The Voltron Problem: How Much Do Shows Owe Fans?
It’s been a bit since the final season of Voltron: Legendary Defender was released, and despite my best efforts, I still have a lot of feelings about it.
Look, Season 8 was… something. And while I really liked some parts of it and thought the overall writing was objectively good, I (and many other fans) had a lot of problems with it. On a technical level, people have pointed out animation flaws and mistakes, as well as re-used lines and a few continuity errors, which suggests that some things may have been changed last-minute. Many thought some of the beloved relationships and bonds in earlier seasons were lacking. Some thought particular characters were done dirty (particularly Allura and Lance). Many were also disappointed in the lack of LGBTQ+ representation.
And look, I know I have my own biases. For the sake of transparency, my favourite character is Lance, and in terms of ships, I ship Klance (Keith and Lance). I don’t want to bring that into this post, although some of that is inevitable. Instead, I wanted to focus on a question: how much does a show owe its fans?
The Voltron fandom is infamous for being particularly zealous. It’s been known as one of the most problematic fandoms online, and not without good reason: the ship wars in particular have spawned a lot of hate and threats against those involved with the show. But it was also a show that seemed to have an unprecedented amount of interaction between the people behind the show and its fans. Voltron’s VAs, artists and writers went to conventions; they responded to fans on social media, teased character arcs, and were often quoted as sources for fan theories — all of which made fans feel more connected to the show and its characters. And while that was a huge reason for Voltron’s popularity and prevalence online, it’s also the reason why Season 8 was so awful for many of its fans.
The core of the problem is this: fans expected more, and because of that, Season 8 was a hard pill to swallow. But where the line between what is ‘deserved’ and what fans get is a blurry one, and I don’t exactly know where it should be drawn. I want to be clear here: I don’t blame any one person for the way Voltron ended, or think anyone involved had bad intent. But I think that in an attempt to interact with fans and promote the show, Voltron made mistakes — a lot of them. A prime example of this is when the showrunners announced that Shiro was gay and had had a boyfriend back on Earth, and released a clip at Comic-Con that implied this subplot would be heavily featured in Season 7. The fandom rejoiced; I’ve never seen a fandom rally like that around a ship that had yet to be formally introduced, and in my opinion, a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was an explicitly queer relationship (something which is still very rare in television, let alone in children’s TV).
Yet when Season 7 came out, Adam was killed after mere minutes of screen time; he died before Shiro even arrived back on Earth. Instead of the representation fans were hoping for, Shiro was forced to suffer more. The reaction from fans was swift and harsh, especially from queer fans who felt it continued the implication in media that LGBTQ+ characters can’t have happy endings. The showrunners issued an apology days later, saying they hadn’t expected the backlash or realized how much it would hurt their fans. Yet it was still a hard pill to swallow for many when Shiro and Adam had featured so heavily in promotions only to never be given a chance in the show, and I can understand why so many felt personally hurt by it. Voltron seemed to promise something they didn’t deliver on.
As a whole, a lot of Voltron’s marketing came across as pandering or sensationalist. Many of the promotional photos on Netflix played directly into ships; there were several of Allura, Lance and Lotor, setting them up as a love triangle; there were several of Shiro and Adam; and several others seemed to suggest other ships. Trailers were tagged with ships to get more views, and the show’s Twitter often posted vague quotes from upcoming seasons that sent fans into panics. Cast and showrunner interviews would hint towards certain plotlines that wouldn’t come true. Jeremy Shada, Lance’s voice actor, was particularly loved by fans for ‘spoiling’ things, especially things that could be taken as Klance-adjacent (most of which turned out not to be true). And fans, unfortunately, took everything at face value.
My point here is that from where I stand, the multi-directional take displayed in promotions and interactions with those with ‘insider knowledge’ allowed multiple sections of the fandom to think they were going to get what they wanted and that their ships and theories were the right ones. And while it seems like the show tried to curb this in its last couple seasons (as well as in in-person interviews that went ignored), it was too late. There was so much conflicting information and misinformation and speculation from different sources that it had spun out of control.
Allurance fans thought their ship would come true. So did Klance fans, and Sheith fans, and Shadam fans, and fans of every other ship. Lotor fans thought he would get a redemption arc. Lance fans thought he would get the recognition he deserved. And yet none of that happened. Allurance was given a couple minutes of screen-time and then Allura was killed off, leaving Lance to mourn. Klance didn’t happen, although their close friendship was highlighted. Shiro and Keith, who were shown to be as close as brothers two seasons before, barely even interacted, completely ruining one of the best platonic relationships in the show. Lotor was used as a prop as part of his mother’s creepy, abusive self-redemption fantasy. Lance, at the end, is reduced from the “razzle dazzle” boy who started off the show wanting to be the best pilot he could, to a reclusive farmer crippled in his grief. And Shiro’s queerness is regaled to two seconds in the end credits, where it’s revealed he marries a background character from the last season — a move many saw as an attempt to make up for killing off Adam the season before and to give some semblance of the representation that was so heavily promised in the beginning. Yet instead of feeling natural, it gave off the feeling to some that they were only adding in Shiro’s wedding to avoid another controversy; his character itself didn’t matter.
Because so many people were hoping for different things, it would’ve been impossible to satisfy everyone regardless of how the show ended. But this ending was something that somehow managed to piss off almost every part of the fandom. And at least to me, a large part of that is because fans thought that they were going to get what they wanted in terms of representation and that their ships and character headcanons and theories would turn out correct. Or, to put it simply, that their ideal version of Voltron was the one they were going to get.
Like I said, I don’t know where to draw the line. How much onus should be placed on the showrunners to ‘control’ their fans? Should Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos have come out and made it explicitly clear what was and wasn’t going to happen as soon as they realized the discrepancy in the fandom? And in a larger company with its own interests (and its own marketing team), is it even fair to hold them responsible for what happened on the show?
But was it fair of us to expect so much from Voltron, too? Was it fair of us to expect the show to bend to our whims, even if that wasn’t their original vision, even if there were other factors at play? Should we have expected everything we were promised would come true when so many other shows before it have failed on those same things?
Here’s the thing: I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if it’s naïve to expect more of the shows I love. But I expect a lot of other showrunners will be keeping Voltron in mind, because it’s not something a lot of people are going to want to repeat.
