Before Pidge became the Green Paladin, she was known as Katie Holt, and both her father and brother were members of the Galaxy Garrison who were sent to Kerberos as the first humans to travel to the edge of the solar system, along with Shiro. Five months after launch, the Galaxy Garrison broadcast that the Kerberos crew had gone missing and were all presumed dead due to a pilot error. Katie refused to accept this as truth and hacked into the Garrison's computer systems at least twice, learning that there was no sign of a crash on Kerberos. Garrison Commander Iverson caught her in his office and threatened to charge her with treason; instead, he had Katie banned from the Garrison. She vowed to never stop searching for the truth.
In Season One[]
The Rise of Voltron[]
In order to uncover the truth of her family's fate, Katie disguises herself as a male cadet under the name "Pidge Gunderson" and enters the Garrison with her new identity, assigned to Lance and Hunk's team as a communications specialist cadet. Iverson and the other Garrison personnel do not notice any anomalies. With her own personal goals in mind, Pidge does not bond well with her team and spends much of her time alone studying the edge of the solar system with her personally-built equipment. Her equipment begins picking up alien radio chatter that keeps repeating one word: "Voltron". One night, Lance and Hunk sneak out during curfew and see Pidge doing the same. They follow "him" to the roof of the Garrison building where Pidge admits to what she has been doing all this time, yet does not reveal any information about her relation to the Kerberos mission or her true identity. They do not believe her claims that aliens exist, but a fiery object suddenly appears in the sky and crashes into Earth nearby. It is an alien ship containing Shiro. Pidge instantly recognizes the ship as as such, and as Galra. She then insists that they go investigate, to which Lance agrees.