‘Voltron: Legendary Defender’ Achieved The Impossible By Making A Story About Giant Robots Emotionally Compelling

For years television has been awash in halfhearted reboots and lacking continuations. But there’s one modern adaptation that’s not only managed to respectfully honor its source material but build upon it, creating a new, emotionally nuanced, and smartly progressive world from its 1980s roots. For seven seasons Netflix and DreamWorks’ Voltron: Legendary Defender has been quietly telling one of the most interesting stories in modern sci-fi. The Voltron reboot has somehow managed to turn giant fighting robots into an emotionally fulfilling epic, and this Friday its gut-punch of a story will finally be coming to an end.

Created by Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, who both worked on beloved animated series Avatar the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, Voltron: Legendary Defender is a reboot of the anime Beast King GoLion. However the property it probably best known to American audeinces for its line of robot toys. The series follows a group of intergalactic warriors known as the paladins. Each paladin can pilot a different lion-shaped ship and together they can form Voltron, a giant butt-kicking robot. It’s basically a typical hero’s journey with lion spaceships and more teamwork.

And it could have just been that. No one expected Netflix’s Voltron series to be anything more than an excuse to watch comically huge robots beat up even bigger robots. But every episode of Voltron has delivered something that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s blossomed into a heartfelt and complicated series about personal evolution, accepting one’s identity, fear of being ostracized, loss, PTSD, and sacrifice. All of that is happening in between laser fights and sci-fi craziness.

The series was never afraid to take a hard look the traumas of killed friends and destroyed homes and explore just how deeply these wounds hurt its characters. And yet at the same time Voltron always took care to side-step the huge plot points other series have spent seasons milking. For example in its first season the shockingly smart Pidge (voiced by Bex Taylor-Klaus) reveals she lied about being a boy to get into the Galaxy Garrison. But instead of becoming a season-long contentious arc, her big moment is shrugged off. Her gender doesn’t change how much her team values and respects her, though this moment is a huge deal to this character. Voltron even took this early plot twist a step further, keeping the subtext around Pidge vague and encouraging trans, gender fluid, and asexual readings of the character.

Voltron‘s fearless captain Shiro (voiced by Josh Keaton) also experienced a similar moment. Season 7 revealed through a series of flashbacks that Shiro used to be in a romantic relationship with a former paladin named Keith. This is the first time the series mentions that Shiro isn’t straight, but the show never halts to unpack every one of his teammates learning about his lost love. They already know, and it’s not worth acknowledging. As a result the revealing episode focuses exclusively on Shiro’s pain, giving this already human character more dimension.

There are many shows that pay lip service to treating their characters as people first. Voltron actually delivered on that basic promise. Its characters were always believable people first instead of a collection of after school lessons about gender, sexuality, race, or abilities. Sure, they may not have fit in with the stereotypical white male, straight hero archetype that dominates pop culture, but in that never mattered. What always mattered more were the choices they made and how they used their elevated powers.

And that’s what science fiction should do more often. These universes can be completely devoid of the bigotry that constricts the real world. Why not capitalize that and just tell a great story about incredible heroes? For a show that started as a mecha anime punching its way through a universe of unbelievable fights, it’s pretty damn impressive that Voltron figured out a lesson Doctor Who is literally learning this year. So long, Voltron. It hasn’t always been fun these past eight seasons, but it’s been real.

Watch Voltron: Legendary Defender on Netflix