The middle of Voltron season 7 saw a pair of episodes that were a radical shift for the series. Barely featuring the main characters or their Lions, this two parter instead focused on what had been transpiring on Earth during the time the Voltron Paladins had been out in space. Only featuring a handful of characters we’d briefly known before, “The Last Stand Parts 1 and 2” not only set the stage for the second half of the season but perhaps the future of Voltron spin off media.
The idea of bringing Earth back into the show was something executive producers Lauren Montgomery and Jaoquim Dos Sanots had always planned for but they weren’t sure exactly how they’d do it.
“Was Earth gonna come to the fight (in space)? Was the fight gonna come to them?,” remembers Montgomery. “It was all just up in the air.”
Eventually the team settled on the idea of the Galra invading Earth, which meant they’d have to set up exactly what had been happening on the planet in Voltron’s absence. While this excited the producers, they weren’t even sure they’d be able to do it. Dos Santos explains its rare for an animated series to move its focus entirely away from its main cast.
read more: Voltron Season 8 Review
“Beyond that it deals with politics and military infrastructure.” Not exactly traditional animated fair.
Motngomery recalls the fear that they might not even be able to do the episode. After all, there had been reservations from higher ups in DreamWorks early on about not having Voltron in every single episode. “I remember getting these scripts and reading them and being like, ‘We need to be prepared to scale this down to one episode if that’s all they let us have.’ But that ended up not being the case and we really didn’t experience a whole of push back at all.”
Dos Santos attributes that to learning what was happening on Earth, “served the story really well.”
With the two episodes introducing a large group of now fan favorite characters, could this possibly bode well for future Voltron spin-off media? If stories can work on the TV show without our main team, surely novels or comics wouldn’t have to follow them either?
Montgomery and Dos Santos have previously discussed the idea of sequels and spinoffs and while nothing is confirmed, “we’ve teed up a ton of possibilities there” says Dos Santos. “Now its just people taking the ball and running with it.”
Montgomery takes a positive outlook that there are stories to be told of, “not just our Lion Force Voltron but who knows? Maybe there’s a series out there for just the rebels or something.”
Dos Santos is personally, “all in for a Garrison episode. Just the inner working day-day life of people of the Garrison.”
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Montgomery jokes, “it’ll literally be like the crossover with Power Rangers where it’s just kids in Garrison High School piloting transforming robots.”
Now that’s a show we’d love to see.
“The Last Stand” was an incredible two parter all on its own but what it did for the Voltron franchise might be even greater.
Shamus Kelley is a pop culture/television writer and official Power Rangers expert. Follow him on Twitter!
