The following is a recap of Voltron: Legendary Defender season two, episode two, “The Depths.” Ergo, there will be lots of spoilers. If you don’t want to be spoiled, go watch it first. We’ll wait.

It’s a testament to Voltron: Legendary Defender‘s terrific and engrossing storytelling that it wasn’t until the last few scenes of “Across the Universe” that I even noticed that Hunk and Lance were nowhere to be seen. Lost in the vortex of space following a corrupted wormhole, we followed all of the other heroes on their journey last time, but Lance and Hunk got an adventure to themselves in episode two, “The Depths.”

As you might expect from an episode centered on these two yahoos, it definitely funnier, given Hunk’s trash-compactor-like ability to devour food and Lance’s belief that he’s a massive ladies man. And “The Depths” was a great showcase for the voice actors playing Hunk and Lance, Tyler Labine and Jeremy Shada, respectively. It also featured guest actor “Weird Al” Yankovic playing a squid-faced mer-person, so that was pretty neat.

Hunk and Lance end up on a frozen planet with copious amounts of water, and they are quickly met under the sea by mermaids, ruled by the beautiful and seemingly kindly Queen Luxia, who wants nothing more than to make sure everyone, including the guests, are “safe and warm.” Everything seemed perfectly idyllic, despite the underwater city’s unquestionable resemblance to Gunga City, however, it’s not all safety and warmth.

The queen explained to the paladin that the city uses a massive Bakku garden for warmth and food, and that it fell from space, like a beacon from heaven. Naturally, this isn’t quite the truth, and slowly it became apparent that for all the feasting and dancing and pampering, the city wasn’t what it seemed. While Hunk was totally under the mermaid spell, Lance was rescued by a group of “cave dwellers,” mer-people who escaped the city and now wear jellyfish on their heads to prevent the queen from “mind-swishing” them, the way she now had Hunk. Yankovic’s character is one of these guys, the weirdest and googliest of the bunch, naturally.

They implored Lance to go back to the city with a jellyfish on his head to retrieve his lion. Unfortunately, Hunk had been fully turned into a “safe and warm” slave and attempted to attack Lance. Through a funny action sequence, Lance was able to free Hunk and grab the queen and take her to the caves for interrogation. Turned out, though, the queen was just as much a slave as everyone else; it was the Bakku Garden itself that was controlling things, feeding on any of the city’s residents who were deemed unuseful. That’s pretty dark.

The episode ended with the Bakku Garden revealing itself to be a giant, mossy sea serpent that attacks the paladins, who need to use their lions in order to stop it. Lance’s Blue Lion found the icy water particularly powerful and it created a massive ice beam on its back and zapped the garden. Remember, these paladins are still learning about their lions — the machines were lost for centuries. Together, free-minded, the city residents and the cave dwellers helped create a signal into space which is picked up by Pidge, who eventually arrives to fully reunite the Voltron squad.

“The Depths” was a delightful episode, and I think it warranted having an entire 24 minutes for Lance and Hunk on their own. I remember the first 90-minute episode last year in where it seemed pretty clear that Lance was going to be our rather goofy lead character, before both Keith and Shiro were introduced to share those duties. It’s cool to see Lance get to play the hero along with his double-act partner Hunk, who continues to be the show’s heart.

Voltron: Legendary Defender didn’t use its first two episodes of season two to get down to the heavy, universe-imperative plot and instead focused on its main characters having smaller adventures. This is what makes this show so amazing.

Join us all weekend for more Voltron: Legendary Defender season 2 recaps!

Images: DreamWorks/Netflix

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!