There is no VLD season 9
I checked the main Voltron tag tonight, and I’m not sure why everyone is in a frenzy about alleged new VLD content? The website that talked about a Season 9 coming out in December 2021 was poor clickbait. (I talk about it in this old post here: https://the-lightning-strikes-again.tumblr.com/post/649551689837330432/website-advertising-a-voltron-legendary-defender)
And I see people posting screenshots regarding updates to the Voltron website, but it seems to be just a nod to the recent death of Ted Koplar, whose legacy of Voltron certainly continues.
New VLD content is not going to publish. The show is over, and DreamWorks’ license to produce a Voltron movie officially expired, with the IP holder (WEP) expressing...ah, criticism about DreamWorks’ vision for the script. So there’s clearly some tension between these companies. And that happened, like, wayyyy long ago. WEP confirmed it at that Voltcon convention.
During that same convention, the owner of WEP also mentioned that a crossover/multiverse featuring VLD characters was incredibly unlikely...that any “into the Spiderverse” treatment would involve new iterations of the Voltron characters instead of VLD.
While the Voltron franchise is owned by WEP as an intellectual property, VLD is technically a DreamWorks product. To do anything further with Legendary Defender, WEP and DreamWorks would have to agree to work together, and it doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen:
All of that said, it does seem that with various licenses expired or expiring, WEP is shopping around for a new company to take on the Voltron movie. And clearly, WEP shows interest in rebooting the franchise with a new series one day. I think we can expect a reboot in future years, but it’s a long ways off yet.
VLD is not the legend that is continuing.
It’s the larger franchise that is moving on.
