i say this and i mean it. voltron has no theme, or at least an incredibly weak one. is it that family can be found in any group of people, at any point in time? no, because the only families in the entire show are biological or they knew each other before. is it that hope means you can accomplish anything? clearly not, since the paladins haven’t had trouble in the hope department since season fucking three, and they killed off their “hope” character, too. is it that any place can be called home, so long as the people you love are there? definitely fucking not, in fact i think like, two characters mentioned home in a way that was at all impactful in the entire series!
also, voltron doesn’t have a clear villain. it just doesn’t. at first it was zarkon, then it was lotor, then it was…not…lotor…? then it was no one, apparently, because one of their characters - the only black girl on the main cast - ended up sacrificing herself to redeem two genocidal lunatics. and it makes the whole show seem fucking meaningless because, if they’re nice all along, then why have the paladins been fighting against them for the past seventy-eight episodes?
voltron doesn’t have satisfying character arcs, either. allura died, first of all, without getting any real development of her character that wasn’t about her either getting hurt or shat on by the writers, honestly. then, hunk? he had a four episode arc in season one, then one again in season seven, and for all the rest he was a walking, talking food joke with some cool fighting moments interspersed to make it not that bad. lance was a punching bag full of cheap laughs throughout the entire show, and when he seemed like he was about to get an actual arc, it was taken away from him. (what the fuck even was that astral plane scene with shiro? what was the purpose?) in the end, his arc ended up being all around romance - which would have been sort of okay, if the girl he was dating (allura) didn’t die a few episodes later. and shiro…dear god, shiro. that man was torture porn, there’s no way around it. his character was stagnant as fuck, and that’s not to say i don’t like him - i do - he just didn’t develop at all; he only became worse for the wear.
and the worst part about all that? all those characters are characters of color. the two white main characrers, pidge and keith, had show-spanning, attention-demanding arcs. sure, the writing in them wasn’t good, but they weren’t constantly degraded by the writers in their own damn story.
all the racism in voltron deserves its own separate post, unfortunately. but the gist of it is this: voltron did not treat any of its characters of color well, at all.
all the writing issues, too, deserve their own separate post. the abandoned plotlines, the lack of character relationships, the messy episodes…i could go on. basically, voltron is not a well-written show, at all. whatever angle you’re coming from, you have to acknowledge that it just is not.
so…voltron is a failure of a show. all its problems, all its shitty writing, all of it, caused me - and many other ex-fans - to be unemotional and unaffected by its end. even the once-hardcore fans (which, i admit, i once was) seem just…tired of voltron at this point, and for good reason: voltron has failed to keep its audience invested. it has failed to keep its audience hoping. all in all, voltron has failed.
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