Month: December 2018

Cartoons

Voltron: The Legendary Defender, and Why Allura’s Final Fate in the Series Simply Doesn’t Work For Me

Crystal2 Comments

This is my final post in my 3 part series about Voltron:  The Legendary Defender.  If you’d like to see my thoughts on season 8, and my thoughts on Voltron as a whole, head on over to those posts.  This post is going to specifically be talking about a specific plot point in the ending concerning Allura.  If you haven’t seen the show and care about spoilers, do not read this post because it’s going to 100% be huge huge huge spoilers.  If you don’t care, or have watched all of season 8, then read on!

 

I want to break down this post in 3 sections, because I have a decent theory on what the writers were going for with Allura’s poorly executed death.  Now, I have narrative theories, and I have out of narrative theories for why it happened, but I’m going to be sticking with my purely narrative theories on why thematically, they feel like killing her off at the very very end of the show was the right choice.
I won’t even sugar coat it:  I hated this.  I hated this so much.  Character death in a story can be interesting if done right, if there’s a lead up to it, but there was absolutely none.  The entire series was leading up to another ending for her which was quite obvious, so killing her at the very end honestly threw me for a loop.  I was angry, but not for the right reasons:  I was angry that they did this, not because I was grieving  the character.  Just really not cool to have her be the only one who dies, after they spent all of this energy destroying a very interesting plot that could have happened early on, with Shiro dying.
But I’m going off on a tangent here, sorry.  Any time I think about it, it just makes me semi-rage.  OK, so I want to break this post up into 3 sections:
What I think they were narratively going for with this choice, why I don’t think it worked, and how I’d have written it differently.  I’m adding on this last part for the express purpose of making myself feel better, because I’ve been coming up with alternative endings ever since watching the ending that I think could have worked for the story they were trying to tell since the beginning of the series.

 

But with that long intro out of the way, let’s begin!

 

WHAT THE NARRATIVE WAS GOING FOR

 

I definitely think that in season 8 at least, they were trying to draw parallels between Honerva and Allura.  Two Alteans, on the exact opposite of the spectrum:  One who had lost everything due to a war, but otherwise had a loving family and upbringing.  Tarnished by the actions of the other:  an Altean who’s quest for knowledge ultimately warped and destroyed her, and her family.  Even when Allura had power on par with Honerva, she chose to use it in a far different way:  to protect the people she loved, and pave a future for them.  Allura’s motivations are purely from a selfless point of view, where as Honerva’s are from a selfish point of view:  She wants to use all of this power to get back what she lost, where as Allura wants to salvage and protect what she has gained.

Both are war orphans in a sense, but Allura found a family in the Voltron Paladin’s.  Honerva pushed everyone away to the point where she thought her only option was to do everything to regain what she’s lost, instead of trying to live in the present, and look towards the future.  Both return to their families in the end, the families that they’ve lost, and in the end join together to right the wrongs forged by the war caused by Galra, and Altean alike.

Even with The Entity plot line, we see these parallels drawn.  Honerva took The Entity into herself and started a 10000 year Universe-wide war.  Allura took The Entity into herself to stop Honerva, and to protect what she loves.  To “Finish this, once and for all” as Allura stated.  The Entity started corrupting Allura’s personality, and intent while it was still around, but in the end, she overcame it, and used the power to save not only her reality, but all other realities.  Honerva, on the other hand, had The Entity in her for 10000 years, and used it to do nothing but conquer, and spread hate, and tyranny.  So it’s obvious they were trying to pull the light vs dark thing here with both of them with this plot.

 

Honerva’s character work solely in  season 8 is superb.  All of this, I got simply from seeing her in season 8, and I have to tip my hat to the writers for fleshing her out in such a short amount of time.  As I’ve said in another post, the character work is always well done in Voltron, and it’s the biggest strength in the show.

 

But, Allura’s character work completely throws what they were going for with her sacrifice out the window…

 

 

WHAT WENT WRONG, AND WHY THIS DOESN’T WORK

 

For these parallels to have worked, and be driven home to the extent that I feel they wanted them to, Allura needed to exhibit some sort of tiredness, and form of loss.  Throughout the series, she does state not having a family to go back to, and she tends to look down when family is mentioned, but I don’t think this is enough to warrant her sacrifice at the end.  All signs throughout the series point to her being so happy she found Team Voltron, that they all were her family now, and although that doesn’t replace her previous family, I don’t think you can take the logic leap of “She’s been sad about Alfor not being around sometimes” to “She’s so sad that she would rather sacrifice herself for her Voltron family to live their lives, and for her to be with her original family in the afterlife, then to stay and live happily on Earth with them”.

 

Especially with the Lance love subplot, we see Allura as being so so so happy with him.  She has the support she needs both romantically, and platonically through him and the team, and to me it just doesn’t make sense for her to sacrifice herself when she had this to go back to.
That being said, the whole Altean magic plotting hinders this as well.  Like, Honerva absorbed enough quintessence to sacrifice herself, and herself alone, so why couldn’t she?  I’m fine with magic not fully being explained in a story, but Altean alchemy  was one of those things that just wasn’t explained enough for Allura to have to sacrifice herself to restore realities to make sense, when Honerva has more experience, and far more power at this point to do so herself.  I just think it was a thinly vailed attempt to draw these parallels of both were broken by this war, all be it in different ways, but now they both return to their families in death.
But if you’re going to show Allura as being so happy with her newly found family, then why go with the story beat of ending her life at the end?  When it was very obvious  throughout the show that her entire plot and character arc was she found a new family to live with, and be happy with at the end of all of this.
I’ve seen some people say her plot came full circle with her dying, because her losing her entire life as she knew it happened at the start of the series, and now it’s restored with her dying to be with them in the end.  This would have been a fine arc if it was shown like, at all in the series, and wouldn’t have felt like as much of a blow to us fans if it was more better displayed throughout the series, with a few quiet moments of her missing Alfor, and old Altea…but there literally was nothing leading up to she misses her old life so much, she wouldn’t’ mind dying for others to return to her old family.

 

This death wasn’t led up to in season 8, either.  She absorbed The Entity sure, but there was never any explanation as to what The Entity was, and by the last 3 episodes of the series, it just…wasn’t there?  So saying the only way she could get rid of it would be a death doesn’t make any sense to me either.  If they wanted to keep the rest of the season entirely the same, they could have easily written in that taking in The Entity was irreversible, so she might as well use the power to save realities, and that also would show giving in to the side of evil to stop evil, has consequences and isn’t’ the answer.  As it stands, her death just feels like a cheap shock value stunt at the end of the day, instead of having the impact it could have if, once again, the plotting and theming was executed better.

 

It really bothers me that at the end of the day she saves everyone all by herself too, like why not have all of Team Voltron sacrifice themselves if that was the route they wanted to go?  That would still be sad, but make more sense than just her doing it, and drill home our teamwork overcomes all obstacle’s theming we had for all the series.
But I’m starting to get into my last part, so let’s just move on to the last section.

 

MY DIFFERENT ENDING BRAINSTORMS

 

OK so, I’ve thought of a few different ways to end the show.  The first one that came to mind was, everything plays out the way it did in the end, we get Honerva’s change of heart.  Allura offers to help her fix what she’s done, but Honerva goes “No, I’ve caused you enough Greif.  I’ll do this by myself.  Live happily Allura, don’t make the same mistakes I did!”.  She uses all of the quintessence she absorbed from the entire galaxy, and restores it back to the galaxy, giving back all realities she destroyed.  Voltron appears, with Allura in the blue lion, we have our 1 year flash forward, but in Lance’s plot, we see him and Allura together, spreading peace across the galaxy, and retiring to the farm to rest and be in love.

 

If you want to go the character death route, what I started saying earlier is what I would have done.  If you want a sacrifice, either make it be all of the Paladins, so the theme of teamwork runs throughout the entire series, or you have them make an even bigger sacrifice:  they need to use Allura’s alchemic power, but she simply doesn’t have enough power to do so.  But what do they have that does?  Why, Voltron and the lions, of course, they are made of pure quintessence after all.  So Allura uses her magic, with Voltron as a battery, and they sacrifice the lions to restore realities.  You could even bring back the lion bond plot that kinda got dropped throughout the series, and have them connect with their lions for the last time to say their goodbyes.  Something akin to the ending of season 6, making them sacrifice something so important to them, but in doing so having them save the day.  This way, we can still get our time jump, still get the epilogues, but the Paladin’s all have something to grieve  over together.
I think with this ending it would bring them together even more as a family, and they’d bond even stronger – once again, drilling home the overall theme of six broken people bonding together to become even closer than family.  Have them take that  selfie, but instead of an Allura statue, it’s a Voltron statue, or five statues of the Lions, and in the back is a statue of Voltron.  Show the epilogue, then the end credits scene can be the Lions flying out of a galaxy, the six paladins sensing the bond between their lions reform, and smiling because they know they’re alive out there somewhere.

 

Even if you wanted to keep the ending entirely the same, you totally could, but instead at the end have the Lions sitting there, and then they spark to life.  All five paladins feel it, run to them, and see Allura slowly stirring in the cock pit of the Blue Lion.  Lance grabs her, she slowly rouses, grabbing her turns into him hugging her tightly, only for the rest of the team to join in on a group hug.  Pan out to a group shot of the six of them, and the Lions behind them – perhaps their eyes glow, as if they’re smiling, happy that their chosen are reunited again, and can live their lives together.

 

Since earlier in the series, we saw Shiro was in the consciousness of the Black Lion, this totally could happen – just have Allura in the consciousness of the Blue Lion, but her Altean magic took time to reform her body, and that’s why it took a year for her to reappear.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

The fact that I can come up with three endings like this I feel is a good indicator of how wonky that ending was.  It just felt unplanned and unnecessary, and like I said earlier only there for shock value.  My headcannon is that Lance gets Allura back, and they live happily ever after.  I’ve seen some fan theories that Allura becomes the new Lion Goddess, or Goddess of the Universe because of her sacrifice which is a nice ending…if that were their intent, but all we have to go off of is some ending credits scenes, and major theorizing.  It isn’t open ended, it’s just messy, and like I’ve said so many times, it leaves a horrible end note prevalent on an otherwise fantastic series.

 

And that is the end of my 3 part Voltron series folks!  Not gonna lie, I was majorly frustrated with how the show ended, and writing these have majorly helped me vent out my frustrations with the directions the show ultimately took in the end.  I sincerely hope that we get a 1 hour OVA where they fix what went wrong in the final episode, because leaving it as it is with Allura dead, after she already had to sacrifice so much is just not cool with me, considering the major themes of the show.

 

 

I hope you all enjoyed these posts, as rambly as they got at certain points.

 

So do you have any thoughts on how Voltron ended?  Let’s talk about it in the comments!

Cartoons · TV Shows

The Voltron The Legendary Defender Retrospective:Characters, Plotting, and Theming

Crystal1 Comment

In my last post, I talked about Voltron The Legendary Defender Season 8.  This post, I wanted to have a bit of a retrospective on the series.  So this post, I’m going to be talking about the show’s writing, plotting, and characters, what they did right, and what they did wrong.

 

The biggest thing I see people say about Voltron:  The Legendary Defender is “missed potential” and I have to say, I agree with that statement.  There were a lot of wonderful character moments, some very good plotting and theming in the beginning of the series, say until about seasons 5 or 6.  But somewhere along the line it just fell off the wagon and I’d like to try and figure out where and why that happened by dissecting the writing and themes of the show in general.

 

Needless to say, spoilers for all of Voltron:  The Legendary Defender are going to be in this post.  With all of that out of the way, let’s get into it.

 

CHARACTERS

 

My favorite part of Voltron had to be the characters.  They just started out so fleshed out, and working so well individually, as well as as a team.  I think both configurations of teams worked, but I will say in later seasons, they found less and less to do with Shiro, and his plots probably fell flat the most.  But in the beginning, all of them had really interesting motivation’s and struggle’s, and it was just a joy to see them deal with them while growing as Team Voltron.

 

When the character work started to fall apart I feel, is when they finished the characters first wave arcs.  Shiro was dealing with PTSD, Pidge was trying to find her family, Keith was struggling to accept himself, and was trying to learn how to work together with his team when he’d rather just stay the lone wolf he started out as.  But when all of these arcs came to completion:  Shiro “dies”, Pidge finds her family, Keith finds his Mother and grows, the characters just started to fall flat.  It wasn’t because they weren’t still interesting, all of their core aspects that made them loveable were still there, but without having an external story for them to deal with individually, they felt like they just became one-dimensional.  We went from each of them having their own hardships, and together coping with them and becoming stronger to deal with the plot happening around them, to just having them all be “Voltron Paladin’s”.  When the writers wanted to focus more on the plot, is when the characters suffered.  Instead of having the characters interact with the plot, the plot happened and propelled them forward.  It was this weird thing, where they weren’t inactive in the plot, but at the same time, the plot stripped away what made the characters, the characters.

 

I’m not one of those people who think in season 8, not having character moments made it less of a season.  I think by that point, they had grown their bond, so we were able to have it take a backseat to the story.  But when throughout the rest of the seasons, there’s this constant battle between focusing on characters, or focusing on plot…I think there’s a major problem tonally.  What I think needed to happen was there needed to be a choice made early on in the shows run.  Were they going to make it primarily a character focused show, where the plot mattered, but took a backseat to developing character relationships and their stories, or was this going to be a space epic, where the plot was the foremost important thing, and the characters were going to not be a big focus.  This got split in every season past season 3 I feel, and the show overall suffered for it.

 

PLOT

 

I think the plotting is the weakest link in the series overall.  In the first two seasons, there was a clear goal:  Destroy Zarcon, take down the Empire.  After that plot was finished, Lotor comes into the story and that’s interesting as well, but where it falls short is the sub plots for characters throughout the series. We have these plots dragged out for seasons on end, only to have them finally revealed, but then concluded within 3 or less episodes of the reveal.  There needed to be time to tell these stories, instead of having a huge windup and resolving it so quickly that you’re not sure why it happened in the first place.  I’ve addressed some of these issues in another article, so if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on this, head over there.
This goes along with a lack of risk taking with these plots.  It seems like they wanted to go there with some of them, but they just didn’t for some reason or another.  It threw off some strong character beats that could have happened, and not following through with them really just made you feel like, why was this happening then?  In the end a lot of plots just were never resolved, and if that were to happen, then why open them up in the first place.

 

The plot felt rather nonsensical in a lot of points after season 3, as well.  They would try to tell this epic story that would start out making a lot of sense, and being super engaging.  I feel like a lot of times however, they would get carried away with action scenes, and drawing out suspense, that when it was time to resolve the plot, they just had to figure out this really quick resolution that would make little to no sense.  This is especially apparent  at the ends of season 6, and season 8.  They either needed more episodes, or needed to cut out the filler (there were a lot of them that were fun and really goofy, but had absolutely nothing to do with plot) so if they wanted to have some more time explaining the plot more accurately, perhaps filling out some things that would lead up to the season or series finale, the plotting dropping the ball halfway through the ladder seasons perhaps wouldn’t have happened.

 

I think seasons 1 through 4 were done very, very well.  Season 4 was waffling a bit, but it really felt like their vision was lost from season 5 onward.  I enjoyed the characters, and action in those later seasons, but the plot just started to feel like they wanted to lead into something, but weren’t quite sure what.

 

Biting off more than they could chew definitely feels like the theming overall with the plotting in the ladder half of the series, especially in season 8.  They wanted to do something grandiose, but overall just weren’t sure how to finish up the plot, so ending it made it feel rushed, nonsensical, and forced.  If only we had the plotting from the first few seasons throughout, plus the awesome character work…

 

THEMEING

 

And finally, we get to what in my opinion, is the biggest misstep of the series.  The theming of the show completely went out the window at the end.  The entire point of the series was that a group of broken people can come together, become even stronger as a unit, and overcome all obstacle’s.  But halfway through the series, they decided to separate characters.  Keith went off on his own multiple times, and for some seasons he wasn’t even in it for pretty much all of it.  In the end, instead of the entire team working to stop Honerva, Allura is the only person who can, and does.  Pidge goes off to take care of finding her family on her own, and I think Hunk and Lance are the only two who don’t have plots where they just go off on their own and do things if I’m remembering correctly.  This dichotomy  really does the show a disservice, as when the final battle comes for most seasons, they all come together, form Voltron, and save the day.  But sometimes, this just feels so hollow, because they’ve spent entire seasons apart from each other, and doing their own things.  Once again, this wasn’t prevalent in the first four seasons, but definitely was more of a thing in the 2nd half of the series.
Team Voltron is far stronger as an ensemble character piece, and not having that be the central theming throughout the series, and not just in the first half, was not wise for the writers.  I feel like once Shiro stopped being the Black Paladin, they weren’t sure what to do with the team.  I don’t think Allura in the blue lion was a bad move – in fact, I loved that so much – but not having much to do with Shiro at that point, and not sure how to retune the team dynamic when Allura was part of the team and just not a paladin was sort of odd.  Not sure why that was the case, but they just weren’t sure what to do with the theming then and didn’t realize that they could have had Shiro be just as important in the plot outside of the Black Lion, just like Allura was when she wasn’t a paladin of Voltron.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

I feel like this review sounds like I wasn’t a fan of the show, which is so far from the truth.  IT’s just seeing the series finale, and how big of a misstep it was, and how much it’s literally upset every fan I’ve ran across, it just feels like “missed potential” is the perfect word to describe Voltron.  A lot of plots that fell short that had tons of promise, a lot of characters that had lacking development.  A lot of side characters introduced, as if they were meant for more, only to be never addressed again.  Overall, the unwillingness to go with more mature themes of the show that they so obviously were setting up is strange to me – and you can say “But it’s a kids show!” but killing off one of the main characters is something that a kids show wouldn’t do unless it was trying to be more mature, so why not go all the way with said maturity, and take the risks with the plotting that were shouting at us all throughout the series?

 

So what went wrong?  A lot of fans are theorizing that there was corporate interference, and the creative team paid the price for it.  I think that’s very much the case, because it really feels like how they ended the show isn’t what they were going for at all.  But those are all just theories, and we’ll never truly know unless someone in the crew or cast speaks out about it one day.

 

And thus ends my retrospective on Voltron:  The Legendary Defender as a whole.  I loved you Voltron, but you were by no means flawless.  Your ending made an otherwise amazing show just be ok, and I’ll forever feel so disappointed by it.

 

But those thoughts are for the next, and final post in this series:  Voltron:  The Legendary Defender, talking about the ending.  If you want to see my thoughts on the final season, you can head on over to this link.

 

What are your thoughts on the series as a whole?  Would love to hear in the comments!

Cartoons · TV Shows

Voltron: The Legendary Defender Season 8 Review [Spoilers]

Crystal2 Comments

It’s over my friends.  After 2 some odd years, Voltron The Legendary Defender is over.  It’s been one heck of a ride, but I won’t say that the ending is something…that I liked, or that I expected.  In fact, the ending made me so furious, that I had to decompress over the weekend after binging it all on Friday.  I went to the reddit for Voltron to talk to other fans, which is something I’ve never done for the show, that’s how upset I was.  But after taking some time, I think I’m ready to talk about this.  I need to talk about this so I can get my feelings out about it, and move on with my life.
I have a lot to say about this season, and the show as a whole.  So I’m going to do a series of 3 posts, this one just talking about season 8, the next one talking about Voltron as a whole, it’s flaws and positives, and the last one…talking about the ending.  In particular, something that happened in the ending.  It’s probably not what everyone is thinking of, but it’s the thing that affected me most and I really need to write a post about that specifically, along the same lines as the 2nd post in this series:  What I think they were going for with that choice, why it wasn’t executed well, that sort of thing.

 

That being said, the first half of this post is going to be spoiler free.  The 2nd half is going to have spoilers, because it’s unavoidable when talking about a series finale.  But I’ll be sure to label spoilers with a big old heading so you can leave if you don’t want to know what happens in the ending.
So with that out of the way, let’s get into my general thoughts of season 8!

 

GENERAL THOUGHTS

 

The season starts out very well, giving us the resolution to story arcs that were lingering for quite some time.  After the first episode, we start the season with some backstory for a certain character, then go right into the rest of the season having action, some “filler” episodes, and the ultimate ending of the series.  The filler episodes this season were the best of the series, in my opinion:  They got the themes they wanted for the filler across and lightened the mood, but at the same time they propelled the plot forward – which is something that previous filler episodes haven’t done before.  They usually would put the plot at a standstill, then next episode would pick up the plot again.  But seeing filler that leads into plot, and that grows characters was nice, and I wish we had more of that throughout the rest of the series.

 

The character moments are few and far between in this season, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.  The characters bond was pre-established, so we didn’t really need to see them interact as much as in past seasons.  I really enjoyed what we got though (seeing Pidge and Allura acting like sisters in the first episode was one that certainly warmed my heart) and just seeing the culmination of the six main characters relationship was such a treat.  Seeing how Keith, Lance, and Allura grew throughout the series especially was nice.  Like they are completely different characters between the beginning and the ending, and their character arcs were handled well..for the most part.  But we’ll get to that in the spoilers section.

 

The villain of the final season was a major lead up that also was something culminating throughout the entire series, and I really liked it.  Not only was it a personal battle for our Paladin’s, but it also was a matter of saving their universe, and multiple others.  Once again, the villain  was handled excellently…until the ending.  The action was on point, and the stakes just kept on ramping up higher and higher…but then the climax just utterly fell flat, and felt rushed, and like the writers  had expended all of their energy getting to the point of the final battle, only to realize “Crap, how are we supposed to resolve this?”.

 

Of course, the answer is AlluraXMachina!

 

But that, once again, is getting into spoiler territory. So I think at this point, it’s time to talk about it.  The thing that’s going to just make Voltron a great series, instead of the amazing series it could have been…

SPOILERS!  SPOILERS!  TURN BACK IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS!!!!!!

 

OK so.
I loved everything about this season.  Sure, there were certain things that just weren’t answered, like what happened to all of the Shiro clones, and a lot of stories mentioned that just…weren’t addressed or touched on again, like Veronica trying to make friends with Acxa, and that whole ex-Lotor’s General’s crew having that episode was nice but it wasn’t really closure.  That the other General popped up, wanted to kill Keith, and then just decides not to because of a few nice words was choppy writing, and it feels like it was something that the writers wanted to have more time with but couldn’t.  Lance and Allura, though there was lead up throughout the entire series for it, when it actually happened we just got a phew scenes of it, and it didn’t feel like it got as developed as it should have when they actually got together – they just had their relationship go from 0 to 100, and even though I loved they’re fluffy moments, I would have liked to see the actual relationship take time, just as much as them getting together did.

This season was very much Allura’s story, which was…alright?  Once again, it just sort of came out of the blue.  Like the previous seasons had very much a tone of teamwork makes us all stronger, but in season 8 Allura just was the focal point, and as much as I love her it felt like major tonal  whiplash because this isn’t how the show was.  If we had a season format, where every character had their own season to shine and have their arcs, then focusing on Allura would have made more sense.  But as it stands, this was an ensemble piece that just decided to make 1 of the characters become the main one at its climax.

 

Along those lines, like the themes in general got a mish mosh and the tone of the show suffered for it.  Voltron is notorious for the central message that all of the heroes will win, no matter what odds will face them.  Shiro dies?  No worries, AlluraXMachina will bring him back.  Pidge needs to find her family?  No worries, she’ll find them, none of them are dead, or evil, and she’ll find them and put her family back together again.  But for some reason, in the final episode of the final season, they decide to throw all of that out of the window.
OK so this is a huge huge huge spoiler so if you really don’t want to know it, don’t read on.

 

But they set the precedent that no matter what, all six of our main characters will win the day, that none of them will die, get injured, or any of that…
Only to kill Allura in the literal last ten minutes of the show?

This was what ruined the season for me folks.  After everything we had been through, she’ dies.  Granted, she chooses to sacrifice herself to save the universe, and all its realities, but like…there was absolutely no lead up to this what-so-ever.  Allura has always been a selfless character, like it’s in character for her to do so, but I mean from a writing standpoint, there was absolutely no lead up to this.  She absorbs the Entity, which also has no real explanation to whether or not she got rid of it after a certain point (just seemed like a plot device to get some episodes going, if I’m being completely honest) and there just was no in-universe logic to why this had to happen.  I would have been heartbroken if she died regardless, she’s my favorite character, but they don’t explain any of the reasoning properly so it just feels like they needed AlluraXMachina to do her thing once again, but this time decided to kill her?  Allura, who’s suffered the most, sacrificed the most out of all of the characters, is the one who has to die, when Honerva has the exact same power set as her, had absorbed all the energy of the universe, and showed that she was willing to fix her mistakes because of a very quick heel turn because of some memory flashback provided by our favorite Altean.  Like, if there were any lead up to this what-so-ever, if they had dropped some scenes explaining why this had to happen, then it could have been better and seeing that it would be inevitable for Allura to die would have been interesting.  As it stands however, it feels rushed, forced, and an answer to the plothole they wrote their selves into.  How do we fix Honerva destroying all realities?  Altean magic, of course!

 

This is what I’m going to need an entire post to talk about.  This, it’s execution, how clunky, and unnecessary it is when they spent an entire season bringing Shiro back to life earlier in the series, just isn’t cool.  It makes an otherwise amazing series and season just feel like we didn’t get the ending we were promised from the beginning.

It honestly felt like this wasn’t the ending that they wanted.  It feels like from how the show was going,  That it was going to end with EVERY PALADIN alive, and happy, and that suffering and sacrifice has its rewards for our heroes.  That Allura lost her family, but she has a found family in the paladins and can start anew in spite of all of her life hardships.  This terrible execution of theming, this rushed resolution to the plot, isn’t new to Voltron:  Legendary Defender, but it was excusable when overall the story was enjoyable.  If we had an extra season, I wholeheartedly believe we’d have a plot much like the Shiro clone plot in which the other paladins go to save Allura from a dimension in between realities.

 

The rest of the ending was fine.  I didn’t mind the epilogues itself, but everyone but Allura getting their happy ending leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.  This was an ensemble piece, and in my opinion that means the entire team should have made it out alive.  Teamwork, and supporting each other was a huge theme of the series, so Alura alone sacrificing herself is just a bad way to end the series.  I’ll be talking about this in another article however, so I will leave it at that.

 

If you’re a fan of Voltron:  Legendary Defender, this season is like the others.  Lots of action, good mech battles, decent characters, very choppy writing and poor execution for some key plot points.  This season felt rushed, and I really think that we needed an extra 13 episodes to get the story that the writers wanted to tell.  Allura dying was just there for shock value, and as I said earlier, it really doesn’t feel like what the show was heading towards, but sigh it happened so we have to deal with it.  I shall stick to my headcannon that the Lions fly off to get Allura so her and Lance can live on his farm, and have lots of half Altean, half Earth babies.  Such a bittersweet ending, that sours an otherwise amazing series, and season.

 

And those are my final thoughts on Voltron:  Legendary Defender season 8.  It had such a strong start, so many amazing nods to characters we’ve seen in flashbacks, and in the story.  My favorite interactions hands down were Allura and her Father getting to reunite, and seeing the original paladins help our favorite team in the end.  But fanservice like that doesn’t make up for the plot holes, bad execution, and pointless character death this season was plagued with.

 

And that’s what I’m left with guys.  This is where I’m at.  I went from fiery anger, to “I can’t believe they did this” to dull acceptance, and I guess that’s where I’m at now.  It’s up to you whether or not the ending will ruin the entire series for you, but for me, at this current point in time, it does and I don’t think I’ll be rewatching the show anytime soon, or watching anything else these writers produce.  I can’t bring myself to watch a show I enjoyed so much only to have such a hugely disappointing  ending be thrown at me, so yeah.

 

 

Watch season 8 of Voltron for all of the good in it, and let’s flock to fanfiction if the ending we got isn’t something that we liked.  I know I for one will be doing so.

 

 

And that’s it for my Voltron:  The Legendary Defender season 8 review.  Next post in this series, I’ll be talking about the series as a whole, and trying to dissect what went wrong, and what went right overall with the writing in this series.  Hope you come along for the ride!
Have you watched the series finale yet?  Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!  What parts in the season did you like, and what were deal breakers for you?