okay, it took a while but I'm back and my thoughts are Collected and I'm ready to share them. it's a lot longer than I expected so I apologise. anyway,
first of all I'm gonna say that I don't really think keith needed a biological family in the show. the biggest theme the show had going was that it was a found family story, and that all of these people who are pulled away from the worlds and homes they know can make a new home in each other. and keith, a character who canonically grew up without a family, arguably needed this found one most. however, I also don't think that a sibling plot for these two would necessarily be a plotline for keith. rather, it would be mostly in the interest of axca's character arc instead.
i also think that voltron handled keith's childhood trauma very poorly. trauma will not go away just because the person who abandoned you comes back and says "my bad." and beyond that, making an entire storyline revolve around keith being isolated from his found family and essentially trapped on a moving object with the woman who left him for two years solely so they didn't have to actually write any closure or healing makes me mad. let krolia's actions have consequences. (it would also have made krolia an infinitely more interesting character if everything wasn't forgiven and forgotten right away.)
one last thing before we get properly started: this is not supposed to be some kind of fix-it situation. I don't believe that having keith and axca be siblings would have made the series infinitely better, but I do believe that it would have made more sense narratively and been a more interesting storyline if done right.
okay, now that that's done I'm gonna elaborate.
reason number one: they look alike. I know this is a talked-about issue, but as someone who is very into art, and specifically character design, it's something that I think about a lot. everything in character design is intentional. characters look a certain way for a reason - whether it's to indicate where they're from, what kind of life they lead, or to influence the audience's opinion on them - nothing in character design is by accident. which is why I think it's very weird that axca and keith look so similar if they are going to have no relation at all. this weirdness is made even more so when we get introduced to krolia. krolia's design is very similar to keith's, and this is on purpose - making keith take after his mother is supposed to hammer home the fact that they're related, and make the audience consider them a family. so why does axca also look very similar to krolia? it doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given that most (full) galra are quite bulky or just larger than humans in general in comparison to krolia. it would make sense for axca to have this similarity if she was also krolia's child.
[picture id: a side-by-side comparison of the faces of krolia, keith and axca respectively. krolia is a galra woman with short purple hair and purple skin, yellow eyes and is wearing what looks like a turtleneck. she has two triangular markings on her face, going inward from her jaws. keith is a human man with shoulder-length black hair and thick eyebrows. he has the same triangular marking on the right side of his face and is wearing an orange shirt. axca is a galra woman with blue-purple skin, yellow eyes and short blue hair. her hair is tied back except for a small piece falling onto the left side of her face. she is wearing armor. all three characters have the same face, jaw and nose shape, along with similar eye shapes. krolia and axca both have the same eyebrows and their eyelashes are drawn in the same way, and all three characters look annoyed. they all have similar hairstyles also, with all of them having bangs of some kind.]
number two: they're both half galra. this is not necessarily any kind of indicator, but it is a connection that they share that, if they were siblings, could easily be explained by krolia's position in the blade of marmora. not to say that I think krolia would just go around having kids with random people on every planet she crash-lands or is stationed on, but it would at least be some kind of explanation. because of the status that we learn half-galra have among the empire, the likelihood of some loyal galra soldier having a kid with someone who is not galra is not very high. therefor, axca being the child of a marmorite soldier who was left to be raised in the empire (for some unknown reason) makes a bit more sense in my brain. however, why a marmorite would want their child to be raised with the elitist ideology that they are actively fighting against I cannot fathom - krolia did believe it would be safest to leave keith on earth with his dad, but that's nowhere near the same thing as allowing your kid to be brainwashed by a totalitarian military (not that I would put it past krolia, but whatever). anyways, you can figure that part out for yourselves, that's not why I'm here.
sub-two: a second way to look at this is the idea of axca and keith actually being twins, but having been seperated at birth. this could have happened because keith passed for human and axca didn't, and is a concept that I personally think would have been very cool to explore had they made it canon. it does however make the fact that axca was raised in the empire even stranger, because why would krolia bring axca back into space with her only to drop her off on some galra-occupied planet on her way to the marmora base? again, I wouldn't entirely put it past her, but it really doesn't make any sense, especially when she could have brought her back to the base to be raised as a marmorite instead. so as much fun as it would be for keith and axca to be twins, the likelihood is very, very low.
number three: the relevance of keith's heritage. I'll be the first to admit that I'm actually a big fan of keith being half galra. I think it's an interesting piece of lore and that it makes sense narratively, especially with the flashbacks that show how krolia and keith's father were protecting the blue lion; which again ties into keith's initial pull to the lion's hiding place (beyond just being a destined paladin of voltron ofc). that being said, I do partially think it was weakly written. besides his access to the blade of marmora, finding out that keith is half galra was kind of a null point for a while in the show. the most entertaining (and insane) part to me is how he just let a bunch of strangers drug him and beat the shit out of him solely to get his ancestry.org results and leave. the plotline certainly had a direction it was created to follow, I won't deny that, but I will say that it could have been a lot juicier if we got some family drama thrown into the mix (excluding, ofc, the "trapped on a space whale with his mother" thing, since that doesn't actually do anything for a point of conflict, and is really just lazy writing). and what better family drama is there than reuniting with a long-lost sister during wartime only to not even know if you can trust her 👀?
number four: axca's character arc. from the moment axca is introduced in the show, we know her as one of lotor's generals. hell, she's literally lotor's second in command. but despite this she inevitably changes her ways, joins the coalition, and becomes one of the good guys. canonically, axca is the last general to lose trust in lotor, and the catalyst of her (and her teammates') distrust is the death (murder) of narti. now here is the thing: as interesting as this is, and as much as I appreciate axca's loyalty to her found family (no matter how toxic it was)… I can't help but think about what would have made her personal struggle with switching sides more interesting. in the show axca is the last of lotor's generals to lose faith in him (although she is the first to betray him), because as cruel as he is, lotor is part of her family. lotor and his generals are all half-galra, and they stick together because the rest of the empire treats them as a lesser breed. she has a bond with these people, and she does what lotor tells her to do out of a sense of duty. regardless of if she thinks what she's doing is right or wrong, lotor has given her a home, and she will follow his orders to show her appreciation.
now, what do you think axca's reaction would be to finding out about who her biological family is? the crux of axca's arc is her inner conflict. she owes her life to lotor, but she doesn't trust him. the generals are her family, but she doesn't feel safe among them. the empire is all she's ever known, but she doesn't even know if she agrees with their principles anymore, or if she ever did. if she was keith's sister, this would add an extra layer to that internal conflict - perhaps she learns about her relation to him on a mission of some kind, or maybe the galra have something in their dna to recognise their kin a lá into the spiderverse (I don't know, but try tell me that doesn't sound like something that voltron would come up with). or even a more sensible approach, like figuring it out based on similarities that she notices and pieces together. either way, i think it would have added a really cool layer to her arc, and to her connection to the coalition in general. obviously, though, I don't want to replace her actual journey with some new "she's a good guy because she's related to keith" thing, because that is kind of dumb and just completely misses the point of her arc entirely. that being said, there's no reason her arc couldn't have involved more layers - lots of little and big things piling up until eventually she can't stand to work on lotor's side anymore.
so, moral of the story: voltron's inability to live up to its own potential is staggering, and I will forever be disappointed that keith's galra heritage wasn't delved into more. also, the way the show treated axca was dumb. decide if you want a character to be important and stick to it please <3.
tldr; keith and axca as siblings would have been a very cool plotline in my opinion because it would have added extra layers of internal and external conflict to both the show as a whole and both of their character arcs, as well as making a lot more sense narratively than the route they actually took of ignoring axca for seasons on end only to bring her back so they can make her a weird kind-of love interest.
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