Showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery unpack the ‘complex’ season’s morally gray villain
Lotor.
But fans only heard the name uttered in the season 2 finale.
Hunk, for one, is already freaking out.
As Dos Santos explains over the phone, Lotor is a way more efficient operator than his father.
Now theyve got this new guy who is not predictable, Montgomery explains.
So its just infinitely more tricky for them.
Season 4 will drop much earlier than usual this October.
Itll make him very different from Zarkon, whos our…establishing bad guy.
Weve done Zarkons arc and left him in a kind of really different place.
We wanted to space things out and introduce these lovely characters just a little bit at a time.
Now theyve got this new guy who is not predictable.
So its just infinitely more tricky for them.
Who rises to the occasion?
How things get shifted around.
At least, they really understood the team dynamic there.
Now, its almost starting another step back.
NEXT: Shiros disappearance and Lotors generals.
Its safe to assume both sides were kind of left not really knowing exactly how the fight ended.
Our guys dont know what state Zarkon is in.
They dont know, is he dead?
Did we hurt him?
They just knew they had to get out of there and the same goes for the Galra.
They know Voltron escaped, but they know about as much as our guys knew when they left.
I think were leaving that mystery hanging out there intentionally.
So if people assume that, cool.
If people assume that he was splattered on the inside of a cockpit, cool.
[Laughs] All things are on the table.
Ive just been going online on theVoltronReddit and reading all these fan theories.
Have you seen any of them?MONTGOMERY:Uh, I dont know.
I know people pretty quickly guessed Keith being part Galra pretty early on.DOS SANTOS:Yeah.
We were, Wow!
Theorize all you want, its fun.
What can you say, if anything at all, about Lotors inner circle of generals?
And then we had to think, Okay, what does that mean?
Do the Galra like that?
In this old Galra regime, this empire that Zarkon set up, is that frowned upon?
Take everything by force or just burn it down and Lotor is not that way.
Lotor is very much open to everything.
So if someone is half-Galra, he doesnt have a problem.
So what does that say about each of their characters?
We loved working on them, we loved drawing them, we loved being a part of them.
There was always a bit of a rivalry between Lotor and Zarkon and theres some of that, too.
Again, weve done our own spin on it.
Its not exactly the same thing that it was in the original, but its in there.
Its definitely a relationship that we thought would be unique.
I think we mentioned Lotor was exiled.
Well, why was he exiled?
Clearly, theres some sort of…DOS SANTOS:Theres an issue there.
I think aroundVoltron, whats interesting is that Netflix still hasnt really released their ratings for these shows.
I think back to, like,Legend of KorraandAvatar, those seasons kept going and going and going.
So, I mean, weve been thinking in that direction since the inception of the series.
So you have to try and wrap it up and leave something open.
So weve been lucky in that way, that theyve been totally accepting of doing a serialized storyline.
And who were these original paladins?
Were winking over the phone.
So, its cool.
Its the core of theVoltronmessage.
What can you say about Pidge?
We heard a little bit about her character from Comic-Con.
Shes always been one of my favorite characters, especially in season 1 with her coming-out moment.
But now she has proof of her brother being alive in the Galra rebel unit.
Could you elaborate on that a little more?
But were not making like an art-house picture here.
Theyre things that weve actually had the fortune of us choosing the things that partially become toys.
That would be fantastic.
Its just them repainting Batman blue and sticking an icicle on his head and calling him Arctic Thunder Batman.
So, theyre nice enough to keep us in on all the development meetings on their end.
So, yeah, I mean, it came from a…We realized we were working onVoltron.
Thats a very long answer to a very short question.
Do you feel that?
Hearing people react to stuff is like, I mean, you get goose-pimples.
Its like watching it again for the first time and its awesome.
[Laughs]DOS SANTOS:The whole world dies!
[Laughs] No, I mean, youre dealing with some pretty heavy things.
It gets serious, we start taking things a little more seriously.
Things get more complex.
