Voltron: Legendary Defender (Re)Watch 7.12, "Lion's Pride, Part 1"

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The penultimate episode of Legendary Defender's seventh season puts one threat to rest--only to show another coming all too soon.

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7.12, "Lion's Pride, Part 1"

Written by Mitch Iverson
Directed by Rie Koga

Synopsis

Amid the ongoing fracas, Voltron is formed. Shiro welcomes the Paladins back to the fight for Earth and queries the fighting forces for their current status. The cadet pilots rendezvous with the Atlas and prepare to sally forth again. The Galra, meanwhile, regroup, assessing their situation; the siege weapons are moving into position, and all fire is to be directed at Voltron and the Atlas.

The new volleys begin.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

As the Galra assault resumes, so does the Earth forces' counterattack. Bolstered by Voltron, matters seem to go better for Earth. But the siege weapons are converging to kill the planet, so Voltron redirects to take out Sendak. Artillery fire from the planet, however, interdicts them, and they are hard put to it. The Atlas is not doing much better, either, and the cadet pilots re-deploy to run further interference for the Atlas and Voltron. The latter is tasked with destroying the siege weapons; the Paladins formulate a plan and work on it as the fracas continues. Shiro and the cadet pilots continue along their work as they do.

Risky, indeed.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

The Paladins experience some success; they are able to interdict the siege weapons' beams, though they cannot long do so. Shiro improvises a new plan, putting Coran in command of the Atlas and working to infiltrate Sendak's ship as the Galra assault continues.

Time to enact their plans grows ever shorter as they do so, and the interdiction fails--only to be succeeded by the Atlas interposing herself in the path of the siege weapons' beams. More time bought, the fight continues, and Shiro succeeds at his infiltration, making himself the agent of infiltration and disabling one of the siege weapons--as well as de-powering Sendak's ship.

Meanwhile, the Paldins begin to recover from their exertions, and Lance moves to assail the siege weapons. Allura joins him, followed by the other Paladins. The cadet pilots are also successful, and Sendak's ship is in free-fall towards Earth. Shiro attempts to flee but is confronted by Sendak; a melee begins, and the Paladins work to guide the ship towards an empty area. They succeed, and Shiro and Sendak's duel continues until Keith decisively intervenes, and Sendak falls.

After, Keith tends to Shiro, and the Paladins come to believe that Earth is safe--briefly. An incoming fireball puts the lie to that belief as the episode ends.

Discussion

As a culmination of what has gone before, the episode introduces little if any new medievalism. It does, however, neatly deal with the dark mirror relationship between Shiro and Sendak that has received comment before, doing so in a way that could easily be read either as mimicking Arthuriana or as the kind of theological parallel which medieval minds, by report, would have appreciated.

Sendak is defeated in his person not by Shiro but by Keith, Shiro's clear favorite. As such, the battle mimics the Arthurian chivalric in that it is only through carefully cultivated fellowship that one side prevails, Keith serving Shiro as Lancelot serves Arthur; the parallel is admittedly incomplete, given the character names involved (although the case can be made that the Paladin Lance is more like Gawain than Lancelot), but it is nonetheless close enough to be seen readily.

Keith's entrance into the battle, descending from the very heavens with sword in hand to vanquish a  foe clearly demoniac in both appearance and attitude, is also similar to the intervention of divine might into the human struggle against sin, both in medieval Christian concept and, not uncommonly, more recent ideas. Shiro is unable to defeat his evil counterpart without aid; it is only with assistance from on high that his foe is undone. The reading is similar to some interpretations of the third part of Beowulf, wherein the eponymous hero finds victory only through the aid of his kinsman, Wiglaf, and which has been likened to the need for outside agency to defeat sin.

In both cases, the parallels are not exclusively to the medieval, although they do certainly connect to medieval ideas. Given how much the series has done to connect back to the medieval, however, looking to it for antecedents seems still to be a way to understand better what is going on in the series and why it matters.