Netflix's Voltron: Legendary Defender

I don't think Hunk has ever had any jokes calling him dumb. At most it's him joining the rest of the Paladins in not knowing what Pidge is talking about sometimes, with him easily keeping up with her the rest of the time.

Plus, Hunk may be a butt-monkey, but it's not idiot jokes. It's fat jokes.

Even the episode "The Voltron Show" went for physical comedy, mostly related to his physique. He's not presented as dumb at all, with few cases where he doesn't know something. He's treated as pretty smart too.

A little late to the punchline. It was season 2 where the fat jokes were rampped up and while not called "dumb", he was often depicted as being unable to keep up with what everyone was saying as a source of humor and nearly every thought was focused on food. Compare Season 3 Hunk, where he's able to keep up with Pidge's technobabble and help her make science stuff, and The Voltron Show seemed more like a pointed Take That! at his depiction in Season 2.

I liked Hunk the least during season 2. Literally everything out of his mouth was a fat-joke & I was yelling at the TV calling him a cowardly dumbass when he said the scariest thing he's faced on this journey was the fucking kitchen malfunctioning.

Thank God they toned that down afterwards. I like him better as mechanic who can keep work along with Pidge in his own fields & contributes to the team.

I remember rolling my eyes when Lance called Hunk their engineer in Season 2, since the one time he tried to work on anything, he ended up breaking it by accident while Pidge was doing all the crazy feats of technological wizardry. It even contradicted season 1 where he was able to hotwire a Galra-made elevator and fix an alien spaceship and recognize that it wasn't actually broken.

Yeah, Season 2 was a low point for Hunk but he's clambered back up since.

Now he's Best Nerd Buds with Pidge and Matt. A drastic improvement.

edited 2nd Feb '18 4:15:40 PM by TheGunheart

My heart was warmed by seeing the Sincerity Mode.

I'm very glad Hunk is getting to use his smarts and be Science Buddies with Pidge and Matt. I definitely enjoyed that.

edited 15th Oct '17 9:14:50 PM by DeathsApprentice

I hope Lance transfers his one-sided rivalry with Matt. This one looks like it could actually be enjoyable to watch. Especially if he's just oblivious the whole time and it all bounces off of him because he's such a Pollyanna.

edited 15th Oct '17 9:34:48 PM by AlleyOop

Hell, this season Lance was able to give Allura a pep talk without being a sleezy creep or ruining the moment, so he's definitely improved.

Was anyone else expecting Matt to be a bit less... perfectly okay? I like what we got (it's a bit obvious that this is the second half of the last season, so it's less a moment on its own and more a conclusion for previous episodes), but I kept expecting him to be twisted by his experiences or something. For a while, I figured the mysterious and ominous figure chasing Pidge throughout his debut episode was him until we definitively saw them both in the same place.

edited 15th Oct '17 10:26:34 PM by KnownUnknown

He had a scar.

For me the actual disappointment came from when Pidge was at the memorial. That was a great moment - swelling orchestra, the inevitable reveal.... and then suddenly HE'S ALIVE. It didn't feel earned in a weird way. Especially as all that stuff about ciphers and the codex in the same episode. If we'd had that maybe earlier, with Pidge talking about how she spoke to her brother etc....

It just felt that his death would've solidified the war time theme the episode was going for - the loss of the rebel soldiers (rescued) the death of Matt's saviour. Yeah he's a good character and it's nice to have someone else in the palace / crewing the HUGE WARSHIP.. But i got the same vibe - was half expecting him to be EVIL or darker, or not as.... nice?

Him being alive had already been leaked.

I also expected him to be a bit more jaded but then again it subverts the expectation that all freedom fighters have to be frontliners and him getting an intelligence job within the rebel army does make sense.

I'm so glad that Pidge finally reunited with Matt. I've been waiting for that since early season one. Why did Matt start calling Katie Pidge in the first place? And if Katie doesn't need glasses, wouldn't wearing them give her headaches?

Am I the only one who noticed when Lotor said that Honerva, AKA Haggar, was his mom? When was he born exactly? If he's ten thousand years old, has he been eating quintessence to stay young?

As far as I know the show hasn't given any indication yet so far. The fact that he doesn't know Honerva is Haggar leads me to believe he was born after her lichification, whether as a test-tube baby or conceived the old-fashioned way through zombie sex. Alternatively he was born beforehand and frozen like Allura.

So far the only concrete information from Word of God is some comments from Lauren at this year's NYCC. She said that maybe he was born before Allura but she never knew about his existence because of Galra customs against showing off your children, but the way she phrased it made it sound like they didn't think about it very hard, therefore it's probably not actually the case. The other thing she did was tease that maybe there's an "age gap"^note reference to a notoriously popular buzzword among antis that gets hurled at just about any ship they don't like and want to excuse sending gorepics and death threats to fans over for being "abusive" and "immoral", including a pair of friends in their 30s only a few years apart between him and Allura, but it might've just been a tongue-in-cheek jab at Fan Dumb shipping extremists after becoming acquainted with the term via the insane wank launched at her over supposed deliberate sabotaging of Shallura earlier this year, likely even longer before that.

Personally I suspect that Lotor was born some time after the destruction of Altea. Allura had however as long as it took to become a teenager beforehand, which from Coran's comments could be hundreds to thousands of years. Kolivan has been implied to be around for a really long time so it could also be that Galra are even more naturally long-lived than Alteans, meaning it took that many thousands of years for Lotor to be born then mature to however old he's supposed to be.

edited 20th Oct '17 7:20:08 PM by AlleyOop

My personal theory is that Haggar gave Lotor whatever immortality juice she gave Zarkon and herself- And his plans were focused on getting himself that immortality juice without having to run an empire.

A little twenty minute documentary about the original Voltron and how it came to be.

I'm starting to wonder if Allura's super strength and shapeshifting could count as a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, seeing as how neither have come up since. A shame they didn't make her Weapon Of Choice some sort of heavy melee instead of a whip that overlaps way too much with Pidge's grappling hook.

Haggar was shown shapeshifting her face back into Honerva's so they haven't fully forgotten. Though yeah, I'm not super keen on Allura's weapon being a whip either, since it's a common cliche for female characters to use whip weapons and vice versa, even if Allura hasn't been characterized as a dominatrix type. A modified variant of the Simple Staff she wielded before becoming a paladin would've fit the bill quite nicely.

Anyway, according to character designer Christie Tseng November 11 or Pocky Day is now called Bii-Boh-Bi Day at Studio Mir.

edited 10th Nov '17 8:17:25 PM by AlleyOop

"It's a common cliche for female characters to use whip weapons and vice versa,"

So, it's a common cliche for whips to go around using female characters as a weapon?

edited 11th Nov '17 9:46:17 AM by WillKeaton

I’d ask if the Belmont whip had some sort of possessive factor outside of being an heirloom but that’s a gender inversion as well in most cases.

Huh, that's weird. Mention of Troll Hunters third season, but no mention of VLD's fifth season? This is also probably the longest it's taken for official word on a renewal (season 2 I recall was within a month of season 1's premiere, season 3 was announced before season 2 even aired).