The following is a full recap of Voltron: Legendary Defender season 2, episode 6, “The Ark of Taujeer.” Go watch it before you read this, or don’t complain about spoilers if you choose not to.
That last episode was an intense one, huh? Lord Zarkon seems more intent than ever to utterly crush the paladins and retrieve the Black Lion, and that puts everybody on Team Voltron at risk. As “The Ark of Taujeer” began, we learned of yet another planet that had fallen to Zarkon’s power, with the poor Taujeerian people having all of their natural resources zapped by Morbok, an under-general of the Galra Empire. He even incapacitated the Taujeerian ark, a ship which was the last way for the people to leave their slowly-imploding world. Hoo boy.
On Castle Ship, both Allura and Keith believed they alone were to blame for Zarkon tracking them, Allura using evidence of them being found in the first place on Altea, and Keith because he has that dagger with the insignia of the Blade of Marmora. It was also suggested that Zarkon is tracking them through the Black Lion–which DUH!–but it was dismissed because no paladin/lion connection can be intense enough to span that great a distance. Shiro wanted to take the fight to the Galra and not be constantly on the defensive, and luckily, Pidge was a genius enough to be able to create what Hunk reductively called a “Galra Finder.” Since they know the Galra were around Taujeer, they decided to go there.
During the night, both Keith and Allura decided they needed to leave the ship for the sake of the others, and so they decided to leave together. When the ship reached Taujeer, Shiro wondered where Allura and Keith were and learned that a shuttle had launched in the night. He contacted the shuttle and the pair replied that if Zarkon tracks them, they’ll know it’s one of them…but if he tracks the Castle Ship, it must be something else. A fair hypothesis, but a bad time to scarper; the Taujeerians need the full power of Voltron. The four remaining lions land and try to help the people repair their ship to leave, while the Green Lion mended the cracks in the planet with vines and the Blue Lion soldered it together with ice. It was a pretty decent plan.
However, the problem was that, FRIGGING OBVIOUSLY, Zarkon was tracking the Black Lion and so sent Marbok and his cruisers back to Taujeer to stop Voltron from helping the people leave. (Sidebar: What the hell?! How evil can you be?! Just let people not get wiped out by your shitty imperialism! Jeez!) So while Hunk attempts to keep the ark upright, Shiro, Lance, and Pidge use their Lions’ jaw blades (wait, they have JAW BLADES?) to make huge gashes in Morbok’s ship, but it’s not quite enough. They need Voltron! Coran attempted to bond with the Red Lion enough to pilot it–he even wore a uniform and a cape!–but the Red Lion instead just took off into space.
Keith and Allura had been waiting for Zarkon to possibly appear, and spoke at length about how Allura still doesn’t trust the Blade of Mamora, thinking it likely to be a Galra trap. Once the shuttle learned that Zarkon was indeed not tracking them, they attempted to zoom back using some upgrades Pidge put on it, but they instead caused the shuttle to explode and Keith and Allura were stuck floating in space…until the Red Lion appeared! Keith’s bond with it was strong enough for the lion to traverse space to retrieve him. As it returned to Taujeer, and the five lions were together again, Voltron was formed, and together they forged a new weapon: a big-huge-enormous-saber, which cut down Morbok’s ship and saved the day.
So now the crew knows that Zarkon is connected to the Black Lion, having been its pilot in the past. Oh dear, things are getting very grim. Hopefully Shiro can do something about it soon…maybe in the next episode!
Images: DreamWorks/Netflix
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
