Voltron: Legendary Defender: Season 4 (3/5)
If I had to rank the seasons of VLD right now, it would go 3>2>1>4. Though honestly that's pretty arbitrary at this point, since they're all stock average, not to mention that seasons 3 and 4 feel like one overall season split into two parts without any break in the storyline. That said, I'm ranking season 4 the lowest because each season up to this had some kind of angle to it. Season 1 was an introduction, both narratively, and for the characters themselves. Season 2 had a lack of focus, but still coalesced on defeating Zarkon. Season 3 is the immediate fallout of Zarkon's 'defeat and Lotor coming to the fore. Season 4 is...um...well, it's an extension of seasons 2 and 3 really. But that aside, there's two episodes that stick out. One is "The Voltron Show," which had me in stitches as the crew are forced to do propaganda shows to stir up rebellion. It's brilliant, it's hilarious, it's an affectionate parody, and I love it. In contrast, there's the final season episodes where it's just action, and action, and more action, and God does it get boring. Y'know, episodes ago the show was making fun of technobabble, whereas in the final, a planet's going to explode that will destroy "ten adjacent star systems." This is said by Pidge, who was previously complaining about technobabble. First of all, that would mean the blast would travel faster than light. Second of all, what does "ten adjacent star systems" even mean? The distance between stars isn't uniform! I know this seems like an odd thing to get hung up on in a show about space lions, but I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there's no sense of scale in this show. I don't have any idea how big the Galra Empire is. Sometimes it's across galaxies, sometimes it's across the universe, but apparently it's also small enough that a line of star systems can cut it in half. How does astro-geography even work here? Y'know, VLD has people who worked on Avatar: The Last Airbender, and among everything that show did right was give us a sound sense of geography, where everything was in relation to, well, everything. I know that's much harder to do in a space show, and VLD isn't the only one guilty of this, but the scale is so vast, yet so small when the plot calls for it, I've got so little sense of the stakes other than "galra are bad, stop galra."
There's actually another issue with this season though, and that's Keith. I...really don't know what the writers were going for here. Maybe it'll pay off later, but in season 2, Shiro tells Keith that he'll be he leader after him. End of season 2, Shiro is gone. Start of season 3, we have our 'lion swich' and Keith becomes the leader, although with a lot of growing pains. Okay, fair enough. Character arcs. But then Shiro comes back and Keith is like "yeah, I'm just gonna hang out with those Marmora guys now, see ya." So, Shiro's the Black Lion pilot, but Lance is still the Red Lion pilot, even though him piloting Red was contingent on Keith piloting Black, but he's still Red, and oh God I'm overanalyzing space lions! But that aside, what's the point of Keith's 'arc,' if in less than ten episodes, the entire point of the arc is nullified? Apparently Shiro was speaking out of his arse in season 2 because the status quo is reverted.
Also Matt's still alive, because we can't have anyone die in this series. Like, Pidge crying over her brother's grave, among a sea of graves that commemorates everyone who fought against the galra, but nup. We get Matt. Because hey, if we can't develop Keith as a character, then we can't develop Pidge either.
I'm just...I dunno. I'm on season 5 now and I don't know why I'm even bothering, because five seasons in, and all of the problems that were present from day 1 are still present, and I don't see how they can be solved. I feel at this point VLD is at its best when it's being comedic, like "The Voltron Show" episode or that space mall episode. Because when nothing makes sense, I figure running with the insanity is the best bet.
