Telling an epic space opera adventure is a challenging task, especially when the story takes on a life of its own, and Voltron: Legendary Defender is no exception.
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Showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery went into the series with a plan but plans change. ComicBook.com spoke to the showrunners about the storylines they had to leave behind.
“I mean, for us, it’s our goofy storylines, I think a lot of them,” Dos Santos says. “I, 100 percent, was committed to trying to do a pro wrestling episode that was a throwback to an old Avatar episode where somehow the Voltron crew gets themselves wrapped up in an intergalactic pro wrestling league. That never came to light, that’s a heartbreaker for me.”
“Yeah, and then there’s some things we ended up having to trash,” Montgomery adds. “For instance, way back when we thought we were going to be able to have Shiro exit the show at the end of our Netflix Season Two, we had every intention of Keith being the leader. The team working together and growing throughout the rest of the show, struggling with their differences, but ultimately gelling as a team. We ended up not being able to do that because we needed to bring Shiro back, but the weird thing is that it created these other storylines that are interesting in their own way. But now we have this storyline that we didn’t expect to happen with this Keith and Shiro dual leadership friction.”
“And Keith going off and leaving, following his way to Marmora, which is something we would have explored a little bit,” Montgomery continues. “We definitely would have gone into the Blade of Marmora and found Keith’s family, but not necessarily in the way you see it now.”
Dos Santos highlights the change in direction of that particular storyline as a watershed moment for the series.
“That’s I would say, if we give interviews in a post-Voltron world, that would be our biggest turning point, and probably that biggest storyline that branched off other storylines,” he says. “That created other sort of branches of storylines, Shiro sticking around past Season Two.”
“More importantly than the Shiro thing, no pro wrestling episode and that the world is a much sadder place for it,” Dos Santos jokes.
“It’s the biggest tragedy of them all,” Montgomery concludes.
Voltron: Legendary Defender Season Five is now streaming on Netflix. Voltron: Legendary Defender Season Six premieres in June.
