There’s a special kind of emotional alchemy that occurs when you introduce a thing you loved as a kid to your own children, and they not only embrace it, but become even bigger fans than you ever were. This is the story of our family’s relationship with Voltron.
My spouse and I both loved the original animated series from the 80s as kids. I know, the quality doesn’t really hold up, but when we heard that Netflix was rebooting the series we knew we had to check it out with our kids.
If you’re not familiar with it, the premise of Voltron: Legendary Defender is pretty simple: five teens – Shiro, Keith, Lance, Pidge, and Hunk – must band together to pilot five robot lions that can come together to form one super-robot, Voltron, to fight against an evil emperor bent on taking over and/or destroying the galaxy. (I mean, there’s a bit more to it than that, but I’ll let you discover the details.)
While our kids didn’t love it at first, we persisted, and within about three episodes they were hooked. We’ve binged every Netflix season upon release, and today, the final (sob!) season comes out – so, there’s our weekend viewing planned!
We were already fans of the new series, but that was firmly cemented when we got to the point in Season 1 where it’s revealed that…
SPOILER WARNING!
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SERIOUSLY, BIG SPOILER AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN”T SEEN THE SERIES!
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YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
…Pidge used to go by Katie. They started dressing in boy’s clothes to get into the Galaxy Garrison academy in order to find their missing father and brother Matt, but midway through the first season Pidge reveals their identity to the rest of the team.
The series never explicitly uses the word transgender to describe Pidge, but even after her missing family is found, Pidge continues to eschew dresses, skirts, and all other trappings of typical femininity, instead preferring to keep their hair short and wear pants. Which makes Pidge, if not overtly trans, at least non-gender-conforming. Collider has a great piece on this.
I’m using they/them pronouns for Pidge becuase, while it’s not explicitly canon to refer to Pidge this way, Bex Taylor-Klaus who voices Pidge has said publicly that in their mind Pidge prefers they/them. The actor publicly came out earlier this year as trans non-binary, which for our queer kid, made Bex 1,000% cooler and more rad.
In the ultimate show of fan love, our daughters cosplayed as Matt and Pidge at this year’s Fan Expo in Toronto, and got to meet Bex Taylor-Klaus at a panel – a thrill they’ll never forget!
If your kids are into anime or up for some space-based animated adventure, Voltron: Legendary Defender will scratch that itch, and at the same time provide some valuable and much-needed visibility for the often-neglected T in LGBTQ.
