Main points from Afterbuzz interview
Spoiler warning for season 4!
So Afterbuzz TV sat down with Lauren Montgomery, Joaquim Dos Santos and Jeremy Shada to review episodes 1 and 2 as well as discuss the season as a whole. Here’s a summary :)
*Note: a lot of this is paraphrased since I was taking notes as I was listening, but it’s as true to what was said as physically possible
Last season was a lot about building Keith’s confidence as a leader and then immediately he steps out of the role. Joaquim says Keith has always been reluctant to be in the leader position
Lauren says we have a situation where we have one paladin too many, something’s gotta give. Had Shiro stayed gone Keith would’ve absolutely stayed put, but with Shiro back Keith feels like he can’t fill those shoes, so he’s kinda pulling back to sort of force Shiro to step back in
Lauren is responsible for the Shiro & Keith cameo in the background of the Holt final photos before the Kerberos launch
Lauren calls Shiro Keith’s “guiding light”
Lauren says Shiro is going to have a “lot of development”
Jeremy teases more backstory
The fakeout at Matt’s grave was Joaquim’s idea
Steve Ahn’s birthday made it into the graveyard scene as Matt’s wrong birthday (or perhaps the coordinates? wasn’t clear)
Jeremy says he watched the graveyard scene not knowing anything since he wasn’t in that episode, and even he believed it for a second, despite Matt’s VA being around a lot to record lines
Lauren says she still gets affected and she’s known since day one that Matt will be back (”and he’s gonna be a rebel and he’s gonna be an action star!”)
Matt is a huge dork. He had to grow and evolve to survive but at the heart of it he’s still Pidge’s dork of a brother
Matt was the only person Pidge could relate to growing up because she was way too smart for everyone else in her class, smarter even than her own teacher, so she had no one except her brother. And then he kinda left her behind, not intentionally or in a mean sense but still
Matt got into the Garrison on brainpower and he isn’t as powerful as some other characters. He very much fights like someone who isn’t a big guy (speed not strength)
Lance is all about being in the spotlight. The Voltron shows are everything he’s been waiting for
Jeremy says it was fun playing those more lighthearted episodes after the more serious growing and maturing from last season
Lance has a lightheartedness to him; Jeremy says that’s his favourite part of playing him
Lauren jokes that it’s all Jeremy’s fault cause he’s so good at playing Lance and if you’re mad that Lance is funny all hatemail goes to Jeremy
Joaquim says it’s tough with so many characters, but reiterates that every person will have their time in the spotlight
Regarding Lance’s pep talk to Allura at the end of the season, Lance knows when someone needs to step up, he’s a really good team player. He loves being the center of attention but he’s also able to pull back. Jeremy says the team is like a family now, and it’s that respect and care and love for everyone on the team that lets Lance be confident in saying stuff like “I know you can do this, it’s all you” as opposed to something like “I think I can do something!”
Lauren points out that Lance started in the blue lion which is a support lion, holds Voltron up, and he’s since graduated to the right hand which is like the ultimate support to the head. It’s a good indication of what’s beneath the surface, he’s really good at knowing everyone’s strengths, good team player
Joaquim adds that if you look deeper, Lance comes from a big family, and within the family dynamic he was probably very much that guy. But to people outside the family he wants to be seen as front and center
Jeremy says Lance is going to continue to grow, building on the more serious moments from this season and the one before. Lance becomes “a voice of reason” soon
Lauren is to blame for Lotor dislocating his shoulder. They wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with that; they knew he had to get away but how? It’s not like he could drive with his mouth or pick the lock, the space cuffs don’t have locks. Joaquim says everyone cringed just looking at Lauren’s storyboards for that scene without even sound or anything
Lauren says Lotor is genuinely intelligent and we’ll eventually learn things about him “like maybe he’s not SUPER backstabby?”
[both Joaquim and Lauren are very tight lipped on Lotor backstory and relationship with Honerva etc]
Josh Keaton voices Regris
Whenever there’s an extra lady voice it’s usually Kimberly Brooks or Cree Summer
Lauren recalls one amazing blooper when Rhys Darby (Coran) just got so frustrated with a line he cussed them out. Joaquim and Jeremy add that Rhys has this amazing way that he abandons a line, where he’ll just go dadadadada–awwh (“he deflates”). To be fair Rhys gets a lot of the hardest and most technical lines
Andrea Romano (the show’s retired voice director) did the robot voice at Matt’s grave–she has a tradition of doing computer voices (she was the batmobile for a long time)–and she also has done the Castleship’s voice as well as some helmet translations
Te-Osh was voiced by Lacey Chabert who does Nyma. She has a naturally high voice so they pitched her down for Te-Osh and found it turned out amazing
John DiMaggio voiced lieutenant Ozar as well as the bounty hunter and the illegal arms dealer from Reunion (There’s a cute story with Christine Bian–backgrounds and props supervisor–who is a huge Futurama fan so she came in the day John was recording and he was super nice and signed her things and as he left she yelled “Bender we love you!” and you hear down the hall “shut up baby I know it”)
The Blade of Marmora feel the most responsibility out of anyone to do whatever they can against the Galra given it’s their culture and they want to prove to everyone that they’re willing to go as far as it takes to right the wrongs, which unfortunately often leads to BoM operatives being not very long-lived
Joaquim says the grey alien from the mall goes to Earth every now and then for a round of abductions and then he resells everything, which is how he got all the game systems and Kaltenecker, etc
Pidge was determined to play her game and within a few months she had gathered everything to jury rig it so it’d work, and then of course Lance in typical Lance fashion jacked her game system the same way he jacked her headphones
The pixel artist they got to do the game is Michael Azzi, based in Brussels, and he came up with most of it on his own (that boss move at the end where the shot rotates was all his idea)
Any time the show goes Full Anime (the Kaltenecker scene, Matt and Allura’s meeting) it’s usually Steve Ahn’s doing
Joaquim says go watch Matt and Allura’s meeting in Japanese
The Voltron Show episode was very much their Ember Island Players episode. Joaquim says there’s a bit of a disconnect, that it was first and foremost an episode for them internally to come to terms with a lot of stuff, whereas a lot of people are saying “oh they’re speaking directly to us [the fans]” but that’s not the case. They’ve been thinking about this since a long time ago. Lauren says it was written and in production long before the fandom
Lauren would’ve loved to get to know the rebels a bit better and give Olia a proper introductions but just no time
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