Voltron‘s third season is almost upon us. I got the chance to speak one-on-one with Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery about last season’s big reveals and what’s coming next.

Looking for something to pass the time until Voltron season 3 drops on Netflix? I’ve got you covered. I had the chance to ask Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery some of my burning Voltron questions. From what’s going on with Allura’s powers, to how the Paladin’s friendships were forged, to what secrets are still to be uncovered… we discussed it all.

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Dig into the full transcript of that interview below. But beware: there are significant spoilers for Voltron season 2.

Hypable’s exclusive interview with Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery

Allura discovered during her showdown with Haggar that she had some powerful abilities. How do you foresee those powers might alter Allura’s approach to the war with the Galra?

Joaquim Dos Santos: I think she’s still in the process of figuring that all out herself. So, I think as those bits of story were dropping on the audience, they were dropping on Allura too. She was as surprised as anyone.

Lauren Montgomery: There’s certain things that she knows she can do. She’s aware of the fact that she’s kind of blessed with this same ability that her father was, and that certain other Alteans were. Where they have this special quintessence bond, where they can manipulate things in a way that others can’t. And then she knows that she can change shape and change color, like pretty much all Alteans can. But there’s, well, you kind of saw it in her face when she fought Haggar in the end. This resistance that she has to Haggar’s magic was completely new to her and she had no idea.

So, yeah, it’s just one of those things where it’s definitely interesting to see she’s gaining these powers. We don’t know where they come from; even she doesn’t know where they come from. So that is definitely going to influence her in her approach. Is it going to make her more confident? Or is it going to make her more unsure of these powers that she has? That’s yet to be seen.

JDS: Yeah, I think also it was a great character beat when her and Shiro were sneaking off of the ship, and they couldn’t escape, and you clearly saw that she wasn’t, at that point, quite battle tested. Maybe didn’t quite know what she was doing. By the time she was squaring off against Haggar, she’d started putting the pieces together a bit more. I think that sort of character evolution will continue to carry on throughout her storylines.

When it comes to the history of the Paladins and Voltron, Allura is still remaining tight-lipped, though the truth about Zarkon’s involvement has already come to light. Is there more about Voltron’s origins that we’ve yet to discover?

JDS: There is more to Voltron’s origins than we’ve yet to discover. [Laughs]

LM: It’s hard, I think. She has this knowledge. She knows what’s happened behind the scenes. But the other Paladins don’t. And so she has to make this decision: do you be completely transparent, tell them everything, knowing that it might be a turn-off and you might lose the only people that you have at your disposal to help you, or do you hold that back and hope that once they’ve gotten out there and they see how important this mission is, then you can release that information to them, just once the off-putting piece of information isn’t going to make them bail.

So, it’s this kind of a thing. You’re like, ‘At what point do I tell them?’ And I think that’s what she and Coran are struggling through. They’re not trying to be villainous in any way, but they know they’re at a disadvantage. They don’t have a ton of people. The Alteans are gone. And they just happened to find these pilots, that happen to bond with these lions. They don’t want to risk losing that by telling them too much, too soon.

JDS: I think she’s, on some level, coming to terms with the truth herself and how that all plays out in front of everybody else. I think for her it’s a difficult emotional journey, but when you really think about it, she’s got a variation on the old Obi-Wan Kenobi problem. There’s a bit of a grey area back there. It’s not all good and bad.

LM: And also just the fact that it is 10,000 years for the galaxy, for the universe, but for her it’s practically yesterday. So, it might be just something that she’s not necessarily ready to talk about.

We also discovered in season 2 that Haggar is not Galran, as many of us assumed, but is actually Altean. Does this potentially open the doors for other Alteans having survived the genocide?

JDS: I mean, I think it’s a fair assumption. It’s a neat reveal because I think it was all sort of tying with the idea that she had kind of had more of a black and white view of Altea and the Galra. And this sort of flipped the entire script on her. I think if people are asking the question, the door is definitely open. Without giving any spoilery spoilers, we’re neither confirming nor denying whether there’s more Alteans.

That theme of identity and family played heavily into season 2. Not only with Shiro’s struggle as one of two pilots of the Black Lion, but also Keith’s discovery that he was part-Galran. Will Keith be at all tempted to search for information on his mother, or other members of his Galran blood family, or is he completely secure in the Paladins being his family now?

LM: You know, I think it’s a little bit of both. I think there are certain people out there, if you’re dealing with the situation where you find out later in life that you have family out there, you’re definitely going to be tempted to look for them. But you’re not going to just throw away the family that you have to do so. We’ve opened that door, we look forward to possibly expanding on it later down the line. But, for now, they still have a pretty important thing that they have to take care of and he can’t just turn his back on it yet.

JDS: And I think there was something too, within the body of that episode, when Keith did find out that he was able to unlock the blade. I think him letting go of that and accepting the Paladins as family, and accepting the situation, is more important than his personal gain. I think that allowed the blade to kind of open up and allow him to accept his position in this bigger scheme.

LM: He’s not going to do anything out of selfish want any more. He knows what needs to come first before he goes and pursues his own interests.

That discovery also caused some friction between Allura and Keith when she learned about Keith’s heritage. They seemed to reach an accord by the end of the season, but, understandably, Allura has some complicated feelings when it comes to the Galra. Is that friction truly resolved? Or will we see it rear its head again?

LM: I think we’ve given Allura her journey. She started with a very black and white view of good and bad. Galra and Altea. And now we’ve shown she went through that personal internal process with Keith, where she was unsure how to handle it at first, but then she ultimately came to that realization, which is that it’s not black and white. It’s grey.

And by the end of the season we see her working alongside Kolivan and Antok, going in to fight the Galra. So I think she’s kind of come to terms with it now. She understands what the bigger picture is. She understands that not all Galra are bad, and that includes Keith.

JDS: Yeah, and I think just, you know, purely from just a visual standpoint, it was neat to see her working alongside two Galra agents. And then that revelation that the big bad that she was fighting was Altean and that just solidifies it.

On the next page: The rise of Lotor, Lance’s insecurities and searching for a new leader