I think the thing that bothers me most about the VLD writing is that they don't take the time to set anything up. There were a lot of things they did that could have been really poignant and interesting but I just...Didn't care. I wasn't invested. Like Keith leaving the team and Lotor being betrayed. I was like. Meh? The Pidge/Matt thing was POWERFUL tho because we've been waiting for it for seasons. That's Pidge's entire motivation. Everything else felt like ideas they came up with on the fly.
yeahhh that’s…basically how I feel? They’ve got a lot of interesting shifts in dynamics, alliances, and positions, but it’s all done so quickly there’s not the time to build an emotional investment.
Like. Ok. Lotor and his generals were introduced, had their masterplan sort-of framed out, were chased out of the empire, turned on each other, and Lotor was set up for a possible redemption arc (or at least working w/the rebels) in 13 episodes–in what was originally slated to be one season.
That’s far too much in terms of change to pack in like that, and that’s only one plot piece. Voltron has a lot of great story ideas (and, ok yeah, some less than stellar ones as well, but I digress), but it’s trying to do so much at once it’s both hard to follow and hard to build the necessary energy to care about the outcome. It leads to story arcs feeling rushed or unresolved, or character arcs that are set up (like Lance’s hello I’m Bitter) just getting dropped into nonexistence for long periods of time in order to handle other character arcs & story events.
A well-written, cohesive narrative should be able to juggle multiple character arcs, and one or two plot events, but in a way and timeframe that feels interesting without feeling forced or out of control. And yes, I acknowledge, I’m speaking as a writer/intended novelist, and not an animator, but the rules of story are the rules of story.
Pidge’s conclusion of her arc to find Matt was freaking gorgeous, but it’s a long-standing motivation of hers that’s driven her narrative, and a large part of her personality is centered around her relationship with Matt. There was time to let it build and simmer and that made the end result feel very powerful. If she’d just found Matt in season one, after only a few weeks in space and with less time to stress just how much he means to her, it hardly would have felt the same.
Voltron really doesn’t have terrible writing, it just has messy, godawful structure in what it’s trying to do vs the number of episodes they have available to them. While many of the ideas and concepts are interesting, it’s hard to care with the speed they’re introduced and either resolved or dropped by the wayside in favor of other things. I get writers want to keep every cool idea they have in the final narrative, god knows I do, but unless you have the time to pull it off, you just can’t. The Voltron staff either needs to campaign for a series extension with Netflix & Dreamworks, or cut some plot points and just stick to a few slow-burn character arcs, and one or two plot arcs, at a time.
It’ll save us all a headache.
















