Shiro reacts negatively to his new prosthetic arm until Allura swaps out its power source with her own Altean crystal. Sendak's strategy, obtained from interrogating a digital copy of his mind, is presented to the Garrison leadership: he is constructing armaments at key locations around the globe. Shiro suggests infiltrating one such armament in order to figure out how best to deal with it, and two teams are sent — a ground unit (Keith, Pidge, Allura, and Griffin) and a sniper unit (Lance, Hunk, Kinkade, and Veronica). Pidge hacks into the database and discovers that each base is building a Zaiforge cannon, powerful weapons that can destroy planets in seconds.
Keith floats the idea of destroying all the bases at the same time, and Shiro suggests that the paladins each summon their lions to five of the bases while the MFEs destroy the sixth one. En route to the bases, all paladins but Lance are able to activate and summon their lions. Lance and Veronica are spotted and attacked by the Galra, but the Red Lion arrives just in time to rescue the siblings from a ship about to fire on them.
However, the plan fails because the defenses at each base were more powerful than expected, and the paladins are unable to stop the cannons from launching. Sanda turns out to have leaked the plan to Sendak. In desperation, the team forms Voltron, but the robot takes a hit from all cannons at once and separates into the individual lions.
Tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: The Red Lion squashes a Galra ship that was just about to off Lance and Veronica.
- Call-Back: Pidge doing hand signals to Keith, and it takes him a few seconds to understand.
- The Mole: Admiral Sanda is shown to be on Sendak's ship, having told him of the paladins' entire plan in exchange for leaving earth alone.
- Planet Destroyer: The Zaiforge cannons could destroy Earth in seconds if completed.
- Playful Cat Smile: Veronica sports one while teasing Lance about Allura.
- Ship Tease: Allura bids Lance good luck as both of them blush.
- Teleport Spam: Kosmo strategically teleports Keith and Pidge short distances during their infiltration.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The plan to beat the Galra bases is hashed out in detail, so it naturally goes wrong.
