Voltron: Legendary Defender is known for cliffhangers — there’s been one at the end of nearly every season finale since the show first debuted in June 2016. However, Netflix and Dreamworks TV’s sixth season of Voltron bucks that trend, and it’s arguably the best season yet.
[Warning: Major spoilers for Voltron: Legendary Defender season 6 ahead.]
Season six brought plenty of resolution to several long-term subplots such as Shiro’s odd conduct since season three and the origin of Keith’s Galra heritage. However, the biggest reveal of the season was one that hadn’t been extensively foreshadowed or alluded to in previous seasons — and it changes everything.
The season features notable moments for Hunk, who gets to display his engineering prowess in the first episode. Lance also gets some time in the spotlight, unequivocally supporting of Allura despite his jealousy over her and Lotor’s budding relationship. Pidge gets her moments as well, skillfully navigating the castle computers and delivering snarky quips along the way. There’s also a hilariously fun Dungeons & Dragons inspired episode that lets us take a breather from otherwise nonstop action and plot revelations.
This season also adresses some of the most pressing questions that have been raised in Voltron thus far, beginning with Keith. After he was revealed to be half Galra in season two, Keith joined the Blade of Marmora, a society of Galra who work against the Empire, and eventually left Voltron. However, since season five introduced us to his mother, Krolia, we’ve had the same questions that Keith demands answers to at the beginning of the episode: “How did you get to Earth? How did you meet my dad?”
We get brief glimpses into Krolia’s past in a sequence in which Keith and Krolia have to navigate shipless through a quantum abyss (a corridor in space with strong gravitational forces that warp space and time). After crash landing on Earth while trying to protect the Blue Lion from the Galra Empire, she and Keith’s father fell in love. Not long after Keith’s birth, Krolia made the decision to re-infiltrate the Empire in order to cover up the Lion’s location, leaving Keith and his father behind. After his father died, Keith was alone until Shiro took him under his wing.
The biggest revelation of the season comes after Keith and Krolia discover a hidden colony of Alteans. One of the accepted truths of Voltron has always been that Allura and Coran are the only surviving Alteans after Zarkon’s genocide of their people, and we’ve never been lead to believe otherwise. Somewhat less shocking is the fact that Lotor has been deceiving Allura and Team Voltron this entire time — he was the one that not only brought Alteans to the colony, but also took select inhabitants and harvested their quintessence (life force).
Finally, we get to the root of Shiro’s odd behavior over the past several seasons — after disappearing from the Black Lion while fighting Zarkon in the second season, his consciousness remained in the Black Lion while a clone was allowed to escape and infiltrate the team. Haggar, the evil witch, finally assumes control of the clone, leading to a climactic fight between Keith and Shiro’s clone that is arguably the emotional high point of the season.
Remarkably, season six of Voltron gives us something in its finale that we’ve never received: a resolution. After defeating Lotor and sacrificing the Castle of Lions to patch up the holes in spacetime left behind after the fight, the paladins get to ... well, head home. While things certainly aren’t over and they’re going back to Earth in pursuit of the blueprints to rebuild the castle, it feels like we’ve finally come full circle. This time, there’s no new subplot or cliffhanger.
So what’s next for Team Voltron? The fight with Lotor may be over, but the Galra Empire is still in political shambles. Certain planets still haven’t been liberated from Galra control, and Haggar is still roaming the galaxy. Furthermore, Allura and Coran still have yet to rejoin the rest of the Altean people they believed to be dead in what’s sure to be an emotional reunion. We’re 52 episodes into Netflix’s 78-episode commitment, so there’s plenty of time left for new developments.
But for now, Voltron and its paladins get to rest. After years of nonstop rebellions and combat, that feels just as momentous as any Voltron finale to date.