#voltron legendary defefender

[leakinghate]

Hi! I’m falling back down the vld rabbit hole and am once again consoling myself with how the series could/should/was meant to wrap up its various character and plot arcs and come to a satisfying and well written ending with all of tpl’s metas that i found really enlightening back in the day. So first of all, thanks for all the time and energy you guys put into everything you’ve collected/organized/posted!

Second, do you know if any of felixazrael’s metas are still available anywhere? With the blog deactivated, tumblr has kicked all the links on the old posts.

Third, do you have any thoughts on how unavailable vld seems to be now? Amazon doesn’t even have s7 and 8 available for purchase.

Thanks and have a fantastic day! 🌼

Hello hello! :D Welcome back to the VLD rabbit hole! You are so sweet! I shared your lovely compliments with my teammates, and we are so pleased to hear from you! I also occasionally re-read the old metas; there are a few things I'd change about them if I was to revisit them today, but on the whole I think they stand the test of time pretty well, and I'm proud of all the hard work and love we put into them. I keep meaning to write a retrospective of sorts to reflect on the things that have and have not changed since then, but I can never quite seem to find the words for articulating all the feelings that'd be necessarily wrapped up in all that. Felix is a difficult topic. They voluntarily withdrew from the community and asked that all copies of their work be pulled down and disposed of. Out of respect for them and our friendship we complied with their request, even as we as a whole are staunchly against deleting fandom history. It's a complicated and frustrating situation, but they have the right to decide what happens with their work. I'm sorry, I believe all of Felix's metas are lost now. As for your third question... OH BOY do I have thoughts! :D I have many thoughts about the availability (or lack thereof) of VLD. So, as of this writing, the first two DVDs (covering Season 1-2 [production season 1], and 3-6 [production season 2], respectively) are out of print and difficult to come by. Seasons 7 and 8 [production season 3] were never released at all for purchase. I believe there are still several places you can purchase digital copies of the first 6 seasons, but again, seasons 7 and 8 were never released. There could be several reasons for some of this - the DVDs were of low-quality and never sold particularly well (why would you buy a low-res version of a show you could watch on Netflix in HD?) so it's not too implausible to imagine that 7 and 8 were simply never printed because the expense of printing was more than the expected profit. That's plausible, that's reasonable. What's much less so is the unavailability of the episodes for digital download. Making something available for purchase digitally is so inexpensive, by comparison to DVDs, that it's basically free. And with the size of VLD's fandom (even today), you'd surely get enough sales to cover the already negligible costs. So it's not a money issue. And it's not a demand issue. What have we got left? The way I see it, there's two main options here, and they both boil down to: something regarding seasons 7 and 8 being edited is interfering with making those seasons available for purchase.

Option 1: It's something legal.

The rights for Voltron have always been a tricky thing. It's owned by the private company WEP (World Events Productions) which leases out different pieces of the rights to other companies so that they can make the shows and the merchandise based on the brand. I, and my team, fully believe that Bob Koplar, the CEO of WEP, is the man responsible for ordering the edits to Seasons 7 and Season 8. The "why" of the matter is still speculative, but it's pretty clear that he's responsible. (I can get into the details if asked, but we'll be here all day if I do it now, lol) So Koplar holds the rights to the brand, but DreamWorks, which made VLD, holds the rights to the individual show. If there's a legal conflict between the companies, say, over which version of the show can be released... then that could be why we're not seeing those episodes. Option 2: It's spite. Following on the last option, with Bob Koplar having levered his control over the Voltron Trademarks to force DreamWorks to make edits to their show, it's very possible one or the other is preventing the release of the episodes in an effort to screw with the other.

From Koplar's side of things, he's small and petty enough to rip an entire completed show - millions of dollars in investment in animation alone - to pieces for reasons that seem to amount to him disliking the story direction. He'd absolutely hold up the release of the episodes if there was something about them he still didn't like - and there's plenty still there for him to hate! (*cough* like the caricature literally named after him in the Season 7 episode "The Feud" *cough)

From DreamWorks' perspective, they had an entire completed show - millions of dollars in animation, remember! - ripped to pieces by a power-tripping, petty, little man. Which they then had to shell out additional funds to pay to reconstruct. The resulting product, which they were contractually obligated to release to Netflix, was then rejected wholesale by the fanbase, completely destroying any possibility of a franchise for one of the biggest hit shows they'd seen in years. We're looking at tens of millions of dollars down the drain. Would a company like DreamWorks turn around and screw over Koplar in turn for what he did? Yeah, I think they might. All in all, I can't say why they're not available... but I do know that back, immediately after Season 8 aired, WEP's storefront (Voltron Store) and social media accounts were claiming that the final DVD would be out by "the fall", which, given the timeframe, was presumably fall 2019. So at some point there was a plan to make those episodes available, at least on WEP's part. This, however, was likely before it was revealed to Bob that the episode "The Feud" was mocking him specifically. I can't say whether those episodes will ever get an official release, but I can say that if they do, it's going to dig up this whole entire mess all over again. And I'm pretty sure that neither party involved wants that. WEP has their new movie in production, and DW probably see the entire show as something they'd like to forget. Releasing those episodes will bring them both nothing but bad PR.

Thank you so much for your message! I enjoyed receiving it, and I had great fun writing out this answer! I'm always happy to talk Voltron, Voltron theories, Voltron related media. Have a lovely day!

[robobuddies]

You also hate voltron legendary defefender because its popular you just hate things that are popular and arent anime.

yeah, that settles it. you’re an idiot.

[leakinghate]

Oh what a lovely day to awaken to these tags! Thank you for them. It warms my heart to know this post and all the hard work we did is still reaching people who care about this show. It's a rare day that I do not think about this show, and wish we could see the original versions. In retrospect, this post has a lot of issues with it, but many I think are forgivable, given that the main thrust of the post is still true: Season 8 of Voltron Legendary Defender was severely edited post production and one of the main casualties of these edits was Lotor and his associated story.

Do you know, friends, that today, December 7th 2024, is the first day that there is no legal way to experience Seasons 7 and 8 of VLD? it's true. It came down off of Netflix last night, and since it was never released on DVD or available for digital download all copies currently available are those that were illegally downloaded. The only way you can watch VLD S7&8 today is piracy.

You may ask, well, why is that? It should be a simple and relatively inexpensive task to release those seasons for digital download. Why, in the years since their original airing has this never happened?

Well shit, I wish I could tell you, but I don't have any official answers. At this point, all I can do is speculate.

Fortunately, speculation is my forte!

It should come as no surprise that I believe the lack of official copies of S7 and S8 of VLD are a direct result of the edits to both seasons. Yes. Both. When I originally wrote this post, we hadn't connected the dots and realized that Season 7 was edited as well (I covered some of this in my followup post "Seek Truth in Darkness", since a portion of the content cut from Season 7 makes an appearance in Season 8). Whether it's a legal mess behind the scenes holding it up, or a matter of principle (ha!) of DreamWorks not wanting to publish something they were forced to butcher...

Hmm. I don't think I ever came out and publicly said what I believed happened and who was responsible, did I? We alluded to it in a few articles, but never directly stated it. The man in question is notably litigious after all.

*Ahem* Seasons 7 and 8 of Voltron Legendary Defender were edited, post production, on the orders of Bob Koplar, the CEO of WEP (formerly World Events Productions) the company who owns Voltron, the brand, and who leased the adaptation rights to DreamWorks in order for them to make VLD.

Presumably, what happened was that Bob was screened the final cut of the seasons for his stamp of approval (he was not heavily involved in the production despite being named a "Producer" of the show in the credits) whereupon he threw a tantrum and demanded they be changed. His being the CEO of WEP (who, remember, still held the Voltron trademarks) meant that DreamWorks was forced to capitulate to his demands and make the changes. Season 7 was sent back to Mir for the changes to be done professionally, and they're very difficult to pinpoint by animation analysis alone. Season 8, however, was up against a tight deadline and there wasn't time or budget left for proper changes to be made. So they were done with the skeleton team that remained at DreamWorks, and it shows very clearly in both the story and animation. Which is why I could see it, and why the original post could exist at all.

I don't think it's debatable that Season 8 was edited. It's blatantly obvious for anyone who bothers to look and is not under an NDA. The main questions are going to be, what was removed, and why this happened at all.

The answers to these questions are heavily intertwined, as the content removed reveals what was objectionable. As far as I can tell, the two apparently verboten topics were anything involving Lotor's redemption and anything that would potentially cast Voltron-the-robot in a negative light. These topics themselves are intertwined, because it is Lotor's redemption that proves that Team Voltron made a mistake in "defeating" him. As Lotor's VA himself said, "Lotor was framed." Revealing the truth of this would mean that Team Voltron has the potential to be NOT a unilateral force for good, and introduce a grey morality to a previously black and white situation.

In essence: redeeming Lotor would tarnish Voltron's "brand". And this was what was so offensive to Bob Koplar, who is on record saying his favourite character is "the robot".

Bob Koplar does not want it known what he did. Especially as, at this very moment, he is involved with the casting and filming of his long-awaited live-action Voltron adaptation. For sure, he did nothing illegal. In fact it's the very legality of what he did that made it possible - he owned the trademarks, and no one could do something with his property that he did not approve of. But he did something disgusting. He used and abused the creative team of VLD, forced them to butcher their own work, that they had poured their hearts and souls into. He forced them, through non-disclosure agreements, to take the fall for his terrible decisions, and is still refusing to tell the truth about it; he'd rather bury VLD and forget it exists at all.

So thank you, for remembering. For still caring about this show and these characters so many years after we saw it's "end". Maybe some day we'll see the real one.

Chasing the Ghosts of Season 8

Let’s skip the flowery intros and get to the point, because this is important.

Lotor’s vindication and reunion with Allura were originally part of VLD s8 and I can prove it. Most animation relating to this plot was excised, while other clips were re-purposed to make it look like he was dead all along: but some are still in there.

The removal of this plot line was one of the major factors in completely messing up season 8, and it was a change that was made very recently; no earlier than August in fact. There is a significant, non-zero chance that an unedited version of Season 8 exists in its entirety; completely finished.

The evidence is below the cut.

Trigger Warnings: Gore - that image and discussion of it, body horror, sexism, and major character death.

Keep reading