After binging Season 2 of Voltron: Legendary Defender on Netflix, we were left with yet another pile of mysteries, so we hopped on the phone with showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery to get some answers to our five biggest burning questions.
If you already haven't, be sure to check out our full review of Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 2.
Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Season 2 of Voltron: Legendary Defender!
IGN: We find out about Keith’s connection to the Blade of Marmora and how he is part Galra. Why did you decide to make him part Galra? And will we eventually meet his parents?
Dos Santos: I think Keith being part Galra was something we had in our head since the earliest time we were developing the show. I think it was just when we were going to reveal that information, one of the things that we noticed from first season was fans are reacting like "hey, we hadn't really figured out a lot about Keith," and we were intentionally keeping that a bit more mysterious. I think Keith as a character is more guarded. And so in Season 2 when we were finally able to do this big explainer episode, we still wanted to explain that he's got Galra heritage but he's sort got a shady past. You don't know exactly what went down or how it went down. Even the way he is able to find out about his past is sort of through re-living a virtual mindscape. His history wasn't even real events with his dad, it was this sort of subconscious manifestation that explained everything to him. But yeah, for sure I think there's a path that we were intentionally trying to keep hidden in the first season that we let a little pin light on in the second season. That for sure is something I think we want to explore moving forward.
Montgomery: It still remains to be seen. We know who his dad is but we don't know who the other half of his family is, so it's something that… and we don't even know where that's going to go. We don't know if he's going to find that person or if he's just going to find the story of that person. Yeah. But we definitely want to explore that and take it further.
Dos Santos: I think for us, one of the issues we ran into early with developing characters was you had three characters that were really similar in structure. You had Lance, Sven from the original show, and Keith who all occupy this really similar space. So making Keith one, a hothead, and two, have this lineage was a way for us to differentiate him from other characters.
IGN TV: Season 2 saw each lion unlock a new feature. How did you come up with those new abilities and will we be seeing the lions do even more new things?
Dos Santos: I think the idea is that the lions and the paladins and their relationship and all that stuff is kind of ever-evolving. We don't want to say any specifics, like "yeah there's definitely more coming." But I think it's safe to assume that that relationship and that bond only grow stronger over the course of the series.
Montgomery: And it's not just lion-related. Obviously the paladins need to bond more with their lions and strengthen that relationship, but there's also the evolution of Voltron himself, and when they combine to become Voltron, and the stronger a team they become, the better they work together, the more they're able to unlock with Voltron.
We really wanted to kind of make sure that the weapons the lions ultimately manifested were things that harken back to what is the essential quality of those lions and what is the personality of those lions.
You have the yellow lion, which is kind of a heavy armor sort of guy. And he's a little slow, so when he gets his upgrade, you get something that helps him out. He gets even more armor, which is his personality, but he also gets these boosters that allow him to move a little quicker because that's something that lion lacks.
Dos Santos: I think thematically, if we're going down the thematic route there, with Lance getting that sonic blaster, I think on a very superficial level, it plays really well underwater. But also, Lance who's got a bit of a voice on him and is kind of the most outspoken one, so I think the sonic blast sort of builds upon that idea. I think some of these decisions, truth be told, just happen in the room. Like, damn, what are we going to do to get this lion an upgrade. How can it fit into the bigger picture. Sometimes you've got to go with just a cool weapon. It's not necessarily always tied into the theme of the lion.
Montgomery: But we definitely went to great lengths to make at least each lion have something unique. So even though the red and the green lions might both have cannons on their back, they do very different things. The red lion is very assault based because Keith is very hot-tempered. It's just fight, fight, fight.
Whereas the green lion kind of has this interesting thing where it goes in as energy but it comes out as plant life. It's just kind of the way that Pidge would have to fight. She can't take something head-on, she has to figure out some interesting other sort of way because she's not super strong. And then the green lion also has this sort of roundabout way of attacking. It's not just a destructive being.
Dos Santos: It also kind of plays into how her bayard works. You can grapple, the wrapping.
Montgomery: Yeah, we try to make them true to the character and to the lions, but also they've got to look cool and be good for a toy. [laughs]
Dos Santos: In the room, you're coming up with a concept, like "alright we've got to balance the theme of this thing and how awesome is this thing going to look and how awesome is it going to act in the field."
IGN: We’ve been following the ongoing mystery of Pidge’s missing family since the first season, and we saw her get some more information this season, so will she be acting on what she found soon?
Montgomery: Well, as we're going through the story, I think we tend to let the story evolve naturally. And if we feel like this is the appropriate time for her to find out something, then it happens. In this case we had an instance where she's in a Galra prison and she has the ability to look through these prison system logs. And she knows her family is in the system of the Galra, they've been prisoners for a while. So it just seemed like kind of a natural place for her to find something else out. The thing that she finds out, she doesn't know if it's necessarily good or bad news is "hey, my brothers have been taken. I don't know if either by bad guys or good guys. But he's not with the Galra anymore so maybe that's good?" I don't know. So it just sort of supports the mystery because it actually opens it up more. She took one step closer but is still so far away. Because now she doesn't even know where to look.
Dos Santos: What's really good, it's the format that I think we've been kind of blessed with in working with Netflix, and DreamWorks being so supportive in telling a big serialized story, that allowed us to tell character throughlines over the course of seasons rather than trying to wrap up everything in an episode or two.
IGN: The season ends with a victory, but Shiro disappears from his black lion. What can you say about what happened to Shiro? And based on previous Voltron lore and fan theories, does this mean Allura will step up and pilot the black lion?
Dos Santos: I think we love the fact that there are just theories that are rumbling around right now, because to some extent, all of them completely valid. We don't know. We like that mystery kind of hanging out there.
Montgomery: I think it's an obvious kind of go-to to think of Allura. Because if you're familiar with the old series, Winston went to "space hospital" as they say [laughs], and Allura was that next person in line, so if you're going by the old show's standards, then you know "oh, she's going into the lion" so we've always said that we like to honor the old show but we don't feel beholden to it. So it's one of those things that if we felt it was right for the story, that A) Shiro is truly gone and B) Allura will be in the lion, then she'll be in the lion. But we don't feel like we have to follow that mold if that's not the right decision. If we decided ultimately that Allura's role in the castle and as the leader of the Voltron team is where she needs to stay, then we'd do that as well. Because ultimately we feel we improved her role from the original show, to the point where she is so strong in her position now that she wouldn't need to be in a lion to be considered a valuable part of the team.
Dos Santos: We're in a weird, unique position, having the original show to kind of bounce these ideas off of. It kind of gives us an ability to say "this is what we've done before, what's our spin on this? What do we stay true to? What do we deviate from?" So it's kind of cool. It's like this free radical floating out there, kind of adds a little fuel to the speculation fire.
IGN: Zarkon goes down at the end of the season, but then we hear a call for Prince Lotor. What made you decide now was the time to bring in Lotor? And is he a bigger threat than his father?
Dos Santos: I think he's a very different threat. I think that remains to be seen.
Montgomery: It remains to be seen. Lotor was a huge fan favorite from the original series, and we really enjoyed him. You go back and watch the old show. I think our memories of what he did are a little different from what the reality of what he did was end up going down this creepy road where he’s obsessed with Allura. But we saw in him a character that we could really mold and make cooler and more motivated and play with in a different way from how Zarkon was treated.
Also, I'd like to say that Zarkon was defeated in battle but he's not necessarily defeated completely. He's not out of the game. And there's still a massive Galra empire for them to take on. So even though they won this battle, they've still not won the war. I think the arrival of Prince Lotor is the manifestation of that. Sure, you killed this guy, but here's another guy ready to just step up and take over. So what do you think is going to happen.
Dos Santos: Yeah, I think that's kind of the thing we were trying to set up. Obviously Zarkon is a huge, giant, big threat himself. He can singlehandedly fight a lion hand to hand, but how moving forward do you make an enemy and a threat that's different? And one, like Lauren touched upon, the empire is still a vast empire. Just because you killed the emperor doesn't mean it crumbled immediately. They've got threats on multiple fronts, aside from Lotor, to deal with.
IGN: And will Lotor be the new main villain going forward?
Dos Santos: I think it's safe to say he's a presence. We don't want to say spoilery, like "yeah, he is for sure." We've got some zigs and got some zags planned ahead.
Montgomery: I think if we set anything up in our show, it's that even when Zarkon was technically the main villain of these first couple seasons, there were other forces at play. You had Sendak who a loyal soldier, but you had Prorok who was kind of dubious in trying to one-up him. I think having Zarkon out of the running might open the doors for other ambitious Galra to step up. You've got Lotor from the blood heir, but that doesn't mean he's the only one at play here.
Dos Santos: Yeah, the sharks smell blood.
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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