Jeremy Shada and Bex Taylor-Klaus sat down with us at New York Comic Con to discuss Voltron season 2 and what’s next for their characters.
New York Comic Con was a treasure trove for Voltron fans — from the panel, to the fan events, and so much more. Jeremy Shada (Lance) and Bex Taylor-Klaus joined us at a roundtable interview, where we got to ask them about everything from family to romance.
Ahead of the season 2 premiere, we thought we’d give you the highlights, to help you make it through to its official release.
‘Voltron’ has blood and found family at its core
A key part of Voltron’s freshman season was Pidge’s mission to discover exactly what happened to her family, following the disastrous end to the Kerberos mission — which, along with Shiro, her brother and father were involved in. Though Shiro returned to Earth, Pidge’s family still remains missing in action.
“It’s really nice to get to see kind of where Pidge comes from and what made her Pidge,” Bex said of Pidge’s journey in Voltron’s second season. “Especially because I think you’re gonna get to see the difference [between] Katie and Pidge.”
But even with Pidge’s need to find her blood family at the forefront, Bex added that, “She’s not as alone as she thought she was. She’s still searching for her family, but she has family in the Paladins.”
Jeremy Shada, who plays Lance, said that over the course of the first season that the Paladins as a whole “kind of find that out too, because they’re thrust together so quickly, most of them don’t really know each other.”
“They do really have those bonds that start really growing. Which is awesome. You get to see a lot more of that in the second season,” Shada added.
Of course, should Pidge find her family alive and well, somewhere out there in the universe, it’d be an interesting arc to see play out. We asked how Pidge would be able to reconcile the versions of her family that she knew with what they might have become.
“Well, I’m going to counter that and say Pidge has become something that definitely isn’t what her father and her brother remember either,” Taylor-Klaus said. “Everyone has to kind of come back together and figure out who they are with each other again.”
During the Voltron panel at New York Comic Con, it was also made official that Lance had Cuban heritage. Which, Jeremy Shada admitted, even he hadn’t been aware about. “I guess in the back of my head it makes sense. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that earlier.”
Lance’s Cuban heritage is also something that will be explicitly referenced during Voltron season 2. “I just read through one of the more recent scripts, and he has a line that’s talking about ‘oh, you know, I’m just, like, a boy from Cuba,'” Shada told us, before going on to reveal that the line had originally been intended to be said in Spanish. It was eventually changed, as Shada’s pronunciation wasn’t strong enough, but is something they want to revisit when he has “a better handle on it.”
As for the heritage of the other Paladins, Shada said, “I think all the characters actually have different backgrounds and stuff than you would even realize. We’ll briefly mention some of that, and it’s really cool.”
But with Lance’s Cuban heritage revealed, it made us curious about how Lance would continue to handle the prolonged distance from a family he was incredibly close to. We asked if that might affect Lance more in season 2.
“Definitely yes and no,” Shada told us. “Because there’s certain things that the longer they’re out there he gets more comfortable and confident with his new family, for lack of a better word. He gets really close to [the Paladins] as well. And he gets more confident, obviously, just with his role on the team and everything that they’re doing. I think they all do.”
Regardless of Taylor-Klaus’ jokes that they could always take a day trip back to Earth, Shada insisted that they have “responsibilities that they have to live up to now. Their new roles and lives they’ve been thrust into, and those ultimately come first. Defending the universe and saving these disparate planets from the [Galra] Empire.”
As for the possibility of revisiting the implications of their family left behind on Earth, Shada said, “I know that we have something along the lines of that, later. I just can’t say what it is because I don’t want to spoil anything.”
What is love?
When the subject of Lance’s flirtatious ways was broached, it was questioned whether we might see the Paladin begin to move away from that behavior and settle down with someone.
“As you mature as a person in some areas, it ultimately will mature other areas of yourself as well. Lance is always going to be Lance, he’s always going to be seeing himself as very suave,” Shada said in response, something that was certainly on display during the second episode of season 2. “But I think there is, to some extent, at some point you’ll find that one person that above all you kind of fall in love with a little bit and realize that it’s nice to have that one person than kind of just going all over the place. Not spoiling too much, but yeah. He’ll mature in all ways.”
What comes next?
As a bookend to the interview, both Shada and Taylor-Klaus were asked what they might like to see next for their characters — even if that something hasn’t happened yet.
For Taylor-Klaus, she said that she’d “love to see Pidge kind of interacting more. That’s never really been her forte, or even her interest, and I think I’d really just like to see the individual relationships with each of her new family members. I think that’d be really interesting to explore.”
Interaction was also something that Jeremy Shada wanted to see for Lance — but he had a specific Paladin in mind for his attentions. “I think for Lance, I mean, he and Keith are like frenemies. So just more of their bromance, you know. That’d be awesome. If any time we can put the two of them together, they’re just funny because they, like, hate each other but also really like each other as friends and teammates. So I’m saying more of that, because that’d be cool.”
‘VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER’ PREMIERES ON NETFLIX ON JANUARY 20, 2017
Want more Voltron content to keep you going until the premiere? Our season 2 speculation and review of the first three episodes might just do the trick!
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? Voltron season 2 review: Space tacos and feelings
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