'Toon Reviews 17: Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 2 Episode 12: Best Laid Plans

Best Laid Plans

The first part of the season's final battle is impressive with a consistent focus on the Zarkon defeat plan.  However, the way the team puts everything together not only gets them closer to their goal, but also leaves several impacts from the characters’ moments. 

Keith in particular stands out among the heroes by offering to infiltrate Zarkon’s base, being of Galra blood himself, to input a code to make it susceptible to viruses, which Pidge will provide.  It’s great to see how far Keith has come, playing to his usual traits of willfully sticking to his risky ideas, but having strong reasons to validate them.  There’s also a heartfelt scene between him and Allura before he leaves.  Allura has had a lot of Galra prejudice throughout the season which wasn’t always comfortable, with some disdain towards Keith becoming more prominent recently.  For her to confirm to Keith that she’s become less judgmental through seeing him and the Paladins as family is great, and shows that her views are not all black and white. 

With the antagonists, they continue to improve as well.  The trend of good members of the Galra is as strong as ever. Much of their moments are spent on interrogating the member they found out allowed the Paladins to escape a while back, a commander named Thace.  Even the empire's emperor is shown to have humanity.  Zarkon has had the black lion, the Voltron lion he used to pilot long ago, on his mind, but now, his desire to get it back has become very obsessive. It’s starting to get in the way of the Galra Empire maintaining control of the galaxy right down to falling for Shiro’s trap of using the lion as bait to get his base to the teludav.  The obsession is a relatable flaw to anyone, so the audience can see a part of themselves in the main villain. 

As for Thace, it’s a bit contrived that Haggar’s druids let him go while Zarkon’s absorbing energy to track the black lion.  The druids could’ve kept him cuffed up during that time and what later happens could’ve been avoided.  Even if we don’t have a logical explanation for them letting Thace go, his moment with Keith is thrilling and impactful.  Thace helps Keith by trying to enact the code needed to shut down the anti-virus system, but the druids changed the code.   With that, Thace turns the control room into a bomb and lets Keith escape while he stays behind to fight the druids before the bomb explodes, sacrificing himself in the process.  It’s not as impactful as Ulaz’s sacrifice since we don’t know as much about Thace, but the lengths this Galra soldier goes through for the greater good are still of high value. 

With all these character actions in place, the episode reaches an exciting climax where the whole team rushes to move their big teludav over Zarkon’s base now infected with Pidge’s virus while the Voltron lions reassemble.  It’s a grand sequence that impresses with how well it works after many episodes of buildup, thus making a perfect moment of satisfaction to make worth out of the trouble and sacrifices made prior.  However, when the episode ends with a statement that this is just the beginning and the Paladins forming Voltron, the excitement remains as you’re left with something to look forward to next time. 

With all this said, all the shining character moments and the built-up climax really delivering make this a truly great penultimate episode for Season 2. 9.5/10

The Ranking

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

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the last episode of this season which sets the next steps of the plan into motion and leads to big game changing results.

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