okay first off i need to credit @lancesman for something they briefly mentioned in this post that got me thinking.
Lance canonically has a terrible memory. that’s a fact. he’s bad at remembering names, and writes notes on his hands to help him remember. this is mentioned on his page in the handbook:
…and in the actual show. he brings it up as advice for Allura during a coalition meeting in the first episode of season 5.
and Allura does not approve. lol.
but anyway, they make a point to show how Lance does NOT have a great memory.
specifically, he isn’t good at remembering names.
in fact, they have a whole section of the game show episode about Lance not being able to remember names. Josh, Shiro’s VA, has said that the feud episode holds a lot of foreshadowing, and it’s a general fact that all of the filler episodes contain many references to things that have already happened/will happen in the future. so i believe that everything they referenced in there was for a reason.
here, i’m just going to get into the characters whose names Lance is forced to recall. the people Lance remembers says a lot about him. since he usually can’t remember names, the ones he does must have held some significance to him. i’m probably wrong about a lot of this, but whatever, this is just for fun.
first, the spinner thingy almost lands on Kolivan, but finally stops on Antok. for each round, we see one person Lance can remember, and one person he can’t. Here, he knows who Kolivan is, but not Antok. to be fair, Antok, is pretty obscure, i don’t know why Lance would have remembered him, since they had no personal moments together. Kolivan, on the other hand, was a major leader, and they saw him often. i think this mostly serves for us to remember the BOM (Keith also drew his blade in pictation).
the next two people Lance saw were love interests and their accomplices.
Lance is unable to remember Swirn, who he spent lots of time with. he spent just as much time with Swirn as he did with Plaxum, and yet he only remembered Plaxum. as we know, Plaxum kissed Lance on his helmet after he saved the mermaid village with Hunk. so Lance is able to recall the mermaid he was a bit attracted to, but not the other one, who he spent just as much time with.
Nyma, he recognizes, but he doesn’t know who Rolo is. again, he remembered the love interest (despite being rejected pretty brutally) and not Rolo, who was literally working with Nyma and being there the whole time. the whole team remembers this one, but Lance doesn’t.
Lance remembers the aliens he crushed on, but not the other people they worked with.
the final name he recognizes, because they ran into him many times, performing alongside him during the Voltron show.
i mean, it’s pretty hard to forget Bii-Boh-Bi.
but right before this, it almost landed on Ryner.
Lance panicked, he couldn’t remember her. i’d argued that they’ve worked with Ryner and the Olkari just as much as they have with the BOM and Kolivan, yet Lance remembered Kolivan and not Ryner.
what does this show? i’m not quite sure, but i’d like to think it’s because Lance can’t let go of the BOM. Keith ran away to be with them, and although Lance didn’t know why he cared so much when Keith left, Lance has obviously thought about the BOM quite a lot, since he remembers Kolivan so much. in the coalition handbook, Lance even wrote down how much he admires Kolivan, which i thought was interesting. (but honestly, i don’t really know what’s up with this, it’s just good to note.)
anyway, this game reminds us of the characters Lance flirted with in the past, and the fact that he can’t remember names unless he has a strong connection to them. two categories specifically:
1. leaders he likes (Kolivan/Bii-Boh-Bi)
i think these two categories explain the names Lance is able to recall in the game show, and if i’m right, it also explains the two other people he remembered too.
in season 1, he remembers Shiro, a leader figure and personal hero. this fits into the first category. Shiro is Lance’s hero, and he had a strong connection to him.
but there’s one other person in the show Lance remembers. i bet you know where i’m going with this, but:
Lance remembers Keith, despite his terrible memory, and the fact that he can’t usually remember names (not even getting into the fact that it’s dark out and they’re on the top of a cliff and can’t really see Keith’s face and he hadn’t seen him for around a year).
so is Keith someone Lance looks up to, or a love interest? i think both. Lance wants to be like Keith, he modeled his DnD character after him, and always tries to be as good as him. but i think they’re also a bit of attraction there, Lance just didn’t realize it. there’s no way Lance would have immediately recalled Keith, unless Lance had studied his appearance for a significant amount of time before. and why would Lance have looked at Keith so much? he looked up to Keith, wanted to be like him, was jealous, etc.
so yeah. i think it shows a lot how quickly Lance remembers Keith in the first episode. they make a point to emphasize Lance having a bad memory, especially with names, they even chose to make a whole segment of the feud episode about it, and yet he remembers Keith right away, with no hesitation.
but idk, this was just something i wanted to get out there, take what you want from this.
