I took Allura knowing the personalities of each Pilot, after saying "The Lions Choose you" to show that she has a connection with the Lions. They helped lead these 5 through destiny, they arrived, Allura told them why it was them.
They mention that the reason she knows where they are, is because she's got a special link to them. And we saw Lance "talk" with the blue Lion all the way from Discovery to down on Arus. It's not subtle or hidden that these Lions communicate with people in a major way, and she has the strongest connection of anyone alive, which also seems bolstered by her father increasing that connection.
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On the idea of the characters being flat Archetypical recreations... I actually don't agree there. They're all easily more dependable and serious than the shows initial presentation would lead you to think. I expected Shiro to pull rank more, and be less understanding; I expected Keith to have no sense of humor, and to stay much further way from understanding Lance; I expected Pidge to shift a lot more after his family history was revealed. I was also pleasantly surprised when Allura showed how well she understood her own actions while trying to train the group in Ep 2. And so on.
I think they did a good job of presenting the usual suspects, but then diverging in their own way. It's a series that sets itself up to be a long-form work, and I think we saw a decent amount of bonding between the cast, within this first part.
I'm sure the more serious, divergent development will happen once everyone gets to make smaller, more focused groupings with each other. But I'm actually glad to not see the writers try too hard to make the characters original, in ways that would lose their defining traits. It's more groan-worthy, in the end, to push difference for the sake of difference, because then the shifts have no basis to exist, and no buildup to their decisions.
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I saw someone compare this to the Thundercats reboot, and I can say the writing already feels better than that, to me. I spent a lot of time frustrated with how utterly stupid the characters ended up being in that show; They lacked in maturity that seemed to be earned, or that you'd wish was just a part of them from the get-go. Voltron skips a lot of the Melodrama that can come from a team trying to bond, and has characters that are actively looking for solutions, rather than reasons to stay mad at each other. The biggest clashes or disagreements only lasted a few scenes, before moving on to possible solutions.
I actually find that pretty refreshing.
