Mura and tells them to cancel alert status because Golion is on the way.  Then troops in uniforms a lot like those worn by the guys on the blockade runner in Star Wars are surpised to see a rooster frigate.  The missile emplacements on Mura are almost the same as the four corner turrets on castle Gradam.

They merge into Golion with the black lion theme as music.  Again.

The beastman sure uses a lot of missiles.  Seriously.  I mentioned before that it's like something out of Macross.  And so Galra finds a way to counter all of Golion's main weapons: just add really thick shields on all the arms and legs.

The glancing blow from the Mura cannon "messed up" Golion's drive system; blue lion can apparently provide auxiliary power.

The beastman isn't named, again, but it has a giant B on it's front so I'm calling it Beta.