#voltron meta

[garden-secret-ao3writer]

Voltron headcanon

Red Lion: establishes a mental link with Keith out of nowhere

Keith, in terror: Lance is dead, isn’t he.

Red Lion: No. Keith. He’s alive. I just wanted to know if you were safe.

Keith:

Keith: oh.…I'm fine.

His hands are still shaking.

[honeyspeeches]

THE SABOTAGE OF VOLTRON LEGENDARY DEFENDER

KEEP READING

[vldunchartedregions]

Voltron Season 8 Meta Introduction

Hi! Welcome to "Uncharted Regions."

Now that it's been several years since Voltron Season 8 came out, the news of Netflix's removal of the series on December 14th, 2024 shook the fandom and pop culture as a whole.

You may be wondering... 1) Huh?! 2) Why?! It's a Netflix Original! 3) I loved this show, I don't understand! I was the same, too. We were all a little confused. However, licensing rights were ending to Netflix and Netflix doesn't want to renew. Fair play.

As someone who worked in a corporate company who also provides live streaming services + has a degree in television production, we have a better understanding of the executive decisions at play that comes down to it. It was not too hard to decipher why when you know what went on in the trenches of the Voltron fandom from 2016-2018.

The bottom line is that Netflix marketing did not match the source material provided, and there was intensive discourse across multiple facets of the fandom. You can imagine Netflix were not fans of the outcome of the series, and may not have even been told by Dreamworks the outcome of the series when Season 8 dropped; especially when Netflix's global social media accounts openly admitted to shipping Klance on Twitter.

Regardless, we're not looking at who's to blame, but you do have to wonder how such a large international miscommunication between Netflix, Dreamworks, and Voltron's IP holders went down the corporate funnel.

...I digress, let's move on.

As many people did from the news of it's removal (which also surprised the official Voltron accounts), I got back into the Voltron fandom really quickly and tried to rewatch as much as I could before it's inevitable removal from Netflix.

I haven't touched this show in years, friends. Not since 2020. The rewatch showed me one thing: that this show is breathtaking, stunning, and at it's core - it represented change. It's truly one of it's kind. To have the crew from Avatar: the Last Airbender, and Legend of Korra working on it on such a high level? Hell, there was an MFE pilot spin off in the works.

There was a lot of promising stories to tell with new outcomes and twists with a classic IP such as Voltron. It was promising a new future and fresh takes with comics, games, and so much more.

Now, alike to most viewers, I was there when Season 8 dropped. Hell, I was at the NYCC 2018 panel where they gave out these posters (which will be VERY relevant to this meta, I assure you):

The hype of Voltron Season 8 lead to a FULL panel that got closed off mid-way in the line. Many fans flew from across the globe (including myself) to get a glimpse of the showrunners, cast & crew, and a unique slice of the pie into Voltron Season 8's trailer.

The excitement was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before in a fandom. It was extremely thrilling, the trailer was outstanding, and Season 8 wasn't too far away.

First shown at New York City Comic Con 2018, get a look at the #Voltron production team's take on the upcoming final season of Voltron Legendary Defender, streaming on @Netflix tomorrow!

Then Season 8 dropped on Netflix... December 14th, 2018.

It was jarring. There were plot points that made no sense, obvious edits to scenes, censorships like a One Piece 4Kids dub, characters cut and pasted into scenes, and storylines were slapped together like a messy sandwich. And it was incredibly obvious too.

The fandom noticed and reacted accordingly - asking questions and demanding answers left, right, and centre. The showrunners responded through podcasts and statements on various levels.

The answer was clear... their vision wasn't the only vision going into the show:

"You know, as we sort of got through the process of premise, script, it went all the way down the line. It got storyboarded. And then at some point, you know, we received pushback from the studio and you know, we were sort of a little confused, like, “hey, how did it go, like, so far down the line before we received pushback?” And you know, this is not like a, like, a vilifying of DreamWorks or anything, like, every exec that we ever interacted with was, it was like, “hey, we understand why you want to tell this story. We understand where you’re coming from. It’s a little bit bigger than that. You know, there’s-there’s other, sort of, controlling parties with Voltron which makes it unique. It’s not just a DreamWorks-owned property.” And it just–I think logistically it just got really, really weird."

Joaquim Dos Santos - Afterbuzz TV interview. Source: https://dragonofyang.tumblr.com/post/183820127648/abtv-mar-4-transcript

---

Fans promptly started a petition two days later to release the original Season 8. THAT'S how obvious the editing was and how obvious the deterred, original vision had become.

As a disappointed fan and someone who studied media analysis intrinsically for university, I did try to rewatch back then, and it was painful to watch. What happened? There were layers of context on the cutting room floor and scenes didn't make sense. Hell, each episode title always has a double layered meaning, and even those layers were stripped from the core of the episodes for the most part. This left fans to say, "Whaaaaat is going ON?" The entire fandom was hurt by what had occurred.

The cast & crew that were also unaware of these story changes were also quite hurt, too. To make it more apparent, the showrunners were pretty open on speaking about leaving the project as well on the Buzzfeed Aftershow Podcast, but they simply couldn't:

LM: It’s not-it’s not just like, “Oh I can’t afford my mortgage!” You know, we have a crew that we care about we brought onto this show. If we abandoned them, we-we don’t know what’s in store for them. We don’t know, do they get to stay on? Do they get to keep their jobs? Does someone else come on and then they’re working under someone else that they didn’t sign up for? Or–

JDS: Or they’re working under someone else that’s just gonna be like, “Alright, we’re just gonna finish the show and not really do right by the rest of it.”

Lauren Montgomery & Joaquim Dos Santos - Afterbuzz TV interview. Source: https://dragonofyang.tumblr.com/post/183820127648/abtv-mar-4-transcript

---

We all wanted answers, and sure, some members of the team did speak up - but it didn't provide clear answers on what was the go with Season 8 being edited so far into post-production.

Now, this blog isn't dedicated to restoring Season 8 to it's original format (that would be lovely, but we have to be realistic - it has been 7 years and no google drives of the original season 8 have dropped so far). No, no.

That might happen (I've got a positive mindset on it - someone has to have a back up copy on some hard drive somewhere), or maybe it will be released... in a green sock reality.

Rather, this blog is dedicated to all the fans (new & old) whom want a sense of closure to as to why their favourite show on Netflix from 2016-2018 dropped the ball so hard for Season 8.

Not thinking much of it, I had posted a twitter thread detailing how the ending with all the lions flying off looked a little odd.

...And so, I received an anonymous inbox on New Years Day, 2025

This DM... was the start to an unravelling of webs and a rewatch that crumbled immediately. The cracks were all there.

I rewatched Season 8 with this information at hand with a few of my closest online friends, and we were shocked at how much there was to uncover. We were absolutely FLOORED by what was found, including incredible pieces of evidence from the fandom itself.

Now... Why does this matter? It's been YEARS and I'm sure we're not the first to uncover some pieces of information (See the #FreeVLDS8 movement - so, so many good finds there as a foundational point of reference).

Some of what we've uncovered in these Uncharted Regions has NOT been covered by the fandom before, nor does it scratch the surface of what's been found as of yet.

Welcome to the Uncharted Regions of Voltron Season 8.

Our aim for this meta is to acknowledge the following with detailed evidentiary support: 1. The editing of multiple episodes & scenes.

From there, we will look at the alleged changes: 2. Plot points & scenes that may or may not have had cuts. 3. Providing official-style edited shots comparisons to portray how some scenes should've looked in the original Season 8. 4. Piecing each episode / episode orders together (as best as we can) 5. The original ending.

Cheers to the beginning of a new meta, a new hope, and a new perspective on what truly happened to Voltron Season 8.

(Allegedly; for entertainment purposes only)

The one thing I humbly request is PLEASE... No hate towards the showrunners, cast, crew, or the official Voltron IP holders. There's a lot that has changed culturally and intrinsically within the industry over the years and this outcome was not something they could simply control. Let's be adults, look at this open conversation with empathy and love, and respectfully, let's indulge in this topic with grace - your feelings, however, are incredibly valid when it comes to this meta and what we uncover, as there's many alleged finds that may shock the fandom.

Let the journey commence.

Check out my Twitter page for any and all updates in regards to this insanely detailed meta; including teasers and screenshots! Please and thank you.

[artsyjesseblue]

Guys, I think I figured out how Lotor was excised from the end of the S7-8 poster. The image wasn’t cropped. It was enlarged, leaving Lotor out of the picture and shaving the top of Dakin’s head off the image (Dakin is the Coran-innkeeper big lady at the end of the poster).

For reference, here is the full poster, as collected from a fan on Reddit a few years ago. I believe it is actually an official poster, not an image recomposed by fans, because it has the Voltron/Netflix logos on the bottom - which are missing in the individual releases throughout the seasons:

The proof hides in small details, so bear with me while I explain why the S7-8 part of the poster was enlarged…

As I accidentally discovered recently, the poster distributed at NYCC 2018 was even more truncated. Allura wasn’t in it either at the end. Here’s a post from Voltron’s twitter, back in 2018, releasing the digital image—which is the so-called ‘full’ S7-8 poster, that includes Allura.

But if you read the comments, there are several people who complain that all the posters given out at NYCC were… misprinted:

Also:

And this:

And again:

On e-Bay, there are still some original NYCC 2018 posters for sale (yes, in 2025) which, as expected, are missing Allura from the end of the print:

An important aspect is that the dimensions of the NYCC posters I found on e-Bay (including earlier seasons, such as the S1-2) are all 17” length, 9.5” height. So no matter what, they had to confine the image into that ratio. That was the poster’s paper size.

Now the juicy part:

—Look at the NYCC physical poster (where Allura is also missing) : Dakin’s head (the big Coran-innkeeper) is cut from the nose up, so you can’t see the eyes.

—Meanwhile, in the digital poster later released by Voltron and in the full recomposed poster, a little bit more of Dakin fits into the image—the eyes are included, but the top of the head is still chopped. (btw, the ratio of the digital image fits the 17x9.5 proportion too):

Which only means one thing:

That the S7-8 poster was neither chopped physically ✂️ (remember, it’s still 17x9.5, just like the previous posters) nor misprinted nor cropped digitally at the very end. The file image was resized. ENLARGED. This way, Lotor wouldn’t fit into the 17” length (and in the initial print run, Allura didn’t fit either, and that’s why Dakin’s head was snipped a smidge more).

My other proof is that when you look at the section where the S7-8 illustration combines with the previous section (S5-6), the photomerge is not perfectly seamless.

A Discord friend noticed some time ago that the S7-8 part of the fully reconstructed poster is a bit more blurry than the rest. Well, that’s because it was enlarged, so the resolution is different. Thing is, it wasn’t enlarged by much. Just a little bit to cut out that one last character. If you play with the resize tool, you can see that by bringing the image a notch down, Dakin’s head would fully fit in, and it would add that little space needed for Lotor to be there.

The problem is… by sizing up the last portion of the poster, it won’t properly stitch together with the previous section. But Photoshop is smart. When photomerging, the algorithm will automatically adjust the image to try to seamlessly merge the images while also maintaining the ratio. Which means that the image will get slightly distorted, but it’s imperceptible, due to its large size. Only when you zoom in, you see the artifacts at the seams, as described above. Also, the process of ‘distorting’ the image will add to the blur effect.

Looking at the overall poster, no other character is partially cropped out of the page. There are some creatures that have wings/fins sticking out. Lions do not fully fit in. But no sentient characters are chopped. Except big-head Dakin. Oh, and Allura’s right foot.

The entire poster is built in four wave-like compositions, to mirror the four poster releases. Each wave has a beginning, a middle and an end. Except the last section, which ends abruptly, with Allura’s hair floating into La-La land, and the green guy above waving goodbye, like a seal of doom.

Also, I do not believe there is more to the poster, beyond Lotor. The big Coranic dragon probably ends with the tail looping down and under its body. The end of the fourth wave.

Some may argue that we also need to see the rest of what’s on top (because some of the creatures’ top parts are cropped out; same with the Lions). But this would mean that the full poster image must be sized down significantly more—creating even more space at the very end (and a reason to believe there was more stuff missing from the poster). I don’t think that was the illustrators’ intention. The creation of these posters, as explained on twitter by an artist who worked on Voltron, was inspired by Kinu Nishimura. Here’s how Nishimura sets the compositions:

Notice how the big elements are not fully included. They are the background for the characters. (Ha, that actually might steer into a more advanced conversation about why the characters are more important than the mechas, but I shall leave that for another time.)

Lastly, if anyone has doubts about Lotor being the last character in the poster, try to come up with another tall guy that Allura may be gazing so fondly at; a character who isn’t repeated at all in the last quarter of the poster.

LOL, Sendak? 😂 (heh, actually Sendak is present in this section). Adult-Lotor is not present at all in the S7-8 poster, although we did see him/his ghost in S8. In fact, he is present only once in the entire S1-8 poster.

TL;dr: The image was not cropped, it was embiggened 😄 This reminds me of some famous stolen museum artworks, where the thieves cut the paintings from the frame.

[blanceyblance]

Analysis on Lance's underrated role on the team

Or

The Space Mom Lance Agenda Masterpost

Here I will add the links to this meta and some other VLD meta in case anyone is interested in reading.

What is this about?

To those who don't know what i'm talking about, the "Team Mom" is a popular trope often found in ensemble shows where there is a character who acts in a more "gently parental" way to other members of the team.

Just like how the popular "Space Dad" nickname was coined for Shiro and the fandom accepted he was the "Team Dad", there was a time when the fandom tried to shove Allura in the "Space Mom" role.

But after the first seasons, the fans realised that Allura didn't exactly fit the role and just stopped using the name for her.

Some people tried to call Hunk the Mom Friend or Coran as he is also an adult and Allura's guardian.

This little meta is my attempt of saying that the closest thing the Paladins had to a "Space Mom" was a lanky cuban teenager.

Each part covers Lance's relationship with the rest of the team from this angle: how Lance takes on a caretaker/protector position and other interesting stuff I may find relevant.

Part 1. What is a Team Mom?/Keith

Part 2. Keith 2/Allura

Part 3. Allura 2

Part 4. Pidge

Part 5. Pidge 2/Hunk

Part 6. Hunk 2/Shiro

Part 7. Shiro 2/Coran

Part 8. Coran/The Space Pets

Part 9. The Space Pets/Veronica

Part 10. Veronica, Nadia and Sylvio

Part 11. Miscellaneus

Besides I will add other posts that were born while making these posts.

Hope you guys enjoy reading.

[yuhi-san]

Okay so I have seen some posts again about krolia leaving keith and the devastating effect it had on both him and her. And while I largely agree, I feel like it is too often framed as “krolia knew she was abandoning her child and it would be painful but it was the better having him grow up on earth while she went back to war to help make sure the galra wont go locking at earth.”

Which, yeah. But I feel like it never gets acknowledged that krolia leaving wasn’t the issue. Her ‘abandoning’ keith in on itself wasn’t what caused any of his issue.

The real problem was keiths dad dying, especially when he was still very little.

I try to explain.

See, not only wasn’t it a “I leave my child to grow up lonely without me but it is better than if he has to grow up with a galactic war reaching his planet” kind of situation but a “I leave my baby to grow up in the care of his loving father so to keep them both save from this war even if it means I can’t see them ever again” kind of situation.

Krolia was working under very different expectation from what really happened, which obviously she couldn’t have known.

Like, sure. Growing up without your mom you never got to know sucks. But growing up without your mom because she had to leave you but you still have your dad who cares for you and loves you a lot is way less devastating than having your dad die at a really young age and not knowing anything about your mom but that she left you.

and the later is what happened to keith.

If his dad hadn’t died when he was still so young, it would have been different. Still a little sucky but eventually keith would have been at an age where his dad could have explained things.

‘Your mom is still out there but she loves you a lot but can’t be here.’ And maybe he did tell keith that already but it’s kind of a meaningless reassurance once his dad is gone.

But eventually keiths dad could have told him the truth about krolia. Maybe even shown him the lion. and keith wouldn't have been left with no family but still had his dad raising him. you know, important difference.

But again, the dad died when keith was little. And at what point can you trust a child with that kind of information anyways? He couln’t exactly risk keith telling anyone, like a friend he might trust or slip up when getting in an argument.

Either teachers and stuff would worry about the kid having some mental issues and delusions (not good) or less likely but probably worse, someone would have believed it and worst case the government learns his kid is half an alien.

So yeah. My point is, not only was krolia expecting keith to be well cared for by his dad, its his dad’s early death that triggered keiths abandonment issues and most his struggles growing up more than her initial leaving.

In fact, keiths dad not dying but Krolia still leaving is really the only scenario in which keith had a chance at a stable childhood.

Because the sad truth is that even if krolia had stayed, even if the galra hadn’t found earth and the blue lion, it would have set up keith for a life as an outsider and difficulties with socializing.

Because, well. krolia is a 7 ft purple alien woman. Sure they have been living out in bum fuck nowhere. But no one could ever know about krolia. Freaking first alien on earth. You think there is any she could have just lived among humans with no issues? (you know like the government? Public panic?) Can't exactly disguise her in any believable way...

And then there is little keith. Brings us back to the previous point of: at what age can you be sure your kid wont accidentally or unintentionally reveal his mom is a purple alien to somene? And therefor either draw attention from child welfare service for continued and persistent delusions or worse the government interested in a real alien?

And even then. Should he lie about not having a mom in school? make stuff up about his mom being some kind fo freak or wirdo? He can’t ever have friends home. They can’t meet krolia for obvious reasons.

Even if keiths dad had been alive all this time and went to teachers conferences, to sports games, was the one to drop keith of at other kids homes. the lies. The pretending. The feeling – knowing – he wasn’t like others. That he was quite literally alien. Knowing who and what he was but also having to desperately hide it.

With krolia there, keith still wouldn’t have had a stable, easy childhood. Still would have struggled to connect to others. Still have been an outcast.

(and honestly if krolia had stayed but keiths dad would have still died when he was so young it would probably have been the worst outcome. It would have boiled down to a) keith still ending up in foster care away from her and being unable to fit in and connect except he would know she was so close and miss her and also know for a fact that and why he was a freak or b) him having to live in isolation with his mom and never being able to get close to anyone because no one could know) The saddest part is, krolia leaving keith was the only thing that even gave him a so much as a chance at a stable, happy life growing up

[magic-quill]

You know I think the funniest thing about the modern Voltron fandom is that in 2016 (and well over a decade leading up to then!) mullets were a stereotypically untouchable hairstyle. They had not been trendy since the 80s. That's why Keith's hair was a joke -- it was based on the 80s cartoon (barely a mullet anyway) and literally 30 years out of date. But now, fast forward 9 years, mullets are at long last coming back into fashion it seems like some people... don't realize? That that's the point? Like, when I first saw someone with a mullet in the wild in 2021 I was shocked and genuinely told all my friends about it because mullets are so severely uncool. I got behind a wolf cut because it seemed to be just a heavily layered hairstyle, and if that's not a mullet,,, I mean maybe Keith's hair isn't either but in retrospect that was clearly the beginning of the end. Fashion has now changed enough that one of the more famous running jokes in Voltron doesn't work the same way anymore and younger fandom members think Lance was just making fun of Keith for no reason or to be a dick. And obviously I think people can do what they want with their hair and modern mullets do look cool to modern eyes; that's the way fashion works! But it's really funny to watch fashion trends slooooowly date the show.

[violethowler]

Constructing Legends: Episode 07A - What Could Have Been (Part 1) is now live on YouTube!

For this month's video essay, I break down what the original version of Seasons 7-8 were intended to look like before the IP owner meddled by going through all the signs of editing in Season 8 from front to back. Due to how much information I crammed into this script, I experimented with splitting it into Part 1 and Part 2 on the suggestion of my roommate. So the second half will be going up at the same time tomorrow to give people tie to digest everything in Part 1 so they won't be overwhelmed.