This site has already examined, in excruciating detail…
- In Voltron: Legendary Defender, how the Paladins get from the bridge of the Castle of Lions to the Lions’ hangars
- In Voltron: Defender of the Universe, how the Voltron Force gets from the control room of the Castle of Lions to the Lions’ dens
Now it’s time to take a similar look at Voltron: The Third Dimension.
Dens
Just as in Voltron: Defender of the Universe, the Lions in Voltron: The Third Dimension spend their idle time in “dens” on Planet Arus.
Black Lion’s den is within a lion statue on one side of the Castle of Lions.
It’s not clear which side of the castle sports the lion statue.
Red Lion’s den is within an active volcano.
Green Lion’s den is inside a giant tree stump.
Blue Lion’s den is at the bottom of the moat that surrounds the Castle of Lions.
Yellow Lion’s den is inside a giant lion statue in a desert.
It’s unclear how far the dens of Red, Green, and Yellow Lions are from the Castle of Lions. The Castle’s moat is surrounded by trees, so Green Lion’s tree stump den might be nearby, but it might not. In any case, it seems unlikely that all five dens are equidistant from the Castle.
Lion Launch Sequence
As in Voltron: Defender of the Universe, each Lion pilot boards a small shuttle that travels in a tunnel to a point beneath his or her Lion’s den. It’s unclear how the pilots reach the shuttle from the control room. In the program’s second episode, “Red Lion Breaks Loose,” the pilots exit the Castle of Lions’ control room through a seemingly ordinary doorway.
Lance exits through a seemingly different doorway than the others, but maybe all doors lead to the Lions.
When we next see the pilots, each is in an identical “shuttle bay.” (In most episodes, what Keith calls the “Lion Launch Sequence” begins in these shuttle bays rather than in the Castle’s control room.) Each bay’s exterior walls are natural rock, which implies that all five bays are located below ground.
How each pilot reaches his or her underground shuttle bay from the presumably above-ground control room of the Castle of Lions is unclear. Maybe the pilots descend in vertical chutes, as they do in Voltron: Defender of the Universe. On the other hand, maybe the pilots take Lion-colored spiral staircases. Or water slides. I’m going with water slides.
Once each pilot has taken a seat inside his or her shuttle, a transparent canopy closes, and the shuttle begins to travel in a horizontal tunnel. Interestingly, all five tunnels start with a shallow and seemingly unnecessary S-curve.
The shuttles soon accelerate to a high speed, and at a certain point, each tunnel seems to dip downward sharply. There’s no indication that the pilots hold their hands up and scream, as if they were riding in roller coasters.
Our next view of the pilots is from the inside of the Voltron Lions — from inside the cockpit in each Lion’s head, looking rearward. Each cockpit has a hole in the floor, and we see each pilot ascend into the cockpit, still seated in his or her now open-canopied shuttle. The shuttle seat becomes the Lion cockpit seat, and the rest of the shuttle goes… elsewhere. The open shuttle canopy seems to disappear just behind the rear wall of the cockpit.interior literally becomes part of the Lion’s cockpit interior. The lights beneath the cockpit go dark, conveniently hiding how this magic happens.
Once the pilot is inside his or her Lion, he or she places the Lion’s Lion-colored key into a special slot in the cockpit, and the Lion powers up.
Unlike in Voltron: Defender of the Universe, Black Lion, when in its den, is always concealed within the lion statue. Just before Black Lion launches into the sky, the statue disappears, as if by magic. On the other hand, maybe the statue is only a hologram.
The other Lions “simply” leap out of their dens.
It’s unclear where the pilots keep the keys when they aren’t in use. The uniforms are form-fitting, and they don’t seem to have pockets. Maybe the keys are kept in compartments hidden in the bulky, mouth-concealing portions of the helmets.
And that’s how the brave pilots of the Voltron Force get to their Lions.