Voltron: Legendary Defender (Re)Watch 7.4, "The Feud!"

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A surreal experience punctuates the ongoing seventh season of Legendary Defender, offering strange retrospectives of the series so far.

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7.4, "The Feud!"

Written by Tim Hedrick
Directed by Eugene Lee

Synopsis

Strange that this would be a common cultural reference...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

The episode opens as if a game show, complete with recording irregularities. The Paladins find themselves playing upon it--to their confusion. They appear to have been dislocated from their previous experience, and their progress through the show explicates their circumstances. Keith purposes to leave, and the Paladins find themselves made captive to the suddenly sinister show host.

The contests begin, following  what the audience is likely to recognize as familiar formats, and the Paladins do reasonably well. And they find themselves in opposition to Galra forces they had thought destroyed. The latter are introduced strangely, entirely out of character with their earlier actions--but befitting a game show. Play proceeds, with more recording irregularities showing up.

It is a disturbing disjunction.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

After a strange in-show commercial, Lance is singled out for continued play. It does not go well; Lance is evidently bad with names. The stakes are increased for him, as well, and Lance actually manages to score before the Galra are sent away.

Play continues, still focused on Lance, with still-high stakes. He stumbles into some degree of success, but not enough, and another in-show commercial punctuates the action.

As play resumes, Allura pleads for release but is denied. Pidge is called up to play. As she does, more recording irregularities show up, and she attacks the sinister host, prompting them being called into a choice of who to release in favor of the other four. In the event, each of the Paladins receives a vote for release, with reasoning revealing much about their mutual regard. That all vote for another to leave receives comment--and the Paladins are released before the show is turned off.

Quite the change of setting.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

After it is, the Paladins are revealed to be adrift in space. Hunk wakes from what he perceives as a strange dream--one that is revealed to be shared among all the Paladins. Coran confirms that their sinister host is something of a legendary god-figure, one who judges warriors' worthiness. None of the Paladins look kindly on the experience they had, however.

Another recording irregularity evidences itself, turning to Luxia's kingdom and presenting it as a vacation destination in disturbing game-show fashion as the episode ends.

Discussion

The episode plays with narrative reality, partaking of the "it was only a dream" trope that tends to annoy modern readers but forms a significant portion of medieval literature--and some of the most prominent works thereof--as dream visions. Described by Chris Healy of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette as "medieval sci-fi" (which seems particularly apt in the current context), dream vision allows for manipulation of norms with less threat of potential censure; after all, dreams are strange, as all who have them know. And such tend to inform much of the conception of medieval literature, if the persistence of such works as Dream of the Rood and Pearl are to be believed. The knights of the Round Table, after whom the Paladins of Voltron follow, also experience no few dream visions; Malory's depiction of Lancelot's on the Grail Quest come to mind as convenient examples, as does Arthur's in the Alliterative Morte Arthure. (Indeed, Lancelot's dream vision highlights his faults--not unlike Lance's in the episode.)

For the episode to treat in dream vision, then, when the series does so much to invoke and evoke the medieval, reads not so much as a narrative cop-out, as dream-work often does, or as a non-canonical aside, but a callback to perhaps less recognizable medieval antecedents that are not the less valuable for being less familiar. They enrich, rather than detract from, the episode.