Voltron: Legendary Defender Season Five dropped on Netflix last Friday, and it introduced some interesting new wrinkles to the character of Haggar, Emperor Zarkon’s witch.
SPOILERS for Voltron: Legendary Defender Season Five follow.
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The fourth and fifth seasons of Netflix’s Voltron reboot confirmed Haggar, the witch who serves the Galra Empire, was once Honerva, the brilliant Altean alchemist who went to Daibazaal to study the crater left by a comet that hit the planet. She discovered Quintessence and remained on the planet to study it further. While there, she and Emperor Zarkon fell for one another and married, making Honerva the Galra Empress despite being Altean.
The Quintessence corrupted Honerva, as it did her husband, making her more vicious and paranoid. Eventually, she forgot who she was and became the witch Haggar. As Season Five begins, Haggar has a vision of her past life and remembers not only that she was Honerva, but that she and Zarkon had a son, Prince Lotor.
Later in the season, it is revealed that Haggar has some sort of hold on Shiro so that she could see through his eyes and perhaps influence him further. ComicBook.com spoke to Voltron: Legendary Defender showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery about what all this mean for Haggar.
“I think that’s a little bit of that moral ambiguity in the sense that you know a maternal instinct is a really, really powerful instinct, and where exactly does that go wrong, to what end do you fault a mother to going to certain extents?” Dos Santos said.
“There’s a lot to be said about that up to this point Haggar has kind of been, as evil as she is, the voice of reason,” Montgomery added. “Whenever Zarkon is going kind of nuts, Haggar has a plan, like a backup plan. She was sending this guy out, she was doing this sort of stuff. She’s trying to keep things under wraps, she had her hand in everything.”
“And so now she’s got this added element of a past that she forgot she had and it’s thrown her off. And its kind of the first time we are seeing her not prepared for something,” Montgomery said, noting that this is the first we’ve time we’ve seen Hagger “emotionally invested” in a situation.
Now that Hagger knows the location of Oriande, the source of Altean alchemy, she may have major moves to make when Voltron returns in June.
Voltron: Legendary Defender Season Five is now streaming on Netflix.
