Long ago, the brave pilots of Voltron defended the universe from evil in Voltron: Defender of the Universe. Now, more than 30 years later, Netflix has its own Voltron in the sharply written, endlessly charming reboot series Voltron: Legendary Defender. After two seasons, producers and co-creators Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos have curated their 12 favorite episodes of the original classic, which will be available to stream on Netflix beginning tomorrow.
When io9 the pair how and why this curated playlist of original episodes came to be, Montgomery said it was all due to timing. “Our show’s been on long enough, people have seen the first season and then they’ve seen the second season, and now we can kind of go back and really reminisce about the old show and appreciate what it was,” she said.
There’s also the obvious “nostalgia trip” inherent to watching the original of a popular reboot — it’s also safe to assume many people will be watching the original, cheesy-as-heck Mighty Morphin Power Rangers after seeing the new reboot this weekend — but Dos Santos adds that the original also provides a glimpse of where and what their reboot built upon. “I think, for fans of our show who may not be familiar with the original, it’s kind of neat,” he said. “Old storylines are expanded upon and I think that’s like a fun little Easter egg.”
Montgomery and Dos Santos made a lot of logical changes to their version of Voltron that weren’t in the original series, such as fleshing out Princess Allura and streamlining the pilot/lion color scheme. “A lot of it was just [about] making sense,” Montgomery told Inverse a year ago. “For me, we switched up the palettes and the lions because I have color OCD and I wanted everyone to match.”
But a huge change was in Princess Allura, who was more or less a damsel in distress until she became a pilot in the original. In the reboot, she’s a survivor of an extinct kingdom who mentors the five pilots to become heroes. Montgomery told io9 that because she’s been so used to their version of Allura, it’s been an experience revisiting the old Allura. “She had her moments. We just chose to push the power aspect of her a little further into the forefront.”
12 select episodes of Voltron: Defender of the Universe will become available to stream on Netflix tomorrow. Voltron: Legendary Defender is available now.
