This episode left me with a lot of mixed feelings. This might be the one that is the more in the spirit of what all the other episodes have been. This is truly like all those comical episodes we got before. That said, some things are a lot wrong in there. To start on, why is this the only episode in which the main characters seem to be themselves the whole season (aside from some choices they make here) ? First and formost it seems more than out of character to see Shiro and Keith not spending this day together, either both going around having fun, because this is what Shiro would do, make sure Keith is not alone and if not having fun, do a parameter check with him and whatnot. Then to see him go to that armwresling thing was funny I admit and interesting in the fact that he is fighting strong against his ptsd (even if no hint is given which is a little disappointing). The problem however resides in the fact Shiro ends up alone again, no one is with him and he does not hang up with anyone. He and the paladins (because we keep being reminded painfully how much he is NOT a paladin anymore, almost treated like he never was even) only interact at the very end when he won and lifts him to celebrate his victory. And can I say that I find highly weird how the crew character named curtis keeps getting some forced awkward screen time for no reason, leaving us to believe will become a MFE maybe in the future. He seems in this episode to have got teleporting skills even as we see him being with the MFEs in one place yet being there in the armwresling competition at the same time with a VERY inconsistent visual design making him look like he was drawn over Iverson actually and added last second to support what happens in the epilogue and make it so we did see him a little before this.
Now about what happens with Allura in this episode. Lotor is portrayed through the season as the temptation, the evil seed biting at Allura and convincing her to go to the 'dark' side even, digging him into even a darker role. While we are happy to see Lotor again and that it pulls on really great and dark strings in a way, this feels deeply wrong and badly presented in its result, plus add to this that Allura is with Lance now, yet she gets to see Lotor like she was still in love with him, still going out with him and that he was used to manipulate her, giving us the image that Lance is just either a rebound for Allura or not that important either way.
Especially since she hides all this from him and lies to get rid of him and be along in the Atlas. This episode we also gets to see an old side of Allura that she went through in prior season and was shown to grow from only to fall back again into. It feels like she regresses in all the evolution we saw her go through. She becomes again the control freak, the dishonest/judgemental/distant with the paladin self in the fact that she decides that she will win this fight on her own, that she is does not tell the paladin until she has no choice because they find her unconscious after she took the choice on what they would all end up doing alone. This here tells the watchers that Allura does not value team work, that she believes she knows better then anyone or at least that it is what she believes. Errors from our beloved heroes can be part of a great story, but Allura does not get through the path of understanding it was a bad choice, that she was wrong and that she has to apologize for it. In any case, this is a road that we went through before in the earlier seasons with how she reacted to knowing Keith being half galra. Allura is a great character that had evolved beautifully through 6-7 seasons and that fell through a rabbit hole suddenly for furthering the plot in a way the direction wanted us to be and she was the sacrifice to bring us there (literally!)
Now about what happens with Allura in this episode. Lotor is portrayed through the season as the temptation, the evil seed biting at Allura and convincing her to go to the 'dark' side even, digging him into even a darker role. While we are happy to see Lotor again and that it pulls on really great and dark strings in a way, this feels deeply wrong and badly presented in its result, plus add to this that Allura is with Lance now, yet she gets to see Lotor like she was still in love with him, still going out with him and that he was used to manipulate her, giving us the image that Lance is just either a rebound for Allura or not that important either way.
Especially since she hides all this from him and lies to get rid of him and be along in the Atlas. This episode we also gets to see an old side of Allura that she went through in prior season and was shown to grow from only to fall back again into. It feels like she regresses in all the evolution we saw her go through. She becomes again the control freak, the dishonest/judgemental/distant with the paladin self in the fact that she decides that she will win this fight on her own, that she is does not tell the paladin until she has no choice because they find her unconscious after she took the choice on what they would all end up doing alone. This here tells the watchers that Allura does not value team work, that she believes she knows better then anyone or at least that it is what she believes. Errors from our beloved heroes can be part of a great story, but Allura does not get through the path of understanding it was a bad choice, that she was wrong and that she has to apologize for it. In any case, this is a road that we went through before in the earlier seasons with how she reacted to knowing Keith being half galra. Allura is a great character that had evolved beautifully through 6-7 seasons and that fell through a rabbit hole suddenly for furthering the plot in a way the direction wanted us to be and she was the sacrifice to bring us there (literally!)
