One of the surprisingly few links between the Lion Force and Vehicle Team episodes of Voltron: Defender of the Universe is the familial link between Pidge, a member of the Voltron Lion Force and the pilot of Green Lion, and Chip, a member of the Voltron Vehicle Team’s Air Team, and the pilot of Rugger 4.
Because 104 episodes of Voltron: Defender of the Universe were adapted from episodes of Beast King Golion and Armored Fleet Dairugger XV, some Voltron fans believe that Voltron‘s mythos was created mostly by happenstance, as each episode was adapted. There is almost certainly a degree of truth to this notion, but if a viewer examines the episodes more closely, he or she might find more depth to the story and characters than one might expect — and perhaps more than the writers actually intended. This is certainly the case with Pidge and Chip.
“Letters from Home” establishes that Pidge and Chip are twin brothers.
LISA: Chip’s very close to his brother. Don’t forget — they’re twins.
The episode also establishes that the brothers are orphans.
LISA: Chip and Pidge were orphans as children. Their adoptive parents took them both, so they wouldn’t be parted.
Pidge, himself a highly intelligent person, considers Chip to be the smarter twin, as he indicates in a letter to Chip in the episode “Letters from Home.”
PIDGE (voice over – as if reading his own letter to Chip): You always had the brains!
Later, after Chip has joined the Voltron Vehicle Team, his teammates acknowledge and admire his intelligence. In “A Man-Made Sun,” the five-member Air Team (of which Chip is a member), and Sea Team leader Krik, are in a death trap.
JEFF: Chip, you’re the scientific whiz — any suggestions?!
Chip saves everyone, after recalling some of his and his brother’s childhood interests.
CHIP: My brother Pidge and I used to study solar power as a hobby.
At some point in their childhoods, Pidge and Chip are adopted. They meet their parents at the orphanage. Pidge recalls some of the details behind the adoption in “The Green Medusa.”
PIDGE (inner monologue): I know what it’s like… finding new parents and a new home. I was an orphan, and I remember the day my new parents came to take me away.
(Flashback to the orphanage)
WOMAN: Are you sure you’ll like living with us?
PIDGE: Yes, ma’am. I know I will.
(Present)
PIDGE (inner monologue): She was very good to me, but I always wished I’d had my own mother.
Pidge provides further details of the adoption in a letter that he writes to Chip in the episode “Letters from Home.”
PIDGE (voice over – as if reading his own letter to Chip): Remember the day at the orphanage, when Mom and Dad came to adopt me, and I said I wouldn’t go unless they took you, too? We swore we’d never be separated! Well, we’re finally separated, and I miss you.
The accompanying video, reused from “The Green Medusa,” shows only Pidge shaking the hand of his future adoptive mother.
We don’t know how old Pidge and Chip were when they became orphans. We don’t know how old they were when they were adopted. For that matter, we don’t know old they are in the “present” of the Voltron programs. In the footage from “The Green Medusa,” Pidge looks the same as he does in the “present” scenes of the program. This might suggest that Pidge and Chip were adopted no more than a few years before they joined the Voltron Force.
How are we to interpret what Pidge told Chip in the letter? Were Pidge and Chip’s future adoptive parents really planning to adopt only Pidge? Did Pidge have to put his foot down and insist that they also adopt Chip? Maybe the prospective parents had just met only Pidge, and Pidge told them up front that he and Chip must be adopted together, perhaps even before the prospective parents knew that Pidge had a brother.
In any case, how would Chip feel to be reminded, years later in a letter, that Pidge had insisted that Chip be adopted along with him? Pidge undoubtedly meant it to express how close they were to one another… but it’s also possible that the words, especially if said repeatedly over years, would make Chip feel inferior to his twin brother.
I point this out, because at the beginning of “Letters from Home,” Chip is sad because he hasn’t received a letter from his mother. (He receives the letter from Pidge at the end of the episode.) To hide this from his teammates, he goes so far as to write a fake letter that he claims is from his mother.
CHIP: Mom says, “I think of you often. We had a nice long letter from your brother Pidge today. He’s fine. I wish you and he were stationed together. Twins shouldn’t be separated. I miss you both.”
One might interpret this as more than a fake letter. It sounds like a cry for help. Maybe Chip isn’t doing well with the separation from his brother, but he perceives that Pidge is doing fine. And maybe it’s Chip who wishes he and Pidge were stationed together, especially when we learn later from Pidge’s letter that the brothers swore they’d never be separated.
In any case, Chip’s friends notice his sadness.
KRIK: Obviously his mother, for some good reason, couldn’t write to him this time around. So he felt abandoned all over again.
Chip is so distraught that he fails to join the rest of the Air Team on a mission. Later his teammate Rocky looks directly at Chip and speaks of him in the third person, with words so pointed as to suggest that Rocky knows just how to hurt his friend most. I don’t think Rocky means to be as hurtful as he comes across, since in many other episodes, he and Chip seem to be close pals, but…
ROCKY: This squirt thinks because he’s small, he gets special privileges! Well, he don’t! He’s gotta grow up and learn to be half the man his brother Pidge is!
Chip felt abandoned by his real parents, and he feels abandoned now from not having gotten a letter from his mother. He feels inferior to his twin brother, and Rocky’s words seem to confirm that belief. Ouch.
Later Chip talks about his fake letter to his friend, Lisa of the Sea Team.
CHIP: I wrote this to myself, and everybody knows it. How can a person be so dumb and live? Why didn’t she write? Maybe something bad happened to Pidge!
Chip just said, in so many words, that he doesn’t deserve to live! Then he covers it up by worrying once more about Pidge.
And how does Lisa respond?
LISA: Everything’ll be all right, Chip. You weren’t the only one who didn’t get mail. Sometimes a packet gets held up or lost. Aw, come on. You wouldn’t want your brother to see you like this, would you?
Soon afterward, a Robeast attacks, and the Voltron pilots are called to their ships.
LISA: Chip, yo you hear that? They need us. Come along. It’s not too late! What about Pidge? Wouldn’t he jump if *his* team needed him at a time like this?
CHIP: Wait up, Lisa! I’m coming! Just because I’ve been a wimp, doesn’t mean I have to stay a wimp!
LISA: You’re no wimp.
Lisa also means well, but her words seem to reinforce — twice — that Pidge is the better of the twins. And when Chip calls himself a wimp, she refutes his feelings.
I feel for the guy.
And at the end of the episode, when Chip finally gets that letter from Pidge, how does it conclude?
PIDGE (voice over – as if reading his own letter to Chip): Mostly I work with our Voltron team to defend Princess Allura and her planet from invasion. I fly the Green Lion, and I form Voltron’s left arm. I’m left-handed, you know. What part are you on your Voltron team? You oughta be the head. You always had the brains! Hey, do you think we’ll ever get to take that vacation we’ve been dreaming about for years? Well, write soon, and fill me in on everything!
Chip (in tears, reading the letter): Love, Pidge.
Although the letter doesn’t state this outright, it seems like this is the first letter that Chip has received from Pidge since they separated. Why else would Chip not know about Pidge’s mission, or which Lion Pidge pilots, and why would Pidge not know which Rugger Chip pilots?
It’s no wonder that Chip is so sad. He became an orphan. He feels that he was adopted only because Pidge insisted that Chip be adopted. He feels inferior to Pidge. His friends’ words seem to reinforce that he is inferior to Pidge. He hasn’t heard from Pidge in weeks, months, or even longer. And he hasn’t heard from his mother as he had expected.
But it gets worse. In an earlier episode, “Pidge’s Home Planet,” Pidge and Chip’s home planet is destroyed!
PIDGE: Picking up radioactive missiles heading for Planet Balto! Oh, no! That’s my home planet, Keith! It’s being attacked!
PIDGE: “My family was moving to another planet. I don’t know if they made it! Gotta go and see!
LANCE: The whole planet has been destroyed! Wiped out!
HUNK: Pidge, we’re near your village!
PIDGE: I see, but I don’t recognize it. Wait, that’s my school… my home!
PIDGE: Looks like the people escaped to another planet, but my world is sure ruined!
KEITH: At least we’re sure everybody got safely off the planet before Lotor started his dirty work.
After a battle between Lotor and Voltron, Balto explodes!
PIDGE: At least I can think of Planet Arus as my home now till I find where my family has gone. Wish I could’ve seen my back yard once more.
Later in the episode, Pidge receives welcome news from his friend and teammate.
ALLURA: When get back to Arus, I’m going to make you an honorary citizen! Then you’ll have both a new home and a new world. Okay, Pidge?
PIDGE: I’d like that.
And later, on Arus:
ALLURA: To Pidge! Now a full-fledged citizen of Planet Arua!
PIDGE (to the Space Mice): Hi, fellow citizens! This is *my* country now! I could become a duke! An earl or a baron or maybe even a knight! But gimme your honest opinion. Am I too short to be a prime minister?
Pidge might seem to be in a better state than his brother, but Pidge might not be in the best mindset either. In “The Sleeping Princess,” Prince Lotor and witch Haggar execute an elaborate plan to make Princess Allura seem to have died, so that during her funeral, they can steal her body and take her back to Planet Doom. As Lotor drives the hijacked, horse-drawn hearse, Pidge jumps onto the carriage and tries to strangle Lotor. Eventually during a skirmish, Lotor stops the hearse and holds the unconscious Allura in his arms, ready to take her away. Pidge halts their plans temporarily by revealing a grenade and pulling out its pin with his teeth!
PIDGE: Her life means more than yours or mine or anybody’s!
Lotor then puts Allura on the ground.
PIDGE: Now get out! I oughta feed you this!
Then Pidge, who is still holding the live grenade, charges at Lotor and Haggar! Hunk and Keith plead with Pidge to get rid of the grenade, but he ignores them. As Pidge reaches Lotor, Lotor leaps over Pidge’s head. Pidge is knocked backward, landing next to Allura, and the grenade flies out of his hand. Pidge places himself over Allura’s body to shield her from the coming blast. The grenade lands on the hearse and explodes!
What was Pidge thinking? Anyone in the Voltron Force would stop at nothing to protect Allura from Lotor, but… a grenade? Why did Pidge have a grenade to begin with? Was he the only person who brought a grenade to Allura’s staged funeral? And why did he pull the pin so early during the confrontation with Lotor?
Pidge usually seems like an outgoing and joyful person, but his behavior during this incident suggests that he was in a dark place. Did he feel imdebted to Allura for making him an honorary citizen of her planet? Was this culmination of his childhood as an orphan, a lengthy separation from his twin brother, and the destruction of his home planet?
Pidge and Chip weren’t the only kids in their adopted family. They also have a younger sister. Pidge mentions her in the episode “Surrender,” after he meets a young girl named Tammy, who tells Pidge that after she grows up, she wants to become a Space Explorer like Pidge and the rest of the Voltron Force.
PIDGE (inner monologue): She reminds me of my kid sister back with the Space Explorers on Planet Terra.
Even as members of the Voltron Force, Pidge and Chip seem to be minors, and they have an even younger sister who is among other Space Explorers. If we assume that Pidge and Chip are about twelve years old, how old would their younger sister be — ten? Even younger? Tammy seemed to be no older than about eight.
March 4, 2019, Update: Shannon Muir suggested to me that perhaps one or both of Pidge and Chip’s adopted parents were career Space Explorers. This might have influenced the brothers’ decision to become Space Explorers themselves, and it might explain why their sister was “with the Space Explorers” — because she was with her parents.
How are Pidge and Chip related to their sister? She is mentioned only in “Surrender.” She might not be their biological sister. She might be the biological child of Pidge and Chip’s adoptive parents — or she might also be adopted.
In “Final Victory,” Lotor has been defeated — although it’s not known for how long — and Pidge contemplates the future.
Pidge (inner monologue): Now that there’s peace in *this* part of the universe, I guess the Galaxy Alliance will be sending us out on assignment some place else. Hey, maybe they’ll call us back to join the rest of the Voltron Force! I’ll get to see my brother, Chip, again! I’m gonna write him a apace letter right away!
Aboard the Stellar Ship Explorer, Chip receives another letter.
ROCKY: Hey, Chip, looks like you got a *real* letter today!
CHIP: It’s from my brother, Pidge! He says their Voltron Force defeated all the Drule bad guys in the Danubian Galaxy. Now maybe they’ll be coming back to join us! If the Galaxy Alliance doesn’t decide to transfer them to another trouble spot.
JEFF: And if *we* don’t get sent to another galaxy! But then we expect that, because we’re all a part of Voltron, Defender of the Universe!
The twins finally re-unite in “Fleet of Doom.” We see them smiling and shaking hands, and a Space Mouse sits on a shoulder of each brother. Chip is taller than Pidge, and they don’t look exactly alike, which suggests that they are fraternal rather than identical twins.
After the events of “Fleet of Doom,” I imagine that Pidge showed his brother some of the Space Mice’s talents, which he had mentioned in his first letter to Pidge in “Letters from Home.”
PIDGE (voice over – as if reading his own letter to Chip): When we’re not flying, I spend my time training animals. You oughta see the great act I’m putting together with some very clever mice here at the Castle.
As an additional curiosity, in “A Ghost and Four Keys,” Pidge calls himself an “Earth man.”
PIDGE: Come on, you robots! You’re only a bunch of nuts and bolts! Let’s see what you can do against one little Earth man!
Why would Pidge call himself an “Earth man?” Before joining the Voltron Force, the brothers had lived on Balto. Did they live on Earth before they were adopted? Were they born on Earth? Did Pidge call himself an “Earth man” simply because he had attended the Space Academy of the Galaxy Alliance, which was headquartered on Earth? Voltron: The Third Dimension establishes Pidge to be a native of Balto, and Voltron Force establishes the same for Pidge and Chip, but that’s not necessarily true in Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
August 23, 2019, Update: I recently noticed a voiceover line of Pidge from the episode “The Little Prince.” The Voltron Force, trapped on the Omega Comet, is on its way to oblivion. A mysterious angel appears before them and offers to them the opportunity to proceed to the afterlife, sacrificing Arus to Lotor, or to return to Arus, sacrificing this opportunity to see what lies beyond. Pidge considers the alternatives:
PIDGE: Maybe I’d see my family again. No, we’ve gotta go back to Arus!
It’s unclear whether Pidge is referring to his biological parents or his adoptive parents. In “Pidge’s Home Planet,” Pidge mentions that he needs to find out where his presumably adoptive family has gone following the devastation of Balto. Maybe he subsequently learned that his adoptive family did not survive.
Pidge and Chip overcame major obstacles in their younger years, they lost their home planet, and they continue to struggle with feelings of abandonment and insecurity. But they are every bit as heroic as their bigger teammates in the Voltron Force.