'Toon Reviews 17: Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 2 Episode 10: Escape from Beta Traz

Escape from Beta Traz

Like the first two episodes of this season, this and the previous one feature two different adventures fitting the same cause.  In this case, they both progress the Paladins’ Galra attack plan with different Paladins going on their own adventures.  This one is a jailbreak plot where Lance, Pidge, and Shiro break into the Galra prison of Beta Traz to rescue the Blade of Marmora technician, Slav. 

The jailbreak is very engaging with the strengths of the characters involved and a whole mystery element to the operation.  The biggest mystery is that the prison is really big, yet it’s only designed to hold Slav.  Pidge, playing to her technical strengths, even deduces fallacies with the prison description by finding two cells.  This gives Lance and Shiro incentive to go find Slav while Pidge watches over them while downloading a virus onto the security system.  She also finds an opportunity to build upon her personal arc of finding her family who was captured by the Galra Empire long ago, particularly her brother Matt.  This arc got a lot of focus in Season 1, and this being the only episode to give it development in this season, makes said episode stand out more. 

Going back to the jailbreak, another mystery to the operation is exactly who Slav is.  When Lance and Shiro split up, they each find a different creature held prisoner.  One is a tall, lean alien creature who’s always worrying about the future, and the other is a hulking dog-like beast who only says “yup.”  Shiro finds the former alien and has to put up with his constant worrying, complaining, and predictions of negative outcomes.  At times, this potential Slav can be funny, but he gets overbearing quickly and for a technician, his worrying makes him look stupid through actually thinking he can drown in a puddle or thinking his mother’s back will be broken if he steps on a crack.  I think Shiro’s constant frustrations with him will most likely mirror the audience’s feeling for this character. 

Surprisingly, Lance’s moments are more impactful.  While guiding his potential Slav, he laments that compared to the rest of the team, he just hangs around and isn’t useful.  These feelings seem justified since Lance has mostly been known to do very little good and mostly flirt with girls or crack one-liners during serious missions, rarely compensating with any big moments.  This continues here when the guards come looking for the creature, and Lance, without reading the context, jumps in to defend it, blowing everyone’s cover.  It does solve the mystery that Slav is the creature Shiro rescued, and we do get an exciting scramble escape which stands out for giving Lance a shining moment when he gives the shot that saves Slav just in time.  As for the dog-beast creature called a yupper, it belongs to one of the guards who turns out to flesh out the Galra, for in addition to being threating like the rest of them, the guard has a lot of cute and endearing love for his pet yupper.  He’s one of their more human members.  Finally, the jailbreak proves officially satisfying when Pidge uncovers interesting information about what became of her brother, bringing this plot point to new lengths. 

As you can tell, this episode has a lot to love with many strong character moments, solid progression of series plot points, and a great sense of general excitement. 9.5/10

The Ranking

1. Shiro’s Escape
2. Greening the Cube
3. The Blade of Marmora
4. Escape from Beta Traz
5. The Ark of Taujeer
6. Eye of the Storm
7. The Belly of the Weblum
8. Across the Universe
9. The Depths
10. Space Mall

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where just as the Zarkon defeat plan is about to come together, the Paladins get caught in a random Robeast fight.


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