If you haven't finished Voltron Legendary Defender Season 3 on Netflix, now's the time to remedy that particular oversight. If you're caught up but have questions, then this chat with showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery is just the thing you need. We talked about the current season's seven-episode order and how it plays into their storytelling plans, how the introduction of Prince Lotor has set the Paladins off balance, and the decision to tell the origin story of the Mighty Voltron.

Before we jump into the interview, here's a reminder that it's spoiler-filled since we talk about events in Season 3. As a buffer, here's our exclusive clip from the current season revealing the fate of a Paladin in peril.

Finally, Shiro. Crash-landed on a snow planet, we find the former black paladin. Get some answers to his mysterious disappearance in the all-new season of Voltron Legendary Defender. Now streaming on Netflix!

Now that Season 3 is available on Netflix, Dos Santos and Montgomery were able to talk about the events of these recent episodes a bit more freely. First up, here's how their latest efforts have been received by the fans:

Joaquim Dos Santos: The cool thing is, with the ability to binge these shows and having them all available at once, we get pretty instant feedback. It’s all been astoundingly super-positive. People coming up with theories and who their new favorite characters are … it’s very exciting. We had same-day fan art at Comic-Con for Lotor’s Generals. It’s crazy. 

Lauren Montgomery: We appreciate it and we’re glad that people like the characters enough to want to do that.

Dos Santos: The fact that somebody’s taking the time to draw those characters is exciting. 

Montgomery: It’s a huge compliment.

Two big changes came in Season 3: The introduction of Prince Lotor, as played by A.J. LoCascio, and a relatively short order of only seven episodes. Dos Santos and Montgomery addressed both of those aspects in turn, starting with just how long they've been waiting to bring Lotor into the fold:

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Image via Netflix, DreamWorks TV

Montgomery: 26 episodes.

Dos Santos: Yeah, we’ve talked about it since Day 1.

Montgomery: We knew from Day 1 that we wanted to make him part of the show. It was just a matter of how much time we wanted to spend with Zarkon, since we knew Lotor would steal the show. Luckily, people really do love Zarkon; I think they missed him a little bit this season. But Lotor was always a wish [and] we knew we he was going to make it in as long as we made it long enough to get him in 

It’s nice to be able to wait a little while before bringing all of these interesting characters in because if you bring them all in rapid-fire at the beginning of a show, you end up going for long periods of time without anyone new or interesting showing up. Being able to do it at a steady pace and refresh the show is fun for us. 

As for the seven-episode order, that wasn't always the plan, but it's something that's actually worked to the showrunners' advantage over the course of production:

Dos Santos: This smaller order of episodes wasn’t something we had planned from the beginning. We had built out, from a story perspective and a creation perspective, for it to be a traditional 13-episode season. The decision to split it up was made after we were already well into production. We had to sort of reverse engineer and look for a natural break in the story around that midpoint. What that allows us to do is dole out the episodes on a more regular basis; there’s not such a big gap in between seasons.

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Image via Netflix, DreamWorks TV

Montgomery: And we weren’t in the place where, “Oh my gosh, we only have seven episodes with Lotor!” We were working with him in the same capacity as Zarkon, where we knew how many episodes we had to bring that character around. Don’t let the seven-episode season throw you off! 

Dos Santos: When you have the benefit of watching the whole thing, think about it like a 13-episode arc. I think we found a natural break for it, but …

Montgomery: It wasn’t a built-in break, intentionally.

A surprising addition to Voltron was Lotor's all-female retinue, a fantastic decision by the showrunners and a delight for fans of Voltron. Here's how that choice came about:

Montgomery: We had Zarkon’s regime, which was very masculine; there were a lot of male commanders. Whenever we’re in the writing room and a new character comes up, I’m always like, “Can it be a girl? Can all of them be girls?” We try to keep it relatively equal. Since we have such a masculine regime with Zarkon, we felt like, what if we had a more female-oriented team for Lotor and show just how different he is from his dad and the different approach he takes. Maybe he’d go with that female energy, less hard-headed, ego-based, like Zarkon’s was, more just, “We’re all going to work together for this common goal.” I think that’s really where it came from.

Dos Santos: Originally we had a bigger, much broader idea—we scrapped it early on—but when we were conceiving of Lotor that there were no female Galra officers under Zarkon’s rule, and that Lotor commanded all of the females because he saw what they brought to the table. I think that got brought back a little bit because, like, Zarkon’s a jerk but he’s not that much of a jerk. But it was a huge marker in the sand to differentiate him from his father, but also the fact that he’s using half-breed Galra soldiers; that’s a really big delineation between him and his dad. I think they’re awesome characters but they bolster his character even further.

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Image via DreamWorks Animation, Netflix

A fun Easter egg for fans of the original 80s series was the appearance of Sven, a nod to the Americanized version of the Lion Force. How exactly did that decision come about?

Montgomery: I feel like it may have just been an off-the-cuff thing in the room.

Dos Santos: What’s funny about Sven is that he’s someone we never really stop talking about, because ultimately when you’re in the writers room [thinking about] what we can mine from the original series, somebody will always just do the voice at some point.

Montgomery: Early on, we were like, what can we do? Can we have Shiro put on an accent for some reason? Then we ended up finding this thing where, with Shiro out of the equation, this guy shows up who looks exactly like him and bam, it’s Sven. It warmed our hearts, but we also got a chance to make Sven kind of a badass. He’s pretty badass in Voltron; he may have had kind of a goofy accent, but he still laid down his life to save Lance. We got to see him and badass Slav in this alternate reality where they’re the only thing standing up this crazy Altean regime.

Dos Santos: If you notice, that was that reality’s version of the Blade of Marmora, they were the Guns of Gamara.

What other Easter eggs are out there?

Montgomery: I’m sure people have spotted it but I haven’t seen anyone point it out: The gift that Baby Allura gets is actually like the Lotor hat from the original series.

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Image via DreamWorks Animation, Netflix

The Season 3 finale may have surprised viewers out there since it didn't bring the conflict with Lotor to a close but rather told the origin story of the mighty Voltron and the original Paladins themselves.

Dos Santos: We knew we wanted to tell that story. We knew it was something that was important to us to understand Voltron’s origins, to understand the reason behind Zarkon’s obsession and why Alfor ultimately made the decision he made.

Montgomery: This was a story that we’ve been trying to tell for a while, we just needed to find the right place. We originally tried to tell it much earlier in the show. We wanted it to be the first episode of Season 2 

Dos Santos: We wanted to open up cold on it.

Montgomery: You realize Zarkon has the Black bayard and then the next season you get the whole story of how he was the Black Paladin. We ended up putting it off over fears that it was too much too soon, or too confusing, or not making our villains feel too sympathetic. The nice thing that it allowed was the reveal that Haggar was Altean at the end of Season 2.

Once we brought in this new, reality-hopping comet ore, we thought that stair-stepped really well into the story of what Voltron is made of and the whole explanation. And, of course, now we see that Zarkon is opening up his eyes and has come back to life; it’s crazy!

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Image via DreamWorks Animation

Sharp-eared viewers might have noticed that Zarkon and Honerva/Haggar sound a bit different in the origin story:

Montgomery: We thought it would be a fun opportunity to do some of the casting for the original Paladins. Neil [Kaplan] and Cree [Summer] did such an incredible job as Zarkon and Haggar, but they’re very different people from who they were in the past, so we thought that changing their voices would actually be a good indicator that these aren’t the exact same characters, they’ve gone through a lot. So we were super lucky that we were able to get Lily Rabe for Honerva and Kevin Durand for Zarkon. 

Dos Santos: When you look at the visuals of Zarkon and Honerva, they look very different, so we wanted that represented in their voices.

When it comes to Season 4, the showrunners were understandably cautious about giving away too much. After some general teases for what fans can expect to see, however, they confirmed the upcoming release date:

Montgomery: Lotor’s going to continue going forward with his plans, the Paladins are going to continue to evolve.

Dos Santos: Lotor’s a very, very different enemy. Our heroes are going to have to adapt to the threat that he represents and obviously things are going to get a little weird on the Galra side because we’ve got some different power players coming back into the game.

Look for Season 4 on October 13th!

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Image via DreamWorks Animation, Netflix
voltron-season-4-release-date
Image via Netflix
voltron-season-4-release-date
Image via Netflix
voltron-season-4-release-date
Image via Netflix