Chasing the Ghosts of Season 8
Letās skip the flowery intros and get to the point, because this is important.
Lotorās 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.
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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. Itās 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? itās 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 donāt 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 hadnāt connected the dots and realized that Season 7 was edited as well (I covered some of this in my followup post āSeek Truth in Darknessā, since a portion of the content cut from Season 7 makes an appearance in Season 8). Whether itās 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 butcherā¦
Hmm. I donāt 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 āProducerā 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 theyāre very difficult to pinpoint by animation analysis alone. Season 8, however, was up against a tight deadline and there wasnāt 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 donāt think itās debatable that Season 8 was edited. Itās 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 Lotorās redemption and anything that would potentially cast Voltron-the-robot in a negative light. These topics themselves are intertwined, because it is Lotorās redemption that proves that Team Voltron made a mistake in ādefeatingā him. As Lotorās VA himself said, āLotor was framed.ā 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 Voltronās ābrandā. And this was what was so offensive to Bob Koplar, who is on record saying his favourite character is āthe robotā.
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 itās 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; heād 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 itās āendā. Maybe some day weāll see the real one.
