Voltron: Legendary Defender

• Josh Keaton as Lieutenant / Commander Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane:
  The Black Paladin and the pilot of the Black Lion. The leader of the Defenders of the Universe, Shiro was captured by the Galra Empire a year before the start of the series during which he was given a weaponized prosthetic right arm. A natural, decisive leader, Shiro is calm and always in control. At the end of the second season, Shiro reclaims his personal bayard weapon from Zarkon that enables them to defeat him, but Shiro mysteriously vanishes afterwards. In season three, it is revealed he was teleported to a Galra ship, as he ended up on one before escaping and was eventually found by the team. After finding that the Black Lion no longer accepts him as its true paladin, he continues to aid the team by providing guidance and support to them from the Castle of Lions. At the start of season four, Shiro manages to re-establish his bond with the Black Lion when Keith was absent during an intense battle. In season five, he was revealed of being an unwitting mole of Haggar, who can see through his eyes to keep an eye on Lotor. After Keith and Romelle revealed Lotor's true intentions, Haggar takes full control over Shiro, and Keith discovers that the Shiro with them is a clone, while the true Shiro died during the fight at the end of season two, and his soul lies inside the Black Lion. Afterwards, Shiro is revived when Allura uses her powers to transfer his soul from the Black Lion to the clone's body. In season 7, following his return to Earth, he becomes the captain of the Atlas, a Garrison battleship, and joins the fight against Sendak. The first episode introduces the character "Adam W." who was shown as a "significant other" to Shiro,[13] a description confirmed by Lauren Montgomery[14] that revealed Shiro as an LGBT character.[15][16] At the end of season 8, he married Curtis, a fellow crewmember on the Atlas.
• Kimberly Brooks as Princess Allura:
  The crown Princess of Altea, the daughter of King Alfor, Allura was the last known female Altean. Pilot and keeper of the Castle of Lions, a structure that is both a castle and a spaceship, Allura granted the Defenders their titles and leads them in their mission to defeat Zarkon and liberate the universe from Galra rule. Allura wishes more than anything to finish her father's work in stopping Zarkon. In season three, she becomes the new pilot of the Blue Lion as the Pink Paladin. As an Altean, Allura's abilities include the chameleon-like ability to blend in with other species and magical abilities related to quintessence. She has a telepathic bond with some Altean mice that had ended up in the same cryo-pod that she was hibernating inside of. During season 8, Allura and Lance engage in a romantic relationship, and Lance starts to be more protective and caring towards her. At the end of season 8, she and Honerva give their lives to restore realities after they were destroyed in the final battle.
• Steven Yeun as Keith:
  The Red Paladin and the pilot of the Red Lion. Formerly a cadet at Galaxy Garrison academy before being expelled, Keith is an orphan and a lone wolf as a result. Sullen and temperamental, Keith spends his free time honing his skills for battle. In season two, Keith discovers that he has Galra blood, apparently from his maternal side of the family. The revelation comes from a knife that associated him with a secret rebel group of the Galra called the "Blade of Marmora", but also ends up straining Allura's trust in him for a while. Due to Shiro's absence, Keith takes over as the head of Voltron as the new pilot of the Black Lion in season three. At the start of season four, Keith officially steps down as the leader of Voltron, handing the position back to Shiro so that he can continue to work with the Blade of Marmora. At the end of season five, Keith is reunited with his Galra mother, Krolia. He rejoins the Paladins in the end of season six, re-assuming command of the Black Lion. At the end of season 8, he dissolves the Galra Empire and transitions the Blades of Marmora into a humanitarian organization.
• Jeremy Shada as Lance:
  The Blue Paladin and the pilot of the Blue Lion. Lance was the fighter pilot of his team at Galaxy Garrison academy. Seemingly cocky and confident, Lance is nicknamed the sharpshooter and ladies' man of the Defenders. Lance shows some doubts on his place on the team. Lance has maintained a one-sided rivalry with Keith from when the two were at the Galaxy Garrison together, but the two have shown to be an effective team. Lance becomes the new pilot of the Red Lion and right-hand man of Voltron from season three onward. Lance presumably died for a brief moment in season 6. He and Allura begin a romance at the beginning of season 8. After the final battle with Honerva, Lance returns to live on his family's farm, spreading Allura's message and gains Altean markings.
• Bex Taylor-Klaus as Katie "Pidge Gunderson" Holt:
  The Green Paladin and the pilot of the Green Lion. Katie disguised herself as a boy named Pidge Gunderson to get into Galaxy Garrison academy to find out what happened to her father and brother who disappeared whilst on the same mission that Shiro was captured on. A technical genius, Pidge is the smartest member of the team, able to create specialist modifications for the Green Lion such as a cloaking device. She also re-purposed a Galran drone to work for her, naming it Rover, who later sacrificed itself to protect her. During her time as a Paladin, she eventually rescued her brother, and then her father. Her brother, Matt, kept fighting for a rebel group, and her father, Samuel, returned to Earth to warn the Galaxy Garrison about the impending war against the Galra. After the final battle in Season 8, she and her family help lead the next generation of Legendary Defenders (a nod to Vehicle Voltron).
• Tyler Labine as Hunk:
  The Yellow Paladin and the pilot of the Yellow Lion. Hunk was the engineer of his team at Galaxy Garrison academy. A gentle giant with an equally large appetite, Hunk is the heart of the team, lifting them up and making peace between them. After witnessing first hand the devastation and misery that Zarkon's conquest of the universe has brought upon the people of various worlds, Hunk is determined to free those enslaved. Following the final battle with Honerva, he starts up a culinary empire to bring worlds together, one meal at a time.
• Rhys Darby as Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe:
  The Royal advisor to Princess Allura's family, Coran is the last known male Altean. Energetic and excitable, Coran serves Allura dutifully whilst being fiercely protective of her. He tends to ramble on and on about his past, particularly about his supposedly daring feats or past experiences. Despite his odd and quirky character, he is a reliable and steadfast ally to his princess and the Paladins.

• Neil Kaplan as Emperor Zarkon:
  The Emperor of the ruthless Galra Empire, and the ruler of most of the known universe after spending the last ten thousand years conquering it. He desires the Lions of Voltron, whom he is powerful to contend against, due to both the threat they pose to his conquest, along with the revelation that he was the former Black Paladin that motivates his claim of the Lions as his own property. During the season two finale, Zarkon faces Voltron and the Paladins in a powerful, experimental mecha armor and is defeated by the Paladins, but left in a coma for most of season three until he was revived by Haggar and begins a manhunt for Lotor. In season five, Lotor fights him in a duel to the death and is slain by Lotor's hand, and he is declared dead by the empire. In season 8, Zarkon last appears as a corrupted spirit inside of Honerva's mind to protect her secrets. When the original and present Paladins fight and defeat him, they purified his soul and returns to normal after millennia. Then when Allura shows him all the suffering he has caused in all that time, Zarkon has become repentant. The old and new Paladins convince him to help them escape her mind using the combined shared bond of all ten Paladins to Voltron.
• Cree Summer as Witch Haggar / Honerva:
  Zarkon's primary advisor and leader of the Druids, dark mystics who fanatically serve the Galra Empire. Haggar is both a dangerous sorceress and a mad scientist. She combines her dark magic with abominable science to arm soldiers with powerful weapons, create giant monsters dubbed "Robeasts" to fight Voltron, and drain the mystical life energy known as quintessence from living things and whole planets for the Galra to use in their universal conquest. In battle, her magical abilities allow her to teleport, cast illusions, and wield dark magic energy. Haggar is eventually revealed to be an Altean alchemist named Honerva, Zarkon's wife who played a role in Voltron's origins ten millennia ago. While afflicted by the same corruption that transformed Zarkon, Haggar lost all the memories of her former life, and gradually recovered them as she traveled the mystical realm of Oriande where Altean alchemy originated. The trip allowed Haggar to restore herself to her original state as Honerva. While she was mysteriously absent during season 7, Honerva returns as the main antagonist of season 8. She has deceived a colony of Alteans that Lotor had kept hidden from the Galra into becoming her willing followers, promising them they will be reunited with Lotor and Altea. Her plan is to summon Lotor's mech, merge it with hers, and open rips to alternate realities so she could find the perfect one to live in peace with, but at the cost of all other realities being destroyed in the process. She nearly succeeds in ending all of existence in the final battle, but is convinced by the Paladins and Allura to stop, though she is disheartened that there is only one reality left because of her actions. She and Allura work together to use all their Altean magic in order to save all of existence, sacrificing their lives in the process.
• A. J. Locascio as Prince Lotor:
  The son of Zarkon and Honerva, making him a Galra-Altean hybrid. He assumed control of the Galra Empire following his father's inability to lead while in critical condition. Possessing a Messianic complex, Lotor's ideology that strength comes from worthy followers from conquered worlds, rather than resource expansion and subjugation, is reflected in his personal all-female strike team who are half-Galra like himself. While acting as ruler, ignoring matters that he deems a waste of time, Lotor has been working on his own plans to obtain Quintessence which results with him branded an outlaw by Zarkon once he returns to power. Forming an alliance with the Paladins after saving them from Haggar's ambush, Lotor manages to win back the Galra throne after defeating his father in a battle to the death and subsequently dealing with insurgents, but Lotor's alliance with the Paladins falls apart once it is revealed that he secretly saved many Alteans at the time during the past war, hiding them away and allowing them to thrive, only to sacrifice a majority of them so he can use their harvested quintessence for his plans, as revealed by Keith and an Altean from his colony, Romelle. It is eventually revealed that Lotor's goal is to establish a new Altean Empire, one that will even span across other realities, and he will dispose of anything, even his own forces if need be, to accomplish this, as he fights Voltron using his own giant robot formed from his Sincline ships, which has the ability to enter the Quintessence field at will. As the fight enters the Quintessence field itself, the exposure to all that quintessence drives Lotor mad with power, just like Zarkon, but Lotor is defeated when Allura has Voltron use all of its power, both from itself and the constant power it gets from Quintessence field, against him. As the power makes Voltron increasingly difficult to keep together, they are forced to abandon Lotor in the Quintessence field. He later died due to Quintessence poisoning.

This show had various LGBTQ characters. Specifically, it featured three gay characters, Shrio and Adam,[44] who broke up, with Adam dying several years later, but at the end of eighth and final season, Shiro is married to Curtis, a background character introduced in Season 8. The series was fraught with criticism for its LGBTQ representation. The show got in hot water for killing off a gay character,[45][46] with some saying the show was following a stereotype known as "burying that gay", leading showrunner Joaquim Dos Santos to apologize to fans.[47][48] This was not a surprise as "not all queer presentation" was created equal as one scholar noted, with representation of bisexual and transgender characters lagging behind lesbians and gay men in some respects,[49] with this representation important in the U.S. political climate while GLAAD called for Hollywood to produce more characters with LGBTQ+ characters.[50][51] Renaldo Metadeen of CBR gave his own take, criticizing the marriage between Shiro and Adam, calling it "cheap and tacked on," while stating that making a "five-second blip of the wedding...come[s] off as a publicity stunt."[52]

Criticism of editing primarily regarded LGBT issues, though some were general observations. On October 22, 2018, a series of leaks of the final episode appeared online of the wedding, in which a different character was seen marrying Shiro.[53] It remains unclear whether the leaks are authentic.

Further controversy followed with the release of the final season, where Shiro is married to Curtis. In the English audio description, Curtis is referred to as Adam[54] though he is once mentioned to be Curtis in the closed captions of a different episode. The error has since been corrected, but a number of fans have noted this as "evidence" of the "tacked-on" nature of the epilogue.

The supervising producer, episode director, storyboard artist, and animator Kihyun Ryu posted on his Instagram on September 12 a piece of Shiro material, weeks before the season was sent to be dubbed into other languages. In the comments, the show runners tell him to "make it beautiful."[55]

In particular, Ezor's role in Season 8 caused controversy. Multiple languages referred to the character as dead in Season 8's "The Grudge". The character's single line of dialogue was pulled from Kimberly Brooks in a previous season,[56] while no audio description ever mentions Ezor's survival within "The Grudge" or its following episode.[57] The lack of movement of the character, only blinking and materializing out of thin air, suggests that the character was meant to remain dead and was added back in at the last minute to appease some negativity.[53]

Carli Squitieri, the storyboard revisionist on "The Grudge", stated on social media after the release of Season 7, "Ezor should have lived, but that's another story I'm not under the authority to speak about."[58]

Fans began a petition for the alleged original season (the version that supposedly existed prior to severe editing), to be released. The petition has garnered over 30,000 signatures.[53]

Speaking in an interview with the "Let's Voltron" podcast Joaquim Dos Santos denied the existence of an alternate cut of season eight.[59]

The series was marred by the extraordinarily poor behavior on the part of a number of its fans. Death threats were issued to many within the Voltron cast and crew,[60] particularly to the showrunners Dos Santos and Montgomery and voice actors Josh Keaton and Bex Taylor-Klaus.[61][62] Almost all of the negative behavior centered on either LGBT representation or "shipping."

A fan demanded that Keith and Lance be written to be romantically involved with one another and threatened to publicly post private internal documents related to the show until the two male characters became a couple.[63]

In defense of the executive producers, Tyler Labine, the voice actor for Hunk, stated on his personal Instagram account that "what is not real and what will all fall by the wayside in due time is all the unwarranted hate and vitriol that the dark side of this fandom has let seep into this precious world. THAT is all just noise and I refuse to listen."[64] He also said, in regard to Shiro's epilogue in Season 8, that the "powers that be and people in control aren’t always free to do things the way they want. There is always someone more powerful with lore control keep the gates shut. Just remember that next time you decide that the creators of this show didn’t care about the fandom. I assure they cared more than anybody. Fact."

The first miniseries consisted of five issues, published by Lion Forge Comics. It was written by show head writer Tim Hedrick and Mitch Iverson, and illustrated by Digital Art Chefs. A special cover variant of issue #1 was available at San Diego Comic-Con in 2016, with a limited release of 250 copies.[80] Issue #2 was released on August 2, 2016,[81] followed by issue #3 on October 5, 2016,[82] issue #4 on November 9, 2016,[83] and issue #5 on November 20, 2016.[84] The whole series will be collected in a graphic novel and was initially scheduled for a December 2016 release,[78] but got pushed back to January 3, 2017, then was finally released January 25, 2017, according to Lion Forge.[85][86] The second series will be announced after the release of the graphic novel.[78] A motion comic of issue 1 with full voice acting by the series cast was released on June 15, 2017, at the DreamWorksTV YouTube channel.[87] The story takes place in between the season 1 episodes "Rebirth" and "Crystal Venom."

During the Voltron: Legendary Defender panel at WonderCon 2017, it was announced that the second series of five issues would debut in May 2017.[92] The date was pushed back to late June due to production delays.,[93] however the date was pushed back on October 4, 2017 where was published where issue 2 and 3 was published on the same day, November 1, 2017 and issue 4 was published on November 15, 2017, issue 5 was published on December 13, 2017, the Vol. 2 Trade Paperback was published on January 31, 2018. The story takes place in between the season 2 episodes "Shiro's Escape" and "Greening the Cube."

Volume 3 debuted on July 11, 2018.[94] The story is set between season 4 and season 5.

A virtual-reality video game based on the series, known as Voltron VR Chronicles, was released for Steam, Oculus and PlayStation 4 via PlayStation Network.

A real-time strategy video game based on the series, called Voltron: Cubes of Olkarion, created by indie developer Gbanga, was entered into and won the 2018 Universal GameDev Challenge.[98] The game was released on Steam Early Access on 29 August 2019.[99] On the 19th September 2019 NBCUniversal shutdown its game publishing division.[100] Three months later on the 19th December Voltron: Cubes of Olkarion was briefly removed from the Steam store, but reactivated in June 2020.[101][102] In the game, players compete in real-time player vs player (PvP) game battles by placing own and destroying opponent blocks with different features in a game board with a grid.[103]

• Cook, Carson (May 2018). "A History of LGBT Representation on TV". A content analysis of LGBT representation on broadcast and streaming television streaming television (Honors). University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
• Where We Are on TV Report: 2018-2019 (PDF) (Report). GLAAD. 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 10, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.