This article features minor spoilers for Voltron: Legendary Defender season 3. Be wary from here on out.
Today is the day, friends! The third season of Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender has dropped in its entirety, and though this season is only seven episodes long (but season four will be only a couple of months away) it’s still full of mystery, excitement, humor, and robot lions flying around and destroying bad guy ships and stuff. But season two ended with a lot of unanswered questions and you should be very jazzed at the prospect of resolving them in these new episodes.
And so, to that end, here are the 6 things you should look forward to most in Voltron season 3.
1. Prince Lotor
The reveal that he even exists was the big cliffhanger at the end of the previous season’s finale, and fans won’t be disappointed. Emperor Zarkon’s son, and his successor, is a handsome, operatic type villain, who uses his wits a lot more than brute strength.
“From a character perspective, he realizes that presentation is almost half the battle,” executive producer Joaquim dos Santos told us. “He exudes confidence, but behind that he’s got this cunning mind and he knows how to manipulate the crowd and use all that stuff to his advantage. Unlike Zarkon who basically kicked down the door and said ‘I’m here. All this is mine. You go away now.'”
2. Prince Lotor’s Gang
One thing we’ve seen a lot of in the series thus far are Galra generals (and other ranks of course) leading various waves of attack against Voltron and its allies. In fact, through all of the first two seasons, the only evil woman we saw was the Witch Haggar, who acted as Zarkon’s mystic and seer. We learn at the end of the second season, during a fight with Princess Allura, that Haggar is not a mere Galra, but is in fact part Altean. She tries to hide this, because it’s implied that the Galra do not like mixing their blood with any other species.
This is Zarkon’s policy, but we quickly learn that Lotor’s is not this at all. In his first appearance, we see that Lotor’s posse consists of half-Galra women whose bloodlines are varied. He’s a pragmatist as well as a cunning strategist; each of his closest underlings is blended with alien races that offer advantages in battle. One has perfect camouflage, another is massive and strong, etc. These characters add a lot of depth to Lotor’s roster of minions, and makes him all the more dangerous.
3. More focus on characters than robot fights
While Voltron itself is obviously a major part of the show, it’s not the entire show, and in fact only works in the narrative because of the dynamic between the individual characters. At the end of season two, Voltron had a major victory, but the paladins suffered a major loss, with the disappearance of Shiro. This will be very important as season three begins.
“Where the characters go is a really good question for season three,” explained Bex Taylor-Klaus, who plays the green paladin, Pidge. “Because we’re missing a piece of Voltron, essentially. I don’t want to give too much away, but I think that’s a major question to think about on your way in.”
4. Finding the Black Paladin
Shiro was the glue that held the four other paladin, and Allura and Coran for that matter, together and focused. With him gone, our heroes have only two options: either find Shiro somehow, or find someone else to pilot the black lion. This is not going to sit well with everybody, and notably Keith, the one most dependent on Shiro, doesn’t want to give up. Maybe he’ll have to, or maybe some other answer will present itself.
5. One-off episodes!
One of the great things about the show, because of the focus on individual characters over always showing robots fighting monsters, is when they do episodes focusing on just one or two of the characters, or that don’t pertain to anything. “There are a lot of interesting one-off episodes that are just nuts,” said Tyler Labine, who plays yellow paladin Hunk. “Like ‘Space Mall‘ on crack. They came up with some wacky stuff that were the most fun to make.”
6. Darkness
While the show always has ample amounts of humor and heart, season three is notable for going a lot darker and more sinister than previous seasons. We’re approaching some really heavy material in the lives of the heroes, and if you thought losing Shiro was a blow, we haven’t seen anything yet.
“Things are going to be different; it’s not the same kind of dynamic as seasons one and two,” co-executive producer Lauren Montgomery told us. “Half the fun of having a show with a long serialized story is to allow the discomfort of things being different to sink in and then just enjoy the ride.”
You can all enjoy the ride of Voltron: Legendary Defender right this second with all seven episodes streaming on Netflix. Let us know what you’re most excited about in the comments below!
Images: DreamWorks Animation/Netflix
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He’s written the animation retrospectives Batman: Reanimated, X-Men: Reanimated, Cowboy Rebop, and Samurai reJacked. Follow him on Twitter!
