Do you know why everyone keeps predicting that Lance is gonna die?
First one: IIRC, Shada once made a joke of “Well, Lance dies at one point, so, that’s gonna be fun,” which I pretty much always took as some kind of space antics going down and Lance is not, in fact, going to pull a GoLion Shirogane. Because listen, there is no way in hell they’d drop a dramatic spoiler like that.
Second one: because, and I’m gonna be salty here, people love to watch Lance suffer. I can’t tell you how many people have described Lance on a downward spiral, getting more insecure and more hurt and not smiling or laughing any more when in actuality we’re seeing him growing, gaining confidence, hurdling things that would have emotionally absolutely sunk him before.
Lance is moving beyond the rivalry, and he was never the type to stew over his own issues- as early as s1e4 his response to feeling homesick was to talk to Coran about it and since then, he’s been more articulate and conversational about his feelings, and, those talks have ended well, even if they don’t resolve everything, because, they don’t have to.
The feeling I get is that segments of the fandom, more than they’re having trouble seeing Lance as a person growing in confidence and making positive strides, don’t want to. They don’t want to see him climbing higher and feeling better because for them, Lance’s essential role is to be the wounded, broken victim to be healed by Keith/Shiro/Lotor/somebody’s loving embrace.
Part of it is a perceptive bias in that Lance is very much a support role. He’s very naturally inclined to propping up others. I think that it really bothers me when Lance’s conversation with Keith is taken as just an exercise in insecurity, when it is actually, I think, a powerful statement of Lance’s values: “I don’t want to hold myself up as important at the expense of either you, Shiro, or Allura. I want you to be happy and I’m not afraid to take a back seat if that’s what it takes, because this isn’t a participation game and I’m not entitled to be Special Chosen Boy.”
And Lance is emotional! He’s someone with a lot of feelings, and very heartfelt. But that’s also Lance’s element. Water is something overwhelmingly thematically conflated with the realm of emotions, and for Lance, it’s something that ties him to Earth, and his home- Earth compared to most of the other planets in VLD has vast oceans, and the home Lance misses was right on the beach, on an island.
It creates this visual of Lance, with all of his positive, warm memories of home, as someone who was cradled and beloved by the ocean.
Saying Lance is going to fall prey to emotional turmoil and come apart at the seams is like saying a fish is going to drown. Lance is one of the most stable members of the team, that’s why he’s a leg. Even moving to Red, the main thing he’s done is work to help Keith navigate his own wild, turbulent emotions.
Because if you want to look at people who are prone to leaving their feelings to fester, that’s Keith and Shiro. Keith is the one who’s carrying deep-seated, old emotional wounds and a lot more raw nerves than he realizes, and Shiro’s the one who doesn’t take his own sound psychological advice.
Lance? Lance takes his own advice. When Lance has a bad feeling he finds someone and talks about it. S2e11 showed us that Lance’s audience doesn’t even have to be really good, they can be literally a dog, and Lance will have meaningful conversations with them as a surrogate.
Saying “oh, no, will Lance be able to deal with this emotional conflict?” is like saying “oh, no, will Hunk be able to lift this heavy thing?” Like. Yeah, there is a possibility they could be overwhelmed, but, they’re probably better suited to deal with it than almost anybody else on the team.
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