WARNING: Mild spoilers for season 1 below.
One of the great things about Voltron: Legendary Defender, besides the character development and hilarious one-liners, is the powerful females. Voltron: Legendary Defender is a Netflix original series based on a TV show from the 80s that was based on an anime. It’s about five lion robot vehicles that are piloted by “paladins” to fly throughout space and defend the universe. With enough training from the paladins, the five lions can combine into a giant robot called Voltron, known as the most powerful weapon in the universe. Besides this fascinating plot and the adventures of exploring new planets and meeting aliens, the show has two main characters that females can not only identify with, but aspire to be like: Allura and Pidge.
When Allura, a princess from the planet Altea, is introduced, she is assertive and immediately avoids mourning the great tragedy she just found out about. She quickly jumps into the role of leading the new paladins of Voltron. It comes naturally to her to be able to match the candidates with the perfect lions and then to push them to train. She is working hard towards preventing more tragedy from happening in her’s and other’s lives, clearly upset by her own past. Despite her spikes in emotion, she is always ready to lead her paladins, and occasionally discover creative ways of making them work together by having a food fight in the middle of a tense meal. However, she doesn’t only have the helpful quality of leadership at her side. She’s capable in many other ways that the paladins and herself discover as the episodes progress.
A common favorite among the characters in Voltron: Legendary Defender is Pidge. Pidge is a bright kid with more than enough determination and intelligence to create a great story all on her own. She has always been beyond tech savvy which has helped her team out of some pretty dangerous situations. The knowledge also gives her, some might say, an unhealthy love for unusual machinery, providing us viewers with adorably excited reactions as she observes the foreign alien technologies she encounters. Besides this high level of intellect and creativity, she has gone through her own tragedy that has given her a determination worthy of a defender of the universe. With a brother and father missing in space that she’s not sure are even alive, she has to make the decision between looking for her family on her own, or staying with her team so that they are able to form Voltron and save the universe.
Another positive aspect to this show is that Pidge isn’t seen as a female to many fans. Because of the circumstances of her introduction to the show, many fans choose to see her as a gender neutral, genderfluid, or transgender character. It’s not seen as a kind of queerbaiting because of the fact that her gender is explicitly stated. Even with the direct statement within the show, Pidge has definitely been interpreted as a comfort for the fandom because this admirable character can be interpreted in so many ways, therefore relating to many kids or even adults who feel alone in who they are.
Pictures courtesy of Netflix.com.