A lot of entertainment sites that cover the animation/comic side of the media have been awfully quiet in regards to covering the final season of Voltron Legendary Defender which aired last Friday December 14th 3:00AM EST.
Looking at their most recent score according to
Rottentomatoes.com this is actually pretty low:
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This was a big drop in the first two seasons averaging a score of 94/95% so what happened in the span of its first debut that was only 2 years ago?
A look back at the controversey surrounding Voltron,
and yes..we must not forget the time when a certain group of shippers threatened to leak images of the show to make sure their ship was canon and
the harassment of the cast and crew of this show, but the most recent fiasco was just this past summerfollowing the outrage from season 7 when Shiro had the "Dumbledore treatment" of being revealed to be LGBT and his ex-boyfriend was killed, DreamWorks and the Eexcutive producers/Showrunners of Voltron, Lauren Montgomery&Joaquim Dos Santos, had a lot to answer for. They issued an apology
This seemed to please some fand but others were cautious and wondered if season 8 could salvage the remainder of the show with only 13 episodes left...
Shiro seems to have not been only fighting for his life within the show of Voltron but even amongst his creators, the show runners of Voltron. They have repeatedly mentioned in many interviews that they wanted to kill him off, and remember..they claim he was always intended to be the LGBTQ rep as of season 2, only for their bosses to force them to keep Shiro in the story.
Shiro's role in the final season does take a backseat since he is no longer the Black Paladin, but he does get to have
a happy ending now married to a random character at the epilogue whom he had no interaction with in regards to his new hubby throughout all of season 8. Fans who were hoping for another shipping couple to happen with Shiro "
Shiro and Keith for example was only 2nd to the infamous *KLANCE* pairing which consisted of Keith and Lance" Regardless of who one shipped at this point, most fans were able to figure out that Shiro's bandaid wedding was a last minute salvage from season 7 "Bury your gay" treatment due to the animator of the show letting the fans know he was still working up util September, 13, 2018.
As one can see with the images compared side to side, this theory holds true.
As much as Shiro's romance, and his overall character of being pushed to the background, treatment has been very vocal following the ending of Voltron, it seems that another characters treatment has not produced the same rallying of fans to demand an apology and will never get a "fix it" treatment is that of Princess Allura.
Princess Allura of VLD who was the first Non-White (Black/or POC alien elven princess..take your pick) sadly got the
Abbie Mills treatment if one pays attention closely to how she has been handled in at around the end of season 2 from this franchise.
Princess Allura started out as a powerful force to be reckoned with in the first two seasons, commanding a group of 5 humans to become the defenders of the universe was a breath of fresh air in regards to her more infantilized/damsel in distress 1980s Defenders of the Universe counterpart. This however did not last since once Keith took on the role as The Black Paladin temporarily in Season 3 and once again at the end of Season 6 on wards, Allura no longer was the de-facto leader of Voltron (not even a princess) and became a basic "plot" for the story as well as other characters to move forward. Keeping in line with the Abbie Mills treatment, Allura sacrifices herself in season 8 in order to save the universe for all the trouble Haggar has created in the past 10,000 years because she was the only one able to do it.
Minus
this one article among many addressing Allura's horrible exit
in fact in praising it as the right decision and many other articles saying her death led to the great story telling narrative of Voltron, there has been no big outrage outside of twitter and tumblr that have been calling out the treatment of Allura with the hashtags.
#AlluradeservedbetterThe fans that also felt Princess Allura deserved better are planning a
tribute to honor her and her voice actress, Kimberly Brooks, next Friday.
**An honorable mention is that their is a small sector of the fandom also upset with the treatment with Lance via Season 8.
His epilogue is him becoming a farmer and preaching about Altean culture oppose to his white team mate counterparts having more important roles, and accusing the EP's of sticking him into a Latinx stereotype.
As for the other paladins, the white ones are safe and doing great things:
Keith is still being cool and part of the Blade of Mamora, and Pidge is the high tech genius for the Garrison. Oh and Hunk? He becomes the Gordon Ramsey of the universe.
Many fans have voiced their dissapointment regarding Season 8 and popular VLD vloggers gave emotional responses to their reactions about how Season 8 was a let down:
Besides hashtags and memorable mentions, their appears to be some fans that believe the current season 8 of Voltron Legendary Defender was not the "True version" that was to be shown to the world. Their claim is that their are lots of errors in season 8 and it seems
to have been hastily put together. This has led to
a petition to get DreamWorks to release the version of Voltron S8 the "show runners" wanted since they have mentioned before that Executive meddling has happened to them in the past
the one where they wanted to kill Shiro but DreamWorks executives said no. Ironically, it seems the fans that started this *fix it* petition did not realize that the show runners (Lauren Montgomery/Joaquim Dos Santos) actually did release the Voltron they wanted and are a bit misguided but none the less..they are right. There was a version of Voltron that almost happened, but sadly was scrapped once the showrunners got approval from DreamWorks to go ahead and have "their version" move forward.
The supposed
*proof* for this happens to come from people taking to twitter no less than a couple of hours after season 8 dropped
to expose the chaos that ensued behind the VLD team Also, some tweets that have now been deleted
(but the internet never forgets)
Pretty much are in agreement with the whole twitter tea spill so to sum up the tweets in the image attachment above from a now *deleted source*
-The show runners hated the Keith + Lance shipper fandom and got rid of their interaction as soon as they got the go to get rid of the show's "bible".
-The story bible was thrown out after season 2 preventing the various writers they hired to have a source for their characters.
-The writers of Voltron didn't know Shiro was going to be the LGBT rep till later on in the story, literally around the time season 7 was going into production since they thought that idea was scrapped. Due to this revelation happening late in the game, this explains why Shiro's sexuality gets the "Dumbledore treatment" and how in S1/S2
he was a contender for Allura's affection. So basically, Shiro was never the intended LGBT rep as they claimed he was from the beginning of the series.
I agree it is somewhat skeptical to believe all of these tweets since the common source most of these users start with is, "
I can't reveal the name of my friend who worked as an intern for the team". However, one of the twitters joining the tweets above, did rightly state that Adam was going to die with a postmark date before the premiere of season 7 as well as any news articles vaguely mentioning Adam's death prior to season 7 release date. (I can't mention the news source that spoiled Adam's death before the show aired, but most of the fandom had a hunch Adam was going to die cause of this censored news site by August 6th, before that source removed that major spoiler. And that twitter user said they knew Adam was going to die around August 4th)
So perhaps all these claims are not false after all...since this is some serious reaching to actually explain the cracks in the storytelling and handling of VLD.
Not surprising though is that some fans of VLD that stumbled upon these tweets
are not the least bit shocked by all of this revelation now coming to light, and in fact feel relieved that what they assumed was happening behind the scenes
were in fact true.
There has been a group of fans in the VLD community
that claim to work in the marketing/entertainment/media/writing field who theorized that Season 7, as well as past seasons post season 2, had a lot of issues with both writing and animation that looked to be copy and pasted together very hastily which made them wonder with their head writer, Tim Hedrick leaving before the show finished, that something was terribly wrong behind the scenes.
Either way, through all of the drama both in the fandom and the cast & crew of this franchise, Voltron Legendary Defender was a reboot of Voltron Defender of the Universe and if it has taught us anything then it is that a show is only as successful as the team behind it.
Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos have since moved on to Marvel leaving Dreamworks behind as they are both scheduled to direct for the spiderman franchises
Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse/and a female spiderman universe. Seeing how directing does appear to be
" a step down from "Executive Producers" I guess its safe to say we don't have to worry about queer-baiting and Black/Non Black POC dying thankfully.
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2 years wasted..
