#being at peace with my status as a dead alter has given me a strange relationship to the concept of death

[thedeadaresilent]

it's a good thing nobody asks me for advice because "let the thing kill you and find peace in the inevitability of dying" is not a useful answer for most of life's problems and I am aware would be actively harmful to anyone but myself.

[puppetmaster55]

Thoughts on s8

Boy, this one got long.

Alright. It’s been like a month, and I feel detached enough from my initial emotional responses that I can finally get this out. My thoughts on the final season of vld. All I can say is, I urge you to read beyond the first sentence, because I will be diving into it and picking it apart as best I can.

So… here it is.

I liked the season.

I know, I’m surprised too. I didn’t go in expecting to like it like I did, I just expected to at most, Not Hate the season.

But I liked it, and perhaps not for the reasons that anyone else could say.

The throughline of the season, the narrative tying all 13 episodes together into one, was very clearly there. I liked that. Compared to season 7, where I still believe that it was written as two separate seasons (the road trip arc, and the earth arc) where season 8 culminated felt like the place that it was leading to when the season began.

I liked maybe two of the episodes, while the rest were middling or passing, and a couple had me staring in confusion trying to understand what was even happening at times.

The best episode of the season, honestly, was Day 47. Kinkade and Rizavi are the most interesting of the MFEs to me, and getting more of them was really nice. Getting a peek into the day-to-day life aboard the atlas was also really nice.

An episode that should have been great, but fell short because of its final lines? Battle Scars (you know, the one with Olkarion? Yeah that one). Up until those final lines, I really did love that episode, because we finally got the answer the unspoken question: why is Voltron necessary to win, to stop the bad guys?

That episode did wonders, to me, in answering that question. We got to see the tragedy and destruction that happens when Voltron isn’t there, when the robeast arrives and attacks and everything that is used to combat it fails to work. Every other time, Voltron swooped in to save the day at the last minute, and while that is excellent storytelling, seeing this, seeing what happens when Voltron isn’t there for that last minute save… that was really powerful.

There was really good lore, some that build upon lore from long ago (the astral plane, anyone? We got more of that), and others that had me staring because who let these writers into my home and into my notes.

And then there’s what I didn’t like.

Lotor had an arc, that much was clear, and he was obviously lingering throughout this season like a ghost. What that means, or what that doesn’t mean, is for another discussion digging up and reconstructing the skeleton by which the series itself was built upon.

Like two paragraphs ago, I talked about Olkarion and how much I really loved that episode. Here, I talk about why I didn’t: because of the handwave at the end. Those final lines, about how these innocent lives died so our heroes could have the information to save others, and that their deaths were noble and not in vain?

I hated that.

I hate when unfair death has all the weight and tragedy removed by saying “they gave us important information that can save the lives of billions” as if they needed to die for that to happen, as if they gladly were soldiers in battle and not civilians safe at home.

So, I would have loved the episode, had it not said that the horrifying and tragic death of Olkarion was, in the end, a Good Thing and that this entire planet, this entire culture, that is dead should not be mourned but celebrated for the death that was forced upon it. That this genocide (and it was genocide, make no mistake) should be celebrated for advancing the knowledge of… yeah.

…….I did not say that this would be without bias. There is no way to speak of this without having some sort of emotional bias.

There are many things I could talk about, from the strangeness of the pacing (Day 47 and Clear Day are about as filler as filler ever gets in this series, and that they’re back to back this season baffles me now as it baffled me when I first watched them) to the ways that characters have their personalities altered (Lance doesn’t feel matured, he feels like he’s had everything that made him a likeable personality stripped away, and y’know what, that’s my next paragraph).

So. Lance. I loved Lance in the early seasons, I loved Lance even as far as season 7. Lance was fun, he had a big personality and made some jokes but was brilliant in his own way and grew despite everything. I didn’t recognize that Lance in this one. Having Allura call him sharpshooter, he should have been preening, and instead he sounded like he didn’t want it, he sounded like someone who was going through the motions. Lance in season 8 was devoid of the personality that he had, stripped away until there was only the ghost of it that appeared maybe three times in all of this season.

Hunk had one moment, when he was making the Altean food and getting the captured Alteans to open up, and that was it. I feel glad, almost, that he didn’t have focus simply because he managed to evade the things that happened to everyone.

Keith… I grew distanced from him in the space between seasons 2 and 3 because of how vibrantly the fandom was chanting for him. I think I grew to become neutral to him from the way he was always centered as The Protagonist. Weirdly, I felt like I recognized the ghost of early seasons Keith (him from the first two seasons, who I actually felt I could grow to like) in this season.

I entered this season resigned to seeing Big Keith Moments, and there were like five in three episodes in a row in the first half, and after that? I didn’t see the season centering itself around Keith as much as I feared it would. This actually made me take a step back and see some good moments for him and remind me that I actually might have grown to like him, that I actually could still.

If there’s one thing that this season let me down on, it’s that Lance did not end up in handcuffs. I’m so let down by that, honestly, it was one of the only things that could be reliably counted upon for each 13-episode set, and he wasn’t in handcuffs at all.

Allura was annexed practically from the start, slated to perform a massive sacrifice that made me hurt even as I watched it happen. She was still in love with Lotor, even as she clung tighter to Lance. For that, among too many other reasons, I cannot say that I enjoyed the romance.

And the romance? If it felt weirdly done in season 7, having it be a throughline in season 8 made it hurt all the more. Lance and Lotor deserved more than to be Allura’s love interests. Lance deserved more than to be stripped away until that was all that he was.

Allura’s end, too, felt awful. I didn’t like it, I still don’t like it, and if this had been the series that was meant to end that way, I would be fine with it. But it wasn’t, and so I didn’t. I figured, though, that she was going to die or something similar when she brought the dead park back to life. I also figured, apparently foolishly, that Lance’s declaration that the team was her family would be something that would stop her from making that sacrifice.

I wanted Allura to live, dammit, and see peace and see the formation of a New Altea.

Pidge was there, too, but she didn’t have any stakes or anything. Pidge was there, and got to taker her whole family (including the dog) out into space. That she got some bonding time with Allura was good, but beyond that there was about as much for her to do in this season as there was for Hunk.

Shiro… honestly? Shiro wasn’t even in this season. I don’t know who that person was that wore Shiro’s face, but the Shiro of the past seven seasons was more of a Shiro than whoever this person was. Yes, even the empty Shiro of season 7 was more Shiro than whoever this Shiro was. He was stripped of his rank of Paladin, stripped of his personality, stripped of everything that made Shiro… Shiro. He even had his status as a main character torn away from him, as he didn’t appear in every episode, and those that he did appear in barely featured him.

God, but Shiro deserved better.

And Kuron, but that’s for another time.

I didn’t expect to get any answers from Operation Kuron, but I at least held out some hope of getting answers regarding the second colony. Dead hope, perhaps, but hope still. I never got the impression that the alteans there were dead, despite all the season 6 dialogue that talking about thousands of Alteans dying by Lotor’s hands.

Looking back, I guess we were supposed to take everything being said at face value. There apparently was no deeper secret, the little stuff that said that we didn’t know everything (even the characters themselves saying that they didn’t know the full picture) meant nothing. Lotor did a bad thing trying to do a good thing, and for that he was sentenced to death.

And even then, after getting shown and told repeatedly that Lotor is an Evil Villain, we’re given his backstory at long last, where he’s shown as a tragic figure who wasn’t an evil villain at all, simply someone who was desperate, and in that desperation turned to methods that were wrong and that he was trying to atone for throughout the entire time he was in the series. So what was it, then, that we’re supposed to feel for Lotor? Are we supposed to feel sympathy for him, or are we supposed to condemn him?

God, but Lotor deserved better.

Everyone deserved better, really.

Two plot threads that I didn’t expect to see closed out, were that of the quintessence monster that Ranveig experimented on, and Zethrid. And honestly? I wasn’t expected Zethrid to make a return. That was a delightful surprise.

The quinessence monster being some late-stage retcon of simply being a monster from the cosmic abyss felt sad, when it could have been simply what it was introduced as: something that was mutated by the quintessence into the monster that it became.

Beyond that, I almost liked the things that Lahn brought up. What right should the Galra have, to submit to Voltron when Voltron is responsible for all that happened was a direct result to Voltron’s actions. They got rid of Lotor, and with his removal there were intense consequences that they cannot simply pretend didn’t happen.

As for Zethrid? The original script was there, with Zethrid’s lines making it clear that Ezor was dead and she was taking revenge on Keith and Acxa. Changing it so that instead it was that Ezor was alive was a good move, since it unkilled a lesbian, but I think it also undercut Zethrid’s arc and made Ezor into some heel-face turn away from violence. I never got the impression that Ezor wanted something different than violence, since she was always one of the bloodthirstier of the generals.

Still, it was a nice enough addition.

And now we reach the yelmore of this season: Curtis.

I love Curtis, honestly, and I love his marriage to Shiro. With how we’ve seen the writers handle romance already, I’m perfectly fine with not getting the tale of how they went from existing on the bridge together to being happily married. I love that we got that, that DreamWorks drew a line in the sand about where they stand on representation and that it was with the first mlm wedding (if not also kiss) in western animated media.

Really, the only thing I can critique is that the original plan had confirmation that Zethrid and Shiro are lesbian and gay, respectively, and they both were originally to end up alone with dead lovers. That is literally all my negative say on the matter.

And all this brings me to… Honerva.

Oh, Honerva. You were, honestly, a more fascinating villain when you were Haggar. You were a scientist, a high priestess, with the backstory of someone who wasn’t afraid to step into the purview of the gods to gain the knowledge you desired. And you ended up as someone who apparently only ever wanted to be a mother. That your whole entire plan, the one that was meant to be the culmination of this entire series, was to destroy all realities until you found the one where you could be a mother to your child, is… quite something.

Under a different approach, I could understand it perfectly.

Under this approach, it was clear with how you commodified Lotor even after regaining your memories that you were going to be the same way with this Perfect Reality Lotor.

I dunno, maybe it was my expectations playing against me, but I expected Honerva to retain her status and desires as a scientist above that of being a mother. Even before she went into the rift, even before it began to affect her, she was more concerned with the science than with much else. Yes, she loved, and yes, she lost, but she and Zarkon both were reduced down to the evils they were deep down: Zarkon, the ruler, and Haggar, the scientist. Learning she was a mother to Lotor didn’t feel like it should have changed her desires for knowledge or caused her to abandon them entirely.

Which isn’t to say that Honerva was a terrible villain here, simply that she became a different kind of villain than who I expected her to be.

As a final season, I didn’t get the impression that we were concluding storylines begun way back in the first season. I didn’t get the impression that we were seeing the end of the journey that we started down. Honerva’s final approach as a villain didn’t feel like the culmination of the path begun at the start.

Quite honestly, season 8 felt like the ending to a different series.

Maybe it isn’t though. Maybe I went into it expected a shonen series but around half a dozen characters instead of one single character, and instead got a weirdly done series with questionable to horrific themes and lessons. Others have written about those better than I ever could.

Or maybe it is, and the series we were sold at the start isn’t the one that we were ultimately given.

Yeah, that sounds about right.