FreeVLDS8

Fan Campaign
Name:	FreeVLDS8
Type of Campaign:
Aims:	Get a supposed uncut version of Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 8 released
Participants:	VLD fans
Date Started:	December 2018
Fandom:	Voltron: Legendary Defender
Campaign Website:
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FreeVLDS8, an abbreviation of Free Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 8, is a fan movement and hashtag that arose after the release of the eighth and final season of Voltron: Legendary Defender. A subset of VLD fandom concluded that the final episodes had been edited from the showrunners’ planned ending at the will of corporate higher-ups. This was based on the noticeable decline in animation quality compared to previous seasons, as well as various statements by voice actors and animators in the immediate aftermath of the season’s release.

These fans went on to create the FreeVLDS8 movement. The aim of the campaign is to convince whoever had ordered the changes to release an unedited cut of Season 8 in whatever format is possible – either as a Director’s cut on DVD or uploaded to Netflix.

Context

There was a generally dissatisfied reaction and significant backlash to the eighth and final season of Voltron: Legendary Defender. Main issues were centered around the decision to have Allura essentially die by ascending to a higher plane of existence, Shiro, who was revealed to be gay in S7, abruptly marrying to a background character whose name is never spoken in the show, and the treatment of Lotor. Some also considered the technical and artistic quality to be lesser than previous seasons.

While many fans initially blamed the show’s executive producers Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos for these elements, another subset looked deeper.

Fan discussion on Tumblr led to the discovery of multiple inconsistencies in the season’s audio and visuals. Some fans dismissed these inconsistencies as simple errors from a rushed production. Other fans believe that the number and frequency of the inconsistencies, as well as the reactions to the season from various members of the creative team, suggested that this wasn’t a case of the production team being sloppy:

• Bex Taylor-Klaus, voice actor for Pidge, tweeted an image of the 80s version of Lance captioned “Internal Screaming” before deleting all mention of Voltron from their social media profile.^{[citation needed]}
• Tae Kwom Kim, a Studio Mir animator who worked on the series, shared his thoughts about the season on Twitter. Kim's thread is in Korean, so there were efforts from fans to translate and interpret his comments. Translated into English, his comment appears to compare making a show to building a house with bricks, saying that every "brick" of the of Season 8 was upsetting, and that some animators didn't recognize what they worked on.
• In a SyFy Wire interview that was uploaded to YouTube the day after the season released and then quickly taken down, Lauren Montgomery commented that “Our visions weren’t the only visions going into this show.”
• Tyler Labine, the voice actor for Hunk, made an an Instagram post on December 15, 2018 thanking his coworkers for their work on the series. After fans lashed out at Lauren and Joaquim in the comments, Tyler responded by saying that the showrunners “aren’t always free to do things the way they want. There is always someone more powerful with lore control keeping the gates shut.”

These reactions led to the conclusion that someone with more authority than the showrunners had ordered changes be made to the season at the last minute. This led to the conclusion that there had been different plans for the show, which presumably would have been more in line with what fans had hoped to see. Some fans began campaigning for the release of the unedited/original season.

Projects & Actions

Petition

A petition, Voltron Season 8 - Release the Original the Showrunners Wanted, was created on Change.org demanding the release of the unedited version of the season.

Rather than receiving the original vision of the showrunners and cast, we as the faithful audience were given a messy season full of executive meddling. Beloved characters were mischaracterized, fridged, and left in the background to be forgotten. The bond between the cast disappeared.

The last-minute addition of the pre-credits epilogue brought us a crushing end to an already disappointing season. Instead of giving ends that our beloved cast deserved, executive meddling caused them to be separated and tokenized and completely out of character.

We are aware that this was not the original plan that the showrunners had for season 8, and we deserve, as an audience who truly loves the show and characters, to know what their vision and story was without the executive meddling that ruined the final season.

The petition’s author outlines some of the initial inconsistencies discovered in a tumblr post on the account "freevlds8." Shortly after making the post, the Tumblr account was deactivated without warning or explanation but was eventually restored several months later.

The petition was signed and shared by Tae Kwom Kim’s wife, and gained 30,000 signatures by February 2019.

While the petition was only directed at DreamWorks initially, an interview with Bex Taylor Klaus by AfterbuzzTV on February 18, 2019^{[citation needed]} brought WEP under fan scrutiny. Bex commented that "the toy company who owns the Voltron IP" considers the show to be "for boys and their dads.” Since the show had never been marketed that way, fans looked closer at the show’s production and learned that while DreamWorks purchased the adaptation rights to the original cartoon, the Voltron brand itself was owned by WEP, giving them final say on how their characters are used. The petition was then updated to include WEP.

The CallVoltron Twitter account was created to provide fans with the contact information of the companies involved in the show’s production – DreamWorks, NBCUniversal (Parent company of DreamWorks), and World Events Productions (Formally WEP) – So that fans could directly express their opinions and ask for the unedited season.

Team Purple Lion

At the end of February 2019, a group of fans associated with the Lotura ship^{[citation needed]} came together under the name Team Purple Lion. The group began publishing detailed essays documenting all the evidence they could find that the season was edited, and set out to further investigate what exactly happened behind the scenes and determine who was ultimately responsible for the controversial elements of VLDS8.

In July 2019, Team Purple Lion created their own website (https://www.teampurplelion.com) to host and archive their essays, research, and analysis. Later in July the group began posting a series of reconstruction videos based on their analysis and conclusion that some content from Season 8, such as the episode “Shadows”, was originally part of Season 7 before WEP president Bob Koplar ordered it removed. The videos inserted the first 15 minutes of “Shadows” into the Season 7 episode “The Last Stand: Part 1”, and the remaining 7 minutes into the end of the Season 7 episode “Lion’s Pride: Part 2”, and discussed the reasons that these choices made sense from a storytelling perspective.

In the following months, Team Purple Lion began working with fans to create a reconstruction of Season 8 titled “Rise and Atone”, filling in the scenes they believe to be missing with voice-acted comic panels. The first episode of “Rise and Atone” was posted to the Team Purple Lion website in October 2019.

Fan Responses

The petition and other projects have received consistent positive support from many fans involved in the campaign, as well as criticism.

While some supporters have lost interest and moved on to other fandoms, or come to terms with the ending they have, the campaign itself is still ongoing.

Many fans who were satisfied or at least didn’t mind the final season or ending feel irritated by the campaign’s vocal presence on social media.

Existence of Unedited S8

Not all VLD fans believe an unedited cut exists, or that asking for additional content is viable, regardless of their opinions of S8. These fans cite how expensive and time-consuming animation is as evidence that any alternate plans for the season simply never made it to the drawing board and that there is no withheld content to be released.

In the immediate aftermath of the season’s release, a vocal subset of fans who were dissatisfied, but did not believe the season was edited, expressed their anger in the form of ad hominem attacks against the staff.^{[citation needed]} Prominent campaign participants state that they are advocating civilly by contacting DreamWorks and WEP, but critics see their attempts to directly contact specific higher ups through public channels in large numbers as being comparable to the attacks other fans have made against the staff.^{[citation needed]} As FreeVLDS8 stretched on, more began to call the campaign targeted harassment.

In an interview with AfterbuzzTV released on March 4, 2019, Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos appeared to say that while last-minute edits were made to the final season, they were extremely minor and that there was no alternate version of the season. This caused many fans to accuse them of insensitivity, queerbaiting, and racism. While Team Purple Lion was quick to point out the inconsistencies of the showrunners’ statements, as well as explain that due to their contracts the showrunners could not speak the full story of what happened without legal consequences, critics believe the campaign to have failed.

Reasons for FreeVLDS8

Many detractors of FreeVLDS8 believe that shipping has played a large role in support for the campaign. Many of the campaign’s supporters are Sheith or Lotura fans: two pairings that were not endgame in S8. Many supporters of FreeVLDS8 believe that that one or both of those pairings were endgame in the uncut version. As a result, supporters may be dismissed as entitled shippers who refuse to accept that their pairing didn't become canon.

Team Purple Lion has been significantly criticized for favoring Lotura and being biased against Allurance which was the canon endgame pairing. TPL's critical analysis has been accused of bias and being overly sympathetic to Lotor. Lance and Allurance fans believe their meta doesn't accurately reflect Lance's character growth in the final season.^{[citation needed]} However its also true that other Allura, Lance and Allura/Lance fans were unhappy with season, with some of those fans among the supporters of the campaign. Some fans who agree with the dissatisfaction of the final season have posted their own meta disputing TPL’s arguments.^{[citation needed]}

S8 was also unpopular with fans who were disappointed by the LGBTQ representation.

GeekDad writer SeanZ published an article in April 2019, Voltron Partners Not Responsible for Failures in Gay Inclusion; Sources Dispute Claim From DreamWorks Staff, defending WEP and claiming that an anonymous source confirmed that DreamWorks was ultimately responsible for the show's controversies with LGBTQ representation.

Company Responses

In the immediate aftermath of Season 8, both DreamWorks and World Events Productions were silent on the subject of the show, giving no official acknowledgement of the FreeVLDS8 campaign. Meanwhile Studio Mir, which did most of the animation for the series, downplayed their involvement in the show as much as possible.^{[citation needed]}

Up until February 2019, WEP had been largely overlooked as the owner of Voltron, and their involvement in the official Voltron Store wasn't widely known. Team Purple Lion’s research placed them under greater fan scrutiny, noting that the Voltron Store’s Twitter account had previously shared posts referencing WEP, and dialing the number listed on WEP’s website gives callers the option to be connected directly to the Voltron Store.^{[citation needed]} WEP responded to the attention by denying that they had creative influence over the brand, and insisted that the official Voltron Store was not affiliated with them.^{[citation needed]}

In the later months of 2020, the Voltron Store began uploading weekly Facebook livestreams hosted by WEP president Bob Koplar and head of licensing Tiffany Illardi. In these streams, they mention their direct involvement in the running of the store. These comments disprove the earlier denial of the affiliation between WEP and the Voltron Store.

DreamWorks has not made an official statement in regard to either the backlash toward the season or the fan campaign for the unedited season.

The executive producers have also made more comments that gave some fans the impression that WEP had interfered with the final season:

• Joaquim mentioned in the March 4th, 2019 interview that VLD had started “as a show for boys 6 to 11 to sell as many toys as possible,”^{[citation needed]} echoing Bex’s prior comment about the IP owner seeing Voltron as a show for “boys and their dads.”
• Joaquim mentioned in the same interview that there were “other controlling parties” involved in the production of the show, and that DreamWorks was fully supportive of their storytelling choices.
• In an interview with Let’s Voltron – the official Voltron podcast – released on March 28, 2019, Joaquim and Lauren both say that WEP “definitely had a say in the creative direction” of the show.

In the later months of 2019, some fans noticed that the Voltron Store appeared to be selling off their stock, and new merchandise was being added for the original cartoon that now bore DreamWorks’ copyright information instead of WEP’s. Meanwhile new merchandise for Legendary Defender only listed the copyright information for DreamWorks, where before it had listed both DreamWorks and WEP. It is speculated by Team Purple Lion, but not confirmed, that this is evidence of a potential sale of the Voltron brand to DreamWorks for purposes of releasing the original cut of Season 8, while others believe it is simply WEP's attempt to to dissociate from FreeVLDS8 controversy.

Coverage, Meta, & Further Reading

Further Reading

• A By-The-Numbers Look At The Disaster That Was ‘Voltron’ Season 8 (archived link) by Taylor Hardman. Article posted on thegeekiary.com, December 29, 2018.
• Voltron Partners Not Responsible for Failures in Gay Inclusion; Sources Dispute Claim From DreamWorks Staff an article by Sean Z at geekdad.com. Posted April 30, 2019. This article inspired several critiques from both fans who support FreeVLDS8 and fans who do not.

Meta

• Was Season 8 of Voltron Changed?. A meta by the petition’s author documenting the first visual and audio inconsistencies discovered by the fandom that pointed to the possibility of the season being edited.
• Chasing the Ghosts of Season 8, ^{Archived version}. An analysis of the visual and story inconsistencies surrounding Allura, Honerva, and Lotor concluding that Lotor was not intended to die, and that his rescue and redemption had been removed from the season.
• Death of a Dark Youth, Desecration of the Animus, ^{Archived version}. A discussion of literary analysis and storytelling conventions that outlines how Lotor’s redemption was such an integral part of the core storyline that removing him broke the structure of the show’s narrative.
• Interdimensional Executive Meddling: Voltron Style, ^{Archived version}. An analysis of the season 7 episode “The Feud,” an episode where the paladins are inexplicably thrust into a nonsensical gameshow for the amusement of an all-powerful entity named Bob. It suggests that the episode was commentary on what happened behind the scenes of the show’s production, noting that Bob the game show host shared a name with the head of World Events Productions, and concludes that if Bob Koplar wasn’t responsible for the controversial decisions in the final season, his position meant that he would know who was.
• Seek Truth in Darkness, ^{Archived version}. A breakdown of every single visual and audio inconsistency in the season, what story elements were removed, the timing of when the editing happened, and the most likely motive for why it happened.
• Clear Day: Aftershock, ^{Archived version}. A discussion of how the imagery and symbolism in the Season 8 episode “Clear Day” was intended to foreshadow an explanation of what really happened at the Altean colony that would have confirmed that Lotor was not the villain he had been painted as.
• Legendarily Defensive: Editing the Gay Away in VLD, ^{Archived version}. An explanation of how comments from the executive producers regarding pushback they received over LGBT representation point to World Events Productions as the party responsible for ordering changes to Season 8, and that WEP had objected to a romance between two male paladins.
• From The Sock Puppet's Mouth, ^{Archived version}. An explanation of how Non-Disclosure Agreements work, explaining that in addition to being forced to keep things secret, those working under NDAs can be legally compelled to lie on their employer’s behalf as long as it does not involve breaking the law.
• Timeline of WEP's Damage Control, ^{Archived version}. Timeline of the responses to the backlash toward Season 8 from WEP and others between December 2018 and April 2019.
• Breaking the Prince's Curse, ^{Archived version}. A discussion of the history of the Voltron franchise that compares how sympathetically Lotor is portrayed in each iteration, and how that reflected on how much creative influence the contemporaneous head of WEP had over that iteration.
• From the Teacher's Desk, ^{Archived version}. A critique and rebuttal by TPL of SeanZ's article that points out the fallacies and inconsistencies in his arguments, as well as how quotes from publicly available interviews were taken out of context in order to support his claims.
• Another rebuttal to SeanZ's article, ^{Archived version} by a fan not affiliated with FreeVLDS8 that points out the logical fallacies in SeanZ’s accusations of queerbaiting and insensitivity, and details the situation the production team was in regarding Shiro’s last-minute marriage.
• Phantoms of the Space Opera, ^{Archived version}. An analysis of Lotor’s unique theme music and how it’s presence in Season 8 in scenes where he himself is not present were meant to build toward his return and redemption later in the season.
• The Heroine with a Thousand Faces, ^{Archived version}. An explanation of the Heroine's Journey and how Allura’s character arc fits into that narrative framework, as well as the role that Lotor plays within the context of the formula.
• VLD Reconstruction Archives, ^{Archived version}. Videos created by Team Purple Lion to depict what they believe the unedited versions of certain episodes looked like prior to the editing of Seasons 7 and 8.
• For New Readers, ^{Archived version}. A summary of the FREEVLDS8 campaign as well as who Team Purple Lion are and what they have accomplished as of May 2020
• The Heroine's Journey of Lance, ^{Archived version}. An analysis by Cosmic Royalty of Lance’s character arc in the context of the Heroine’s Journey and how it was meant to have ended.
• Baked Potato Voltron, ^{Archived version}. A collection of Team Purple Lion’s observations of WEP and DreamWorks’ behavior in the later months of 2019, as well as the branding of official Voltron merchandise, that suggests DreamWorks bought the franchise from World Events Productions.