how shiro living changed the keith & lotor dynamic
Joaquim Dos Santos: [Shiro dying] was honestly going to play into the bigger Lotor picture, where Lotor, and he does it to a certain extent here, is able to recognize that this isn’t the same Voltron team that had taken down his father, that they weren’t working as a unit. That theme was going to stretch a little longer, where our crew had to figure out how to put the pieces back together.
Lauren Montgomery: And even um, you know, with the potential absence of Shiro, Keith becoming that leader, Keith being part-Galra and Lotor also being part-Galra, them both having two sides to them, that was going to be kind of a nice duality that unfortunately ended up kind of having to go away a little bit? To make room?
Joaquim Dos Santos: They kind of became — they were able to tell their story but separate from each other. They were going to be way more tied to one another.
Lauren Montgomery: But, you know. When we first got the news that we needed Shiro to be in the show, we definitely brainstormed as you do, because we want the show to be good regardless, so we’re not like, ‘Well, whatever, throw him in!’ We went back, and we put our little thinking caps on, we all did, Tim, Joaquim and I, and we’re pretty happy with the story we came up with and we think we were able to make a really good show. And actually it ended up making some interesting story things that we couldn’t have predicted, by having Shiro back in.
Joaquim Dos Santos: I think that’s the cool thing, that it brings in another dynamic. It allows us to kind of play with the idea that there doesn’t always just have to be one leader of Voltron.
— FORM PODCAST: CHANGING OF THE GUARD (on twitter)
The thing that I really love is that: I never thought that I’d be able to get the same emotional experience doing a voiceover animated show that I would out of a live TV show. But I have, on this show, on Voltron. The writing is great, the writing is so wonderful that — you’re also in this like, box, because you’re literally in a box, a booth, and you’re just talking to a microphone so you’re just by yourself and that means you can just imagine whatever you want. And it allows you to like, go to a place that — like I did ADR today where I had to redo this pivotal scene that’s coming up soon. And I cried doing it! Like not even because the performance necessarily asked for it, but because I was like, ‘Guys, this is amazing!’ The depths of where we’re going for this animated show that’s quote-unquote ‘geared towards kids’ — it’s not, it’s geared towards everybody.
STEVEN YEUN (KEITH’S VOICE ACTOR)
link replaced with working audio file
the above quote comes from around 1:32:43 in the podcast, but i recommend listening to it all! it’s a wonderful interview, and in terms of voltron specifically, he talks with admiration about the show’s themes, writing, animation, voice directing, and fan response (most of this is after the 1-hour mark)!
(as for the “pivotal scene” he mentions crying over, i’m not sure if it’s something we’ve already seen or something coming up post-S4, but how awesome is that!)
UPDATE: thanks so much to jujuebeey on instagram for getting our answer: steven cried during the recording of the S6 fight between keith and shiro!
jujuebeey Ok but I got to see Steven Yeun once again!! but this time actually got to talk to him about the last season of Voltron. And he confirmed it, he cried during the Keith and Shiro scene.
rukiahitachiin I had talked to him at Fandemic as well! I said I figured season 6 must have been challenging for him since Keith had a lot of emotional moments. He just kept saying how much fun he had recording 😂 did you directly ask him what part made him cry?? I was trying to find out as well!
jujuebeey @ rukiahitachiin Yeah! I was actually unaware of his crying incident. As we were discussing Keith's character development, Steven said something along the line of "That thing going about me crying, I did cry". I asked him which part and he said just the whole fight between Keith and Shiro.
when i first watched the S5 finale, i was instantly struck by how the white lion trials parallel the marmora trials! for brevity’s sake, i will refer to them as WL (white lion) and BoM (blade of marmora) throughout the post.
my friend @shirogane-s made a gorgeous gifset that sums up the main parallel, which is, as she says in the caption:
keith initially embodies lotor’s “i will get the results i want (i.e. victory/knowledge) or die trying” approach, but is only able to awaken his blade once he yields, which nicely mirrors allura’s success with the white lion
these three characters (keith/lotor/allura) are all fascinating foils to one another, so it makes sense that their trials would highlight exactly that!
HERITAGE
kolivan: the only way [awakening the blade] is possible is if galra blood runs through your veins.
lotor: that thing is a guardian — it will only allow worthy alteans through.
the BoM trials can be completed by those of galra blood, and the WL trials can be completed by those of altean blood.
keith goes into the BoM trials wanting to discover the secrets of his past; he has spent his entire life with a blade that he does not know the origins of, but has reason to believe is connected to his mother and to galra heritage.
lotor goes into the WL trials wanting to discover the secrets of altean alchemy; he has spent centuries searching for clues of oriande, hoping it will connect him to his altean heritage and to his mother, who possessed the same thirst for knowledge.
allura goes into the WL trials wanting to discover the secrets that her father knew and that she may have inherited: the ancient altean wisdom that allowed him to create voltron and spread peace throughout the universe, the very legacy that allura wants to continue.
CHOSEN
lotor and allura are branded with “the marks of the chosen”, altean markings that glow when deemed worthy of entering oriande. lotor is unsurprised that allura is chosen — alfor had the strongest understanding of altean alchemy — but lotor does seem surprised by his own selection. because honerva did not unlock the secrets of oriande, lotor only saw allura as a potential key. it’s plausible that haggar and lotor were given the properties of a sacred altean after honerva went through the rift, but lotor is not yet admitting that haggar and honerva could be one and the same. whether or not being chosen by the guardian is due to bloodlines, lotor and allura are both chosen. lotor says this is because some alteans are more connected to energy — more “magical” than others. this is just the first step, however; they will still have to prove their worth in the WL trials.
keith being “chosen” is not quite as magical or mystical! he is chosen by his parents to own the blade, though in its knife form; the magical and mystical part comes if he awakens the blade, transforming it. from the way antok reacts — accusing keith of stealing it — it’s clear that most BoM trials end in owning a blade that is individual to the wielder. because keith comes to the trials with a blade that used to be his mother’s and was then passed on to him from his father, he has to prove that he is worthy of being “chosen” by both the blade and his parents.
you can even argue that keith is chosen by a third person: shiro, who ends up playing a crucial role in the BoM trials, and who was himself chosen by ulaz as a fighter/leader that could help the BoM. shiro chooses keith not just as a right-hand man that will partner him to the headquarters, but as someone he trusts to take over leadership should something ever happen to him. shiro says that keith needs to work on controlling his emotions and on learning self-discipline, unaware that the BoM trials will test keith with that same mindset.
BLACK HOLE VS. WHITE HOLE
each trial is hidden: the BoM trials within a space pocket bracketed by black holes, and the WL trials within the energy of a white hole.
this is true to the fact that both trials are rooted in secrecy. the BoM’s location is only revealed because ulaz entrusted shiro with the coordinates, and the WL’s location is only revealed because allura’s power granted her access to the compass stone’s map. only two are permitted to enter the BoM headquarters, and only two are chosen by the guardian to enter oriande’s realm. in both cases, the rest of the paladins are forced to wait at the castle, without a glimpse of what could be happening — the black and white holes cause too much interference, preventing any readings.
lotor: the wise stand back from the fire; fools are burned on the pyre; the mystic becomes one with the flame; the embers and he are the same.
keith has to navigate away from being sucked into the black hole, but lotor and allura have to navigate inside the white hole. this is a mirror of the trials themselves: the BoM trials are about evading a dangerous path to focus on the destination, and the WL trials are about becoming one with energy to reach the destination.
KNOWLEDGE
as soon as the trials begin, they do not stop. keith is faced with the relentless swordsmanship of the BoM, and lotor and allura are faced with the charged attacks of the white lion.
keith and lotor rise to the challenge, but allura is quick to realize that engaging in combat is not the answer:
allura: i do not wish to fight! i come here seeking knowledge. this isn’t the way.
though allura has lost altea, she has not forgotten its culture or what she has learned from her father. alfor’s contribution to peace went beyond voltron; as coran says, they “can’t always put the fate of the universe in the hands of a giant weapon — at least, that’s what your father believed.” alteans were diplomats. the first time allura awakens her magic, it’s not through weapons, but through words. her voice reaches the balmerans as she tells them not to give up — she knows what it’s like to watch her home planet die, and will not let it happen to them.
coran: in the days of old, when alteans were given the gift of crystals from a balmera, we would repay its sacrifice by performing a ceremony. a sacred altean would re-infuse the balmera with quintessence. in this way, we had a symbiotic relationship.
allura: the galra have only been taking. it’s time we give back.
allura risks the same ceremony that her father performed, even though she’s never done it before and the scale of it may come at the cost of her own life. the ceremony isn’t about power, but about how she can use power to provide peace; and since then, this has been allura’s goal every time she has awakened her magic. her magic destroys the komar (haggar’s experiment that drains planets of quintessence), and her magic revives voltron on naxzela before haggar can bomb it. allura’s magic may be new to her, but by following her father’s footsteps in saving countless lives, she is firm about what she wants to do with her magic.
this is the wisdom that allura brings with her to the WL trials. lotor admits that none of his research can prepare them for what happens once they’re in oriande, but allura is a natural at navigating the obstacles presented by the sages. she knows that she needs to kneel and seek permission for passage and clarify that they intend no harm; that they offer up the compass stone as a gift. she also spots the teludav that transports them to the WL trials, something that lotor says only a “trained altean” would recognize.
as much as he wishes to connect to his altean heritage, lotor is not a “trained altean”. he has attempted to train himself by exploring the universe and gathering what remnants of altea that he can find, but there’s a difference between scientific theory and spiritual practise. attempts at either have been shamed as weak by zarkon — “you have altean blood running through your veins, poisoning your very being” — or outright crushed.
lotor: i envy you growing up with king alfor. i always wanted to be an explorer and learn about the universe. my father was only interested in conquering it. he once put me in charge of a planet for a year, running the quintessence mining and getting to know the local population. rather than employ the usual galran methods of subjugation, i worked alongside the leadership of the planet, learning their customs. we would only extract as much quintessence as could be replenished, and i enjoyed my time there quite a bit. when my father found out what was happening, he ordered me to destroy the planet. i refused, and he sent me away. he destroyed them all. i was powerless to stop him.
lotor does try to prioritize knowledge, just as he feels his mother once did — and if he’s going to gain a victory, it’s not going to be through the brute force and aggression that is favored by his father. he’s a fighter that survives by trapping and evading and using his surroundings; when engaged in combat, he provokes whoever is at the other end of his sword — throk, zarkon, sendak — by mocking their aggressive clawing for power and glory. when zarkon pursues him in the air with the intent to kill, lotor doesn’t fight, but escapes through harnessing the power of a sun.
because he’s been raised in galra culture rather than altean culture, it’s understandable that it’s lotor who keeps repeating that the WL trials will likely test their “worth”. when we first meet lotor, one of the first things he reveals is that rising to the galra throne is through “the honorable rite of combat”, and this is further confirmed with the ceremony of kral zera. you win by being the strongest, whether your methods are mental or physical or a combination of both.
lotor is a “trained galra”, even if he tries to rebel against that training. allura isn’t afraid to be alone during her WL trials, but lotor is out of his element when he finds himself without her, asking after her by calling her name. the landscape is an open space — there is nowhere to hide and its emptiness provides nothing to use. he can’t evade this. plus, the white lion doesn’t talk: it’s like a translucent spirit, making no sounds beyond roars and growls. there is no personality for lotor to provoke, no amount of cunning that will stop the white lion’s physical force — he can only respond to it by matching it with his own.
lotor: i will not yield! i will gain your secrets!
this is an obvious echo of keith in the BoM trials, though he’s fighting people rather than projections:
BoM: surrender the blade and the pain will cease.
keith: i won’t quit.
BoM: surrender the blade and the pain will cease.
keith: never!
this is not about glory; this is not about proving himself the strongest. keith is galra, but hasn’t grown up in the empire as lotor has, internalizing its values despite himself. this isn’t about his pride as a fighter, but as a person. if he surrenders the blade, he is surrendering his identity. if he gives up the fight, he is not being faithful to his determination to always see a goal through — to be all in.
like lotor, keith hasn’t been trained by his mother. keith is coming into his trials with the least amount of knowledge about his family, and he sees his knife as his key. how can he let them take it away? he doesn’t know the BoM’s customs and culture. he doesn’t know that these trials are not just testing his endurance against the empire’s unyielding fight, but testing his ability to know when to stop — a balance that he’s already struggled with.
coran: it’s zarkon! keith, get out of there, now! zarkon is too powerful!
keith: this is my chance to put an end to the galra empire! i have to take it!
zarkon: you fight like a galra soldier — but not for long!
unlike lotor, however, keith has a support system that has helped him try to find that balance.
keith: patience yields focus.
shiro: that really stayed with you, didn’t it?
keith: you’ve given me some good advice. if it weren’t for you, my life would have been a lot different.
shiro is right there watching the BoM trials, worrying for keith and rooting for him. he knows that keith will never quit, and he knows that keith’s emotions can overpower his focus. keith may be seeking knowledge about his galra family, but shiro is his found family from earth. they met at some point in their lives, and shiro for keith became the one person who “has never given up” on him, implying that others have given up. others have perhaps looked at keith’s fire and found the flames too dangerous or destructive, a person they don’t want to get burned by, but shiro looked at keith’s fire and helped him transform it into a light to guide both keith and others, including shiro. he believes in keith.
so, it takes him some time, but keith eventually uses “patience yields focus” in the BoM trials: he slows down and notices the escape route, throwing his knife and evading without surrendering. keith is exhausted and in pain and he desperately wants to see shiro, which is why hologram!shiro appears as a manifestation of his hopes and fears — the hopes that he will support keith, and the fears that he will reject keith. hologram!shiro tries to impart wisdom, but it’s clinical and cruel: keith is selfish, keith already has family in shiro and the paladins, and if keith doesn’t give up the knife, then keith has chosen to be alone. shiro abandoning him is the first thing to make keith hesitate, but before he can run after him, the mindscape changes to a hologram of keith’s father, who has all of the knowledge that keith is seeking.
SACRIFICE
the BoM trials and the WL trials come down to the ultimate question of “what are you willing to give up, and will you give it up?”
allura: i seek the secret of life. i give my own.
allura is willing.
keith: just take the knife! it doesn’t matter where i come from — i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.
keith is willing.
lotor: victory or death!
lotor is unwilling.
before i continue, there’s a third “trial” that feels relevant: shiro’s battle with zarkon in the astral plane.
zarkon: you have no idea how to command a weapon like this!
shiro: no one commands the black lion!
zarkon: you dare lecture me? do you think the black lion would allow such a feeble creature to pilot it? only the powerful can command it!
shiro: you’ve forgotten what’s most important between a lion and its paladin. it’s not about power. it’s about earning each other’s trust!
lotor fails his trials because he fails to realize what allura and keith do: that it’s not about being worthy of power, but about being trustworthy.
lotor doesn’t trust the white lion not to hurt him, and it’s hard to blame him. his father has targeted him with the same physical force, and would have gone to the point of killing lotor more than once. and though lotor is adamant that “that witch is not my mother”, haggar is the nearest maternal figure that he has: she has stood alongside zarkon and participated in the attempts to control lotor, albeit more psychologically than physically. she has sent out people to spy on him (military, narti, shiro); and though she shares the same blood that blocks her from the throne, haggar coldly calls lotor a “half-breed” whose altean blood quells the rights granted by his galra blood.
so, it’s understandable that lotor isn’t quick to trust people, let alone mysterious mystical lions. his team of generals came the closest in that lotor trusted them to carry out his plans, and in the end they deserted him — but only because lotor lost their trust first. cutting narti down is an example of how lotor does not like to feel powerless — like he’s losing control — and thus is not above doing whatever it takes to regain that power and control. he has manipulated the empire, the rebels, and the paladins, presenting and performing himself as trustworthy in actions and in words. but it’s likely that the white lion would have seen a manipulative stab at diplomacy such as “i come here for nothing but peace.” lotor may claim that as his aim in discovering the secrets of altean alchemy, but in reality he is still too focused on power.
it’s comparable to the triforce from the legend of zelda: three forces (power/courage/wisdom) that need to be balanced to bring peace. allura, though she also relies on power and courage, embodies wisdom; keith, though he also relies on power and wisdom, embodies courage; and lotor, though he also relies on courage and wisdom, embodies power.
allura and keith have a better hold on balancing all three, even if one can dominate; but lotor largely uses his courage and wisdom for the endgame of power, a path that his parents went down and launched an unending war.
alfor: the ore from the comet practically engineers itself. it’s frightening, in a way.
zarkon: endlessly powerful ships for the galra empire.
alfor: and an endless source of clean energy for the entire system.
*
alfor: we must exercise caution. we have no idea what is out there.
honerva: the ancients thought that lightning was shot from the bows of the gods until science proved otherwise. we must always push into dangerous territory in pursuit of knowledge.
*
honerva: quintessence is so much more than you can understand. it is life itself.
alfor: you’ve gone too far.
honerva: you’ve always been a coward! you wish to close off our gateway to enlightenment — we should be expanding it!
zarkon: if we use voltron, we can enlarge the opening to the other reality!
alfor: it’s madness! this prolonged exposure to quintessence has poisoned your minds.
zarkon: we’ve only scratched the surface. we can rule this entire universe! we can live forever! all of us!
alfor: i cannot be a part of this.
zarkon: you are only one part of voltron, alfor. you cannot hold us all back because of your fear! alfor, i lead the paladins! i command you!
lotor doesn’t want to be his father, but emulating his mother doesn’t mean he isn’t seeking power. like honerva, lotor seeks power through knowledge; and like honerva, lotor sees going through the rift as how to get that power. plan A was reaping the rift’s quintessence by building ships from the transreality comet. when that failed, lotor went for plan B: allura and voltron — much like how zarkon and honerva manipulated alfor and voltron.
shiro: how do you get an empire that’s only known violence for thousands of years to put down their weapons?
lotor: by providing them with the very thing they’re fighting for: quintessence. unlimited amounts of it. and allura, you are the key to getting it.
*
lotor: in order to transition the galra empire to a peaceful existence, i need to open up a pathway to the quintessence field. once my people have access to unlimited energy, the old ways of the empire will be behind them.
allura: if this voyage is successful, the universe will finally be on the path to peace.
again, lotor is certainly saying all of the right things — but, well, “the masses are easily manipulated.” he must know that it’s not that simple: unlimited quintessence may stop the hunt for power, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop the hunger for it. the galra spirit won’t change from power-hungry to peace-seeking overnight — the galra can still use unlimited quintessence for physical force and violent feats. when keith and krolia reunite, it’s on a mission to destroy a superweapon built from undocumented quintessence that is unparalleled in its power; and lotor says himself that haggar is constantly seeking altean magical knowledge to “pervert” for her own power.
allura: your mother was honerva? the honerva that discovered the rift on planet daibazaal? then you’re — half-altean!
lotor: yes. it was something the galra considered a weakness, but i considered it a strength. the union between zarkon and honerva sparked a technological revolution within the empire. even back then, altean culture was remarkably advanced. the kinds of experiments she was conducting — she advanced science by eons.
lotor is trying to gain power in the Altean (Honerva) Way that he sees as superior to the Galra (Zarkon) Way. given how much lotor has had to fight for his own survival, it’s not unreasonable that he thinks he needs power to do so — specifically more power than zarkon, who lotor has felt powerless against before. when the white lion attacks him, lotor kills it — “victory or death!” — out of survival instincts; he isn’t about to sacrifice his own life that easily, not after centuries of fighting for it and for the dawn of a new age that honors his (and his mother’s) vision of power.
lotor: i will light the flame. not for defeating my father, and not even for being the strongest galra here. but because i did something no one else could do: i returned the black lion to the galra!
lotor may try to distance himself from his father, but at his core, he too sees voltron as a source of power to command. he displays himself as having ownership over the black lion, which is why he doesn’t succeed with the white lion. it never once occurs to him that it’s about teamwork and trust, a sincere emotional bond — “political allyship for one’s own gain” is not going to cut it.
keith’s BoM trials are about forming an alliance between voltron and marmora, but keith succeeds where lotor fails because he puts the mission above himself. the mindscape is on the cusp of unlocking every secret kept from keith, but he’s distracted by the galra attacking earth and people screaming and the red lion waiting for him.
keith: dad, i’m sorry, i gotta go. there’s people that need me out there.
keith’s father: don’t you want to know where you came from? your mother gave [the knife] to me.
keith: mom?
keith’s father: she’ll be here soon.
keith: you gotta tell me, dad. i have to know! where did the knife come from? what does it mean?
keith’s father: your mother is almost here. she’ll tell you everything.
keith: i can’t wait around anymore, i have to go!
keith’s father: if you walk out that door, you’ll never find out who you are.
keith: goodbye, dad.
arguably, the first lion “trial” is between keith and red: the red lion requires its paladin to prove that they’re worthy of respect, and keith has to fight off galra and get thrown out into space for the red lion to believe that he’s “all in”, swooping in to save him; a pattern that continues after keith finds out that he’s able to connect to red from long distances. keith is a paladin of voltron: he knows that working together with your lion is what will save the universe. he would never strike it as lotor did to the white lion, and the red lion would never let anyone strike keith.
shiro: [the red lion] has a link with keith. it knows when he’s in danger — it’s coming for him!
shiro joins red in fighting the BoM, only letting go of a wounded keith to defend him against kolivan and antok, who demand that keith give up his blade because he “failed to awaken it.” keith stops them as shiro and antok clash, voicing what he decided in the mindscape: he knows who he is and what he wants to do. what matters is saving the universe, and they need to work together to make that happen. if he has to give up his knife for that teamwork and trust, then he’s willing to make that sacrifice.
this is what awakens keith’s blade, and it is probably what has awakened other blades: the willingness of the BoM member to put the mission above anything that could hold them back. emotions are a “luxury” they cannot afford; kolivan doesn’t call emotions a “weakness” because he recognizes emotions for what they are: powerful feelings that can make someone selfish instead of selfless, upholding their own life above the lives that the galra have been threatening for several millennia. if they want to defeat the empire, then they can’t indulge in emotions that risk outweighing that mission.
krolia tells keith that she left keith once and will never leave him again — she, too, had chosen between family and mission, and now wants to meet in the middle. in retrospect, this sheds a light on how keith has always struggled with that balance: at one moment, he is scolding pidge for wanting to find her family over forming voltron; at the next moment, he is willing to give up on voltron because he wants to find shiro, his found family.
allura: keith — i know exactly how you feel. but our mission is bigger than any one individual. even those who are … completely irreplaceable.
keith: i know you’re right. it’s time to figure out how to reform voltron.
the black lion trusts keith in replacing shiro because shiro trusted keith in replacing shiro. keith has no visions of the black lion granting him power and glory. he only sees that he is filling the seat of someone he desperately wants back, and keith talks to black as though the lion and shiro are one soul: “i know you wanted this for me, shiro. but i’m not you. i can’t lead them like you. this one’s for you, shiro.”
when shiro does come back, keith sacrifices his own place on the team to make shiro black paladin again. rather than kick lance out of red and allura out of blue, keith turns his efforts towards somewhere he knows he can play a role: the BoM. he makes this sacrifice no matter how much he may miss the lions and the paladins and the teamwork and trust that they have begun to build together. as always, the mission comes first.
and allura isn’t wrong: if anyone knows how keith feels, it’s her.
allura: i don’t know if we should run to preserve what we have, or stay and risk everything. i want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone. i know what you would do.
hologram!alfor: i scattered the lions to keep them out of zarkon’s hands. you urged me to keep them and fight, but, for the greater good of protecting the universe, i chose to hide them.
allura: i think i understand.
hologram!alfor: no, daughter, you were right. i made a terrible mistake, one that cost the universe countless lives. forming voltron is the only way to stop zarkon. you must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.
allura doesn’t have the luxury of putting her grief above the mission. she has lost everything irreplaceable to her — her father, her planet, her people — and yet she doesn’t falter in putting herself out there to ensure that others don’t experience her pain. she ruthlessly trains the new paladins not out of a power trip, but because she understands the urgency of war; and it’s the same when shiro disappears and she has to push keith to step up to the plate, just as she had to for alfor.
it’s hard for her to let go of those leadership instincts when it’s her turn to pilot a lion. she’s used to flying the castle, creating wormholes, and calling the shots for the entire team — and while she doesn’t lose that role completely, it takes a trial and error period to realize that she can’t command blue as she would the castle. she knows that bonding with a lion is important, but as happened to lotor, it’s one thing to know something in theory, and a whole other thing to act it out in practise.
allura: nothing works! i’ve tried asking you nicely, and i’ve tried commanding you! what do you want from me? i can’t do this. everyone depends on me. the universe depends on me, but i can’t control everything. i need your help. guide me. i can’t do it alone.
allura accepts that she can’t fight on her own, and this may be why the blue lion accepts allura where the red lion didn’t. she did ask red for help, but because alfor piloted red, allura put double the pressure on herself in asking red to accept her: not because she wanted the glory of being her father, but because some part of her felt she could only follow alfor’s footsteps if she mirrored him in every way imaginable.
she still sometimes feels that pressure, fearing that she’ll never be the alchemist her father was, but by opening herself up to the support of others as she did to blue, the journey has become less lonely. the universe doesn’t rest on her shoulders alone. the WL trials again ask her to consider the balance between power and peace, and allura accepts the white lion’s energy into her heart — she sacrifices command and control. it’s about working together and trusting each other. how else will they save the universe from a constant cycle of fighting?
allura has the same awakening in accepting the help of the galra: the BoM, keith, and lotor.
allura to keith: i’m so sorry i misjudged you. you’ve proven it’s not what’s in your blood — it’s who you are that counts.
allura to lotor: what you did was for the greater good. and for many of us, proof of your intentions for peace.
despite her trauma, allura’s perspective on galra can be changed if they prove that they are fighting for the same cause that she is. it’s an extreme emotional risk — the first time she had a galra teammate, they betrayed voltron and killed her father and destroyed her entire culture. this cannot be understated, nor can the amount of strength it takes to put herself on the line for that vulnerability again and again. but from where allura’s standing, keith and lotor have proven — again and again — that they believe in voltron’s mission.
as of S5, allura and keith have a relationship of genuine trust. it’s been tested, such as when keith began prioritizing BoM missions over being the pilot of the black lion; but at the end of the day, keith has always done whatever it takes to fight the empire. they were both willing to leave the castle to find out if zarkon was tracking them, sacrificing their own safety for the safety of their team and the entire universe. keith was willing to put action over caution and infiltrate central command to finally defeat zarkon, earning allura’s turnaround in trusting him. they were both willing to sacrifice the chance to stay with their departed fathers, letting go of their holograms to maintain their mission. and allura was willing to reach out and offer keith a place in her “new family”, knowing what it is to lose your biological family and have to rebuild and reconnect.
keith doesn’t fault allura when she falls for lotor’s trap with the altean distress signal, and allura expresses condolences when keith loses regris, partially due to keith’s own risk-taking. keith has allura’s blessing in joining the BoM, knowing he’ll make them proud — and she acknowledges that the BoM have been instrumental in the fight against zarkon, a huge leap from her initial distrust in them and criticism of their caution. though they’ve parted ways for now, allura is similar to shiro in that she has made it clear that she wants keith to feel he can come back to them; that the team has faith and trust in him.
as of S5, allura and lotor have a relationship of tentative trust — “tentative” because it’s genuine on allura’s end, but lotor’s end is debatable. fandom seems 50/50 on it, which speaks to lotor’s complexity and how you can build a case for both. but these are the facts: lotor has communicated faith and support in allura’s abilities, urging her to be the person who can carry on the tradition of altean alchemy. honerva and alfor were alchemists, and zarkon and alfor were friends that fought alongside each other. can’t lotor and allura be the same, and rewrite their wrongs? everything lotor says is rooted in truth, even if there is a part of him that’s bending it to get the results that he wants. he and allura are both genuinely nostalgic for a time that no longer exists — as the new rulers of their royal families, they can understand each other in a way that few others can.
we can assume that lotor is using altean nostalgia for an ulterior motive, just as he used the altean distress signal to appeal to allura and get him the transreality comet. what he’s doing now is a more personal version of that plan, becoming friends with her and earning her trust and confidence. he says that he cannot revive altean alchemy without her, and allura boomerangs the same sentiment back at him: “i’m glad you’re here to help me now. i never would have gotten here without you.” this comes after lotor confides in her his reasons for being exiled, and his genuine despair at how he was powerless to stop zarkon. when allura later repeats that she couldn’t have unlocked her altean alchemy without lotor, he smooths over his frown with a smile and says that oriande was for her and not for him — she is the true alchemist.
alfor was once blinded by his compassion for zarkon, and allura may have that same blindness in her compassion — and empathy — for lotor. but the potential is there for them to have a future relationship without ulterior motives; to someday join together and restore altean culture and bring peace to the universe.
what about keith and lotor to complete the trifecta? as of S5, they have what i call a “wild card” relationship, and one of distant trust. it’s unclear if they’ve properly met in terms of being formally introduced — keith knows who lotor is, but lotor doesn’t seem to have been told that a former paladin (and one that he fought) is now a part-galra member of the BoM. they used to collide in battle when keith flew black and lotor was emperor pro tem; keith had immense distrust in lotor, doing everything he could to thwart him and his traps. but more recently, they’ve collided while saving each other — lotor unaware of who he was saving, but keith completely aware and doing the exact opposite of how he’d approached lotor before. lotor saved keith and the universe for his own political gain, but keith saved lotor because he now trusted him to be someone who could change the political tide.
i said this in my keitor meta for S3 + S4, but lotor saving keith had the potential to make keith do a turnaround in his trust of lotor, and S5 confirms this even if they never met afterwards. keith is still with the BoM, and their contact with lotor is indirect — lotor gives the paladins intel to pass on to kolivan, and kolivan reports back that it’s trustworthy. communications appear to stop after lotor kills zarkon, which is why keith doesn’t hear from them about kral zera — but it’s kral zera where he and lotor collide again, and it’s kral zera where keith saves lotor.
keith and lotor’s potential dynamic is a “wild card” because unlike their dynamics with allura, it’s galra-on-galra. prior to S5, many of us assumed that keith was a prime candidate for manipulation — he was part-galra like lotor and isolated from his former teammates like lotor, and if lotor wanted to deepen that wedge, he could have appealed to keith’s desire to belong by offering him a place alongside him. but as of S5, the tables have turned: it’s increasingly clear that keith is the galra that lotor pretends to be — that lotor finds it hard to be as the emperor’s son. keith refuses to be a prisoner of his own blood, knowing that galra blood doesn’t automatically make one loyal to zarkon or “just like” zarkon. he works with the BoM to take the empire down from the inside, and not just to shift its methods of power as lotor is doing with altean methods, but to dismantle its power and restore stability — hence the plan to blow up kral zera as the symbol of the first planet the galra conquered, along with the galra’s currently powerful leaders.
keith aborts that mission when shiro and lotor arrive — and the fact that keith lumps in lotor with shiro as “someone i want to save” is huge. but it’s logical: keith’s trust in lotor shifted once lotor executed the exact action keith was planning (destroying haggar’s bomb). seeing shiro ally himself with lotor is going to deepen that trust, even if keith is only viewing things from a distance. lotor is like a “cool/calculating” version of shiro: both have been pursued by zarkon for taking his former thrones (the empire’s + the black lion’s), and zarkon has mocked shiro and lotor for being “weaker” than him, stopping at nothing to eliminate them. and of course, both have been pursued by haggar and are currently being pursued by haggar, who through her magic tries to control them for her own agenda for power. lotor and shiro deal with this trauma by masking it with composure, and they make decisive and difficult choices to keep on surviving. keith has never lost trust in shiro, so it’s not out of the question that he’d trust lotor if he got to know him more personally — unless he saw the “cool/calculating” personality for what he used to see: someone cunning and chaotic. this may depend on how lotor responds to operation kuron: eliminate shiro like he eliminated narti, or help him and empathize with him (and therefore maintain keith’s trust)?
on the flipside, keith is like a “fiery/explosive” version of acxa — lotor’s former, and most devoted, general. less is known about acxa’s backstory, but since her introduction in the weblum, she has been mysteriously honorbound. keith says she’s “just like the rest of them” after she steals the scaultrite, but acxa remains different in that she doesn’t kill keith once she gets what she needs (and she pays her debt by saving him at kral zera). she reminds her teammates not to kill anyone, but to get the intel they need and get out. like keith, she encourages her team to stay efficient and dedicated to the mission, and like keith, she is intensely loyal to her leader; she wants to trust that he’ll protect them, and she needs to be convinced to overthrow him for her own gain. even then, her decision to do so is “for narti”, and she can’t help but insist that “no one is replacing lotor” when zethrid and ezor muse about usurping him as emperor (very keith-esque in how he responded to anyone replacing shiro as black paladin). what separates them is that acxa maintains her composure where keith’s emotions are often crystal clear; but they have both served as trusted right-hands to their leaders, and so it again makes you wonder what would happen if there was a mix-and-match: lotor meeting keith, a foil to acxa, and keith meeting lotor, a foil to shiro.
if allura represents the altean side of lotor that he on some level wishes he could embody, then keith may become that for lotor’s galra side. his WL trials demonstrate that he still has a long way to go on the path to inner peace and universal peace; allura and keith are already moving ahead.
as of S5, allura is connecting more and more to alfor and her altean heritage. as of S5, keith has just been given the opportunity to connect to krolia and his galra heritage. but as of S5, lotor has been denied the secrets of oriande and seems to be in denial about haggar being honerva — if he’s admitted it to himself at all, he sees them as separate entities. discovering that haggar is essentially an “amplified” version of the mother he holds on a pedestal could be something that destroys him, or it could be something that allows him to finally move forward and balance these two important sides of himself.
there’s nothing inherently evil about seeking victory or seeking knowledge — it’s about why and how you seek those things, and allura and keith are proof that choosing the honorable path is possible. for inner peace, they could use a little of lotor’s “selfishness” (not sacrificing their own emotions), and for universal peace, lotor could use a little of their “selflessness” (not sacrificing the safety of others). even if you theorize that lotor wants to go through the rift for “selfless" reasons — quintessence to uncorrupt haggar, as his parents may have wanted quintessence to save lotor’s life — there is still an element of selfishness in seeking power that can save one person at the cost of endangering the entire universe.
whatever happens in S6 and beyond, it’s safe to say that keith/lotor/allura all have compelling arcs about the trials of repeating history + shaping their own history. i’m super excited to see how these arcs continue to parallel and/or intersect!
if you follow me on twitter, you know that i love nothing more than geeking out about the parallels & potential between keith & lotor — but it’s time for me to bring that circus to tumblr town! it delights me that fandom is enjoying all of the ways that they mirror each other (even the voice actors!), so i hope you enjoy my breakdown of that mirroring throughout S3 + S4!
LEFT TO LEAD
keith vs. lotor is immediately apparent through both being new leaders: keith of team voltron, and lotor of the galra empire. but their circumstances could not be more different.
keith: i know you wanted this for me, shiro. but i’m not you. i can’t lead them like you.
lotor: i am the leader! but i am not my father.
how does keith become leader? shiro chooses him. as soon as shiro considers the prospect that he may not make it in this war, he turns to keith as someone he trusts to be his successor. keith denies that anything could happen to shiro and is devastated when it does, returning to the battle debris to search for him. shiro is the one person who has never given up on him; through giving keith advice and support, he has made keith’s life different for the better. keith has already lost his biological family, and now he’s lost shiro (his found family) for the second time. he says “please, no” when the black lion echoes shiro’s choice: being the leader means that shiro is gone, and keith refuses to see him as replaceable. team voltron attempts to comfort him in his grief, agreeing that shiro is indeed irreplaceable — but keith has to step up to save the universe.
how does lotor become leader? haggar chooses him; zarkon does not. when haggar says “summon prince lotor”, it is the first time we’re made aware that lotor even exists. zarkon never mentions him beforehand, let alone out of trust or support. he speaks with more approval of soldiers like sendak, who zarkon personally trained and thus does not doubt sendak’s loyalty. it speaks volumes that haggar only calls upon lotor when zarkon is incapable of rejecting that choice. lotor is chosen because he is heir to the throne — not because of qualities seen in him by his predecessor. this lack of personal relationship does not go unnoticed by commander throk, who questions why lotor isn’t at his father’s bedside, and complains that lotor has been chosen over followers more loyal to zarkon.
lotor: my father built our empire on the bones of his enemies. but the time has come to change the old ways, and inspire not fear from those we rule, but loyalty. we must not waste our energy fighting to keep our subjects down, but rather multiply it by allowing those worthy to rise and join our ranks. the universe can no longer doubt our strength! each ally gained only makes us stronger, while those who continue to stand against us will be crushed.
keith: we have to keep trying. we may have come here fragmented and disorganized, but the only way we’re getting out of here is if we work together. this is our team. shiro believed in us! we have to believe in ourselves. who’s with me?
lotor’s first leader speech is a political one. as he privately reveals to his generals, it is a tool to manipulate the masses — and, as he privately reveals to haggar, nothing angers lotor like being compared to his father. his first leader speech is objectively about inspiring loyalty rather than fear in allies; but, upon closer look, he is shining a light on how zarkon treats his own people. Zarkon’s Way demands unity through power and intimidation. by showing mercy to throk, lotor is displaying His Way: that unlike his father, he won’t threaten them or send them to their deaths if they don’t gain a victory. he is displaying the power of unity through equality; he is displaying “i am not my father.”
keith’s first leader speech is an emotional one. he has tried leading His Way, but His Way ends up putting team voltron in danger. he fixes it by emulating shiro: his first leader speech is not only thematically similar to shiro’s first leader speech (don’t give up, believe in yourselves, let’s work together), but repeats some of shiro’s own words. keith knows that Shiro’s Way works — that team voltron feels comforted and encouraged by it. that he feels comforted and encouraged by it. he knows he can’t be shiro, but even when keith does things His Way, he never undermines shiro’s leadership. he relies on shiro’s leadership to make everyone feel safe and united under a common goal.
EXILE & EXPULSION
these differences in keith + shiro and lotor + zarkon may have been formative for two pre-series events. the details are unclear (as of S3 + S4), but we know this: at some point, keith was expelled from the garrison; at some point, lotor was exiled from the empire.
given the way that keith reacts to shiro’s second disappearance, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that shiro’s first disappearance destabilized him. commander iverson claims that keith flunked out due to “discipline issues” — perhaps explosive behavior unfit for what is partially a military academy; or, perhaps keith’s supposed lack of discipline involved doubting that the kerberos mission failed due to pilot error — perhaps, much like pidge, keith challenged the garrison’s authority.
given the way that zarkon reacts to his authority being challenged, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that lotor was exiled for what zarkon would deem “discipline issues” — that lotor may have proposed alternate methods or priorities, or poked at the truth of zarkon’s past, perhaps wanting more information about his mother or the war’s events.
whatever instigated their removal, keith and lotor shared something in common: they did not wallow. they discovered a new purpose.
keith discovered the blue lion’s energy, and gathered research to track it down and examine its surroundings. lotor discovered another transreality comet, and gathered his team of generals to help him develop his plans — like retrieving scaultrite from the belly of a weblum.
the main difference is that until shiro returned to earth and team voltron formed, keith acted alone; lotor had like-minded people and acted as their leader.
MISSING (& MYSTERIOUS) MOTHER
as far as lotor knows, his altean genes come from his mother; and as far as lotor knows, his mother is honerva, a long-dead altean alchemist. he does not appear to know that honerva and haggar are the same person. he is scornful of haggar, but respectful of honerva, speaking of her with pride: “no one comprehended that the experiments of my mother honerva could not be undone.”
as far as keith knows, his galra genes come from his mother; and as far as keith knows, his mother left behind a marmora blade to be passed on to keith from his father. keith is given the chance to hear more, but decides against it. saving the universe is more important than the secrets of his history and identity.
lotor, by contrast, seems highly knowledgeable of altean history, even if there are still secrets about his identity. he has done his research on altean distress signals, teludav technology, voltron, king alfor, and of course, the rift and transreality comets. he indulges in this side of himself that he sees as coming from honerva — which makes sense when you remember how much he doesn’t want to be like zarkon, who is all about physical over mental strength.
lotor knows that the empire has prejudice towards people who aren’t pure galra, though his altean genes appear to be unknown to the empire. nevertheless, the empire knows that lotor’s generals are half-galra. lotor may not be able to find other half-alteans, but he and his generals remain bonded by being half-galra in an empire that views galra as the superior race. rather than feel inferior due to his altean genes, lotor seems to view them as strengths that set him apart from his father; he is not only scientific like honerva, but diplomatic like king alfor and princess allura.
keith’s relationship with being part-galra is difficult in a different way. as a paladin of voltron, he is on the side of the war that rightfully fears the galra. they have enslaved and colonized a countless number of planets, and committed the genocide of altea. allura’s reaction to keith being part-galra — and to the idea of allyship with the blade of marmora — is not because she views altean as the superior race, but because her fellow alteans were destroyed by the galra.
even after that tension is resolved and the marmora members become trusted allies, keith remains the only part-galra member of team voltron. he has no one to relate to, and while he eventually continues his marmora training, he has yet to explore the mystery of his mother. on top of that, keith often feels alienated since his fighting style + speed are sometimes seen as weaknesses to the group; but many galra would consider them strengths.
VICTORY OR DEATH VS. KNOWLEDGE OR DEATH
as seen in his marmora trials, keith tends to be a fighter that “won’t quit” — a determination that embodies the Galra Way (Zarkon’s Way) of victory or death. zarkon even tells him that he fights like a galra soldier!
but several galra, particularly those in rebellion against zarkon, propose a different path: to not be so focused on your goal that you would needlessly die for it — to know when to pull back. we even see it from those loyal to zarkon, ranging from soldiers unwilling to lose their crew to soldiers definitely willing to lose their crew, but unwilling to lose their own lives. the galra are not a hivemind, but Zarkon’s Way certainly asks for them to be.
keith hasn’t grown up under zarkon’s reign; his unwillingness to quit is, simply, His Way. when he’s in, he’s all in. shiro — who knows him best — understands this.
kolivan: sometimes, the greatest challenge is knowing when to stop.
shiro: he’ll never quit.
kolivan: one way or another, this will end. knowledge — or death.
as seen in his swordfight with throk, lotor strives to avoid the Galra Way (Zarkon’s Way); he comes closer to embodying knowledge or death, preferring to observe his opponent’s patterns and evade them. this is yet another way that he subtly rebels against his father.
lotor: you must realize at some point that your repetitive attacks are getting you nowhere. your tactics are stale — and in the end, your own aggression is your undoing.
keith is suited to the red lion’s style of “faster and more agile than the others — but also more unstable.” he can keep up with its aggressive speed as though their minds and bodies are connected, but when the time comes for him to fly the black lion, the connection doesn’t come as naturally to him.
guess who notices?
lotor: zethrid, use the ion cannon to shoot the black lion.
zethrid: why the black one?
lotor: there’s something different about that lion. its pilot isn’t in control.
this first encounter is mostly a set-up for lotor to find out why the black lion has been missing in action. when it ends, both he and keith come to similar conclusions:
keith: now we know that zarkon has a son. we need to find out more.
lotor: we just learned all five lions are operational. there’s still much we don’t know.
at first, the aim is the same: both sides are facing a new enemy, and knowledge needs to be gained about strengths and weaknesses.
but keith quickly veers towards victory — this, he says, is how he leads. back when he faced zarkon, he’d declared it his chance to end the galra empire; he had to take it. facing zarkon’s son reignites that all-encompassing intensity, though with higher stakes because keith is now bringing the rest of team voltron along with him. as the new leader, it creates a chaotic domino effect if he sets a pace that not everyone can follow or wants to follow.
hunk: more than half of the team are in new lions — maybe now’s not a great time to bite off more than we can chew.
lance: you can blame our hotheaded leader for that one.
keith: first, you want me to lead, and then you complain about how i do it. prince lotor is the heir to the galra throne. we could end his reign right now.
pidge: keith, what should we do?
keith: how about this? everyone stay out of my way!
lance: we’re a team, we stick together. isn’t that right, keith?
keith: it’s not about the team! we have a mission that’s more important than any one of us. we need to find lotor and stop him, and i plan on doing that right now.
if keith fights like a lion at the moment of pouncing and going for the kill, then lotor fights like a lion during the hunt. his strategy revolves around keeping a distance; he watches his prey’s movements, circling them and zoning in on weak points. he is patient, both in carrying out his actions and communicating his motives when his team doesn’t follow his wavelength.
lotor: ready my fighter. i’m going to attack the lions myself.
zethrid: you’ll never take them all out alone!
lotor: i’m not trying to.
lotor: acxa, set course for these coordinates. i’m going to lure the lions there.
acxa: thayserix? why?
lotor: these are not the paladins who defeated my father.
ezor: what? how do you know?
lotor: they do not fight as a unit and are unable to form voltron. perhaps my father did as much damage to their team as they did to him. whatever the case, they’re vulnerable and we need to take advantage. keep the cruiser in orbit around thayserix. i’ll flush the lions out one by one for you to capture.
though keith gets better at controlling black, it isn’t enough to singlehandedly stop lotor. keith may be intent on cutting off the head, but lotor goes for every limb: he keeps spotting chinks in the team’s armor and turning them against each other, particularly allura as the newest paladin; lotor dodges her fire so that it instead hits keith, frustrating him. even when keith directs them to circle up on thayserix, to stay calm and fire on lotor as soon as they see him, it literally backfires due to thayserix’s atmosphere — the team is split up and lotor sees the opportunity to chase what he perceives to be the weakest link (the blue lion/allura).
but this is where keith deviates from Zarkon’s Way: he is not only willing to admit his mistakes and weaknesses, but willing to move forward and rectify them.
keith: this is all my fault. i followed him right into this trap. everyone warned me, but i didn’t listen. i put the entire team in jeopardy.
lance: yeah, you kinda did. but now we gotta fix it.
keith: you’re right. let’s go.
even more unlike zarkon, keith isn’t arrogant or prideful. he listens to his right-hand man, and he has no bitterness that allura is the one to outsmart lotor’s plan, using blue’s sonar map and shooting blue’s ice (rather than the fire that thayserix explodes back at them). he gives her the credit, and the team’s relief and gratitude creates a more hopeful energy. keith delivers his first leader speech, calling back to shiro’s themes of unity, and they are finally able to form voltron.
keith comes away from this with new knowledge, knowing that victory is not currently in the cards; and lotor is right there with him:
pidge: lotor’s getting away. should we go after him?
keith: no. pushing the team too hard is what got us in this mess in the first place. we’ll face him again when we’re ready.
zethrid: where are we going? voltron is back there! this is our time to fight!
lotor: a leader must know when to leave the field of battle. we’ll face them on a day of our choosing.
what’s interesting is that keith’s wording admits that team voltron has to work on its pacing if they want to beat lotor; but lotor’s wording is confident that his team is already in control, foreshadowing that lotor has his own complicated relationship with victory and not attaining it. he was willing to admit that allura’s strategy was well-played, but what happens when he loses something more permanent than a temporarily frozen ship piece?
INTUITION VS. INTELLECT
before lotor finds out what it is to lose to team voltron, however, he gains another win over them. his intellect is so strong that it only takes him mere moments to form a new plan from the knowledge gained on thayserix.
acxa: they can form voltron after all. will that be a problem?
lotor: no. an opportunity.
to get his hands on the new transreality comet, he has sent in several pilots without results — but now that he knows that the new paladins can form voltron, he can use them as another test subject. lotor has theorized that voltron will be successful because it’s also composed of a transreality comet, and it’s a gamble he’s calmly willing to take no matter how things end.
lotor: if voltron disappears from our world, then we win. if they make it out with the comet, we’ll take it from them. it’s a win either way.
lotor suspects that team voltron’s attention will be snared by an altean distress signal, and sure enough, allura and coran are instantly moved by it; keith, having fallen for lotor’s thayserix trap, is instantly suspicious of it.
keith: wait — what if someone’s cloning the signal to try and lure us in? princess, i still think there’s a chance that this whole thing is a trap.
allura does not want to miss the chance to find out if there are surviving alteans, and she vows that she will go herself if she has to. keith, again having learned from the thayserix trap, does not allow the team to be split up; they go in as voltron, and as acxa says, lotor’s theory — lotor’s intellect — was right: team voltron is able to come out with the comet, and lotor steals it from under their noses, sarcastically thanking them for answering his distress signal. which means keith’s intuition was right.
allura is heartbroken, mirroring keith’s feelings on thayserix: she feels that it was all her fault that they were lead into a trap, but keith assures her that she couldn’t have known.
allura: that is the problem — we never know. lotor is always one step ahead of us. he has a plan for that ore, and if he succeeds, the galra will finally have a weapon as powerful as voltron.
from team voltron’s perspective, lotor is an enigma. his priority isn’t zarkon’s (capturing voltron); if anything, lotor is a bigger threat because he’s willing to do whatever it takes to build his own equivalent, including breaking into a galra base to steal a remnant of voltron’s teludav. his generals are there to load it onto a cargo ship, and (to team voltron’s horror) they arrive there on a new ship built from the comet.
team voltron doesn’t know that lotor is half-altean, or working separately from zarkon and haggar; that it would be lotor that would operate the teludav technology (not haggar, as allura assumes). it’s an already mystifying situation without the added confusion of shiro’s return, and the clash between him and keith over what the team’s priority should be.
keith: lotor must be nearby. we need to find him and take him out for good.
shiro: team, you cannot let lotor get that ship. you need to get back to your lions. you need voltron!
keith: why take out one ship when we can stop all of this by taking out lotor himself? we can’t let him keep outsmarting us!
shiro: that’s exactly why we can’t risk letting lotor have that ship! this is too important!
allura: keith, i want to stop lotor just as badly as you, but shiro has a point.
keith: okay, you guys go back to the lions. i’m gonna search the ship for lotor.
shiro: keith, you need to stick together.
the rest of the team gently agrees with shiro, and keith grudgingly agrees to move on. it is then that they meet lotor’s generals, and seeing that one of them is acxa only makes the need to stop lotor all the more dire to keith.
keith: i’ve met one of them before. in the weblum. she stole some of the scaultrite.
hunk: allura, you said they had an altean? they must be trying to build a teludav so they can make wormholes.
allura: if lotor has turned the comet into a ship, we have much bigger concerns.
pidge: i thought lotor took over for zarkon. why is he attacking a galra base?
keith: i don’t know. that’s why we have to stop him here and now.
keith is action-oriented: he understands people by their actions, and lotor’s actions aren’t clear-cut. meeting acxa was like a preview: she was voiceless and faceless, and all keith could do was interpret her by what she did. she shot at the weblum’s defenses to save him, earning his trust and teamwork, only to later turn the gun on him and steal some scaultrite. this has given keith firsthand experience with team lotor’s methods. acting against the Galra Way doesn’t necessarily mean that team lotor will be on your side until the very end; but they’ll pretend to be as long as you share a common goal.
so, understandably, keith isn’t giving lotor the benefit of the doubt. he can acknowledge that a lot of the information they’re getting doesn’t add up, but why should they settle for theorizing? why not go straight for the root of the problem? his intuition is telling him that cutting down lotor will cut down all of lotor’s branches — the stolen teludav, the comet ship. and then they can figure out lotor’s plans.
keith knows that lotor is twisty, that he is cunning and that he likes to set traps. keith isn’t about to let team voltron fall into yet another one, even if he has to prevent it entirely on his own. even if he has to defy shiro!
lotor: keep voltron engaged until the cargo ship is out of range. do not be drawn in; the sword strike is his most deadly blow.
shiro: guys, the cargo ship is escaping with the teludav inside of it!
keith: i thought taking down the ship made from the comet was the most important thing?
shiro: we still can’t let lotor get away with the teludav!
allura: shiro’s right. we need to destroy it.
keith: but the comet is right here! we need to take it down!
shiro: keith, the cargo ship is getting away!
lotor: we have them right where we want them. they can either defend, or go after the teludav and leave themselves vulnerable.
shiro: you’re going to have to lower your shield, shoot the cargo ship, and deal with the consequences.
keith: we can beat this ship first and then get the cargo ship!
shiro: there’s not enough time! you need to make a decision!
lotor: they’re going to attack the cargo ship! prepare to fire as soon as the shield goes down.
you can see the parallels between lotor and shiro: both of them feel most comfortable when they have control; when they are able to predict their opponent’s plans, and then form their own decisive plans to prevent them. but during this battle, neither of them are on the field — lotor is directing acxa from a distance, and shiro is directing keith from a distance.
lotor is trying to trap team voltron again: to force them to choose between attacking the comet ship or the cargo ship. he and shiro are aware that choosing the cargo ship will leave team voltron vulnerable, but lotor sounds unusually panicked and impatient — it’s clear that this is not a situation where team lotor will win either way. he wants to come out of there with both the comet ship and the cargo ship, and acxa trusts him to make the calls that will ensure that outcome. lotor’s intellect about voltron has yet to be wrong.
but intellect can only get you so far. no matter what lotor has researched on voltron (like the sword strike being the deadliest), and no matter what lotor has observed himself (that voltron will make itself vulnerable if they want to take a risk), lotor and shiro are unable to predict the extent of keith’s risk-taking.
true, keith does as lotor assumes and as shiro commands: he guides voltron to lower the shield and shoot the cargo ship, leaving voltron exposed for acxa to take them out. but what happens next happens so fast that we need to get it in slow-motion to fully understand it: keith breathes in, waits, and at just the right moment, he dodges the comet ship’s fire so that it instead hits the cargo ship — a faster version of exactly what lotor did to him during their last battle. he has finally outsmarted lotor; has finally escaped one of his traps. he had no direct proof that lotor was attempting to trap them, but keith’s intuition told him to take the chance anyway; he acted slow enough that lotor wouldn’t catch on to him catching on, but fast enough to make the trap backfire as soon as team lotor pounced.
if lotor is dangerous because he knows how to think several steps ahead, then keith is dangerous because he knows how to change steps in a heartbeat. this is why it’s a mistake to assume that keith being action-oriented means that he’s hotheaded — that he’s all about the physical, when instead he’s all about acting based on intuition. sure, lotor realized that the new pilot of the black lion wasn’t “in control”, but he couldn’t predict that keith has learned to balance aggression with “patience yields focus” — that keith is capable of control, of slowing down and coming up with new actions in the heat of the moment. he did it in the marmora trials, and he did it again here.
but keith still doesn’t see it as an all-out victory: he still wants to go after the comet ship, but shiro says they have to come back to the castle and figure out lotor’s actions. and while shiro tells keith that he needs to learn to pick his battles, he also praises keith for what he just pulled off.
keith: i’m no good at this.
shiro: yes, you are. it was your quick thinking that prevented lotor from getting away with the teludav. you’re gonna get there. the black lion has chosen you. i’m proud of you, keith.
shiro doesn’t let his own pride stop him from being supportive, even though losing the black lion is painful for him. but lotor doesn’t manage to keep a cool head about what he’s just lost; he takes the opposite approach to keith, who acknowledges his own mistakes and doesn’t let his teammates blame themselves for his or theirs.
lotor: your failure is most disappointing.
although he was the one to make the call that lead to losing the teludav, lotor places the blame on acxa. it’s the first hint we’ve seen that lotor is capable of pridefully lashing out at his people like zarkon does — that this is what can happen when he loses a chance at victory, and therefore loses his grip on control. and this is acxa, who has been displayed as the most devoted to lotor, not unlike keith’s devotion to shiro; her distress at failing lotor could rival keith’s distress that shiro is no longer the leader, and keith’s firm belief that he’ll never be able to lead like him.
LOSING LEADERSHIP
coran shares the history of honerva, the original paladins, and the transreality rift, from which team voltron concludes that lotor must want to get quintessence from other realities. keith once more underlines that they need to stop him, whatever it is that lotor’s planning.
but several months pass, and lotor has disappeared — not just from voltron’s sight, but from the empire’s. keith starts going on missions with the blade of marmora, and they find a lead in a new form of quintessence that could be linked to lotor.
except team voltron has new priorities: building the coalition. keith finds this embarrassing — “we’re basically the grand marshal of a parade” — and thus does not hesitate to join kolivan’s infiltration mission instead.
keith: count me in.
lance: hey, what about our performance?! we can’t razzle-dazzle the crowd with just four lions!
keith: this mission is more important than a show of arms!
funnily enough, keith is accusing team voltron of what lotor has accused them of:
lotor: your savior, voltron? and where is your precious protector now? gone, leaving you with nothing but a hollow promise of freedom. mercy has never been the way of the galra — until now. how would you like to become a valuable part of the new empire? join us, and you’ll never need voltron again.
lotor said this to the leader of puig, and after what keith said to the leader of puig, it could almost ring true.
leader of puig: our people have heard of the legend of voltron, how he defeated zarkon. that is what gave them hope! what are we supposed to tell them now?
keith: tell them to stand up and fight for themselves! voltron is gone!
this was born from keith’s grief after shiro’s disappearance, not from keith actually thinking that voltron shouldn’t help people. he does want to help people, as voltron or otherwise, but his frustration with voltron as a “symbol” still stands — performed acts of saving the universe aren’t literally saving the universe.
keith: allura, i know you’re mad at me, but i’m not in the mood for a lecture.
allura: i know how important the work you’ve been doing with the blades is. they are incredible allies and have been instrumental in our victories over the galra. and while the news of a new quintessence supply line is deeply troubling, i cannot help but feel —
keith: i said i didn’t want a lecture.
allura: keith, since our battle with zarkon, we’ve been able to bolster our forces by uniting those previously ruled by the galra under a common symbol: voltron. it’s so much more than a weapon.
keith misses the parade, but he misses it because he feels that marmora’s mission is more effective than being what allura calls “a symbol of freedom and hope for the oppressed to rally around.” keith is not interested in parading voltron as a symbol of freedom — he wants to actively confront the galra and fight for that freedom, and the parades distract team voltron from the time that could be spent doing that. for keith, the coalition is important for the rebels that it unites (rebels that he now fights alongside), but not for the fanfare.
throk’s partner: i’ve heard rumors [lotor] fights alongside his enlisted men like a lowly private. some say he allows the planets he conquers to continue to rule themselves. can you imagine?
lotor seems to want a middleground: even if people are united under a “symbol” — an empire based on loyalty rather than fear — it’s important for them to be self-sufficient; they shouldn’t need voltron or galra soldiers guiding (or dictating) their every move. for lotor, there’s an overestimation of voltron from both sides: the people who see it as their only savior, and the people who see it as their biggest threat. why not create a bigger threat?
and so, on lotor’s end, he is also being lectured about not prioritizing voltron, nor rallying troops against voltron’s efforts. haggar doesn’t know it, but lotor doesn’t see the point when his time is being spent on a weapon that could overpower voltron. haggar’s priorities seem weak in comparison.
haggar: lotor, while you distance yourself from central command, rebel forces have taken entire star systems from our hands.
lotor: you think clutching on to worthless outposts strengthens our empire?
haggar: your father knew those outposts would one day become strongholds.
lotor: my father is on his deathbed — and i’m in control.
haggar: you say you rule, yet you stay hidden. an emperor must be seen. his absence diminishes his power.
lotor: i don’t have to explain myself to you. now, do not bother me again.
keith was harsh with allura, but lotor is even harsher with haggar — which is expected, because while keith feels he can defend his mission to track down lotor’s supply line, lotor wants to keep his mission untrackable. his comet ships are being made in secret, and the supply line is far from the typical supply routes; there are even decoy ships to throw people off its trail, which means that lotor is still trying to trap and evade anyone who wishes to stop him. keith is acting apart from team voltron, but they at least know what he’s doing when he’s gone. the fact that lotor needs to shroud his plans in secrecy is a product of his upbringing: he doesn’t feel as though zarkon and haggar can be trusted to support him.
keith wants to trust team voltron to support him, but they’ve proven that their support is elsewhere. their priority is the coalition, and keith’s priority is lotor; he knows that he can’t lead them when they believe in different paths, which is part of why he’s so adamant about shiro taking up the black lion again.
in their original paladin formation, shiro and allura were the co-leaders, and they still act that way despite shiro not being a paladin. they are the ones who try to convince keith of the importance of being present on team voltron — that he’s needed there.
allura: the marmora can go on without you. they have for thousands of years. voltron cannot. we cannot.
shiro: we need to find out all we can about that quintessence, but more importantly, voltron needs a strong leader.
keith: i know they do, and it should be you!
shiro: keith, we’ve discussed this before. besides, we both know that the black lion has chosen you.
keith: you only tried once! you had a connection with the black lion and i know it’s still there! if you just give it another shot —
shiro: keith, we all have a part to play. this is mine now. i’ve come to terms with that — now, you need to. i support your decision to continue with your marmora training, but not at the expense of the team. they need you, keith. they need you to be their leader.
allura and shiro mean well: it’s not that they don’t care about keith as a person, because they do. shiro is keith’s found family, and allura extended the same “new family” invitation when she apologized for doubting keith due to losing her family. this is more than we have ever seen from zarkon and haggar to lotor — if there were ever any feelings of familial love amongst them, they seem to be long gone.
but even the most loving families have misunderstandings — even the people closest to you can misjudge you. we see this fear reflected in keith’s marmora trials, where the hologram of shiro implies that keith is selfish for wanting to know the truth of his past.
hologram!shiro: you know exactly who you are: a paladin of voltron. we’re all the family you need. just give up the knife, keith! you’re only thinking of yourself, as usual!
the hologram of keith’s father does the reverse: he tries to convince keith to ignore the galra attacking earth, because if keith leaves, he will never find out who he is. when keith leaves the virtual mindscape and finally awakens his marmora blade, it’s because he firmly says:
keith: it doesn’t matter where i come from. i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.
keith’s fear is being seen as selfish — as someone who would put his own needs above the needs of the universe. flashforward to S3 + S4, and keith hasn’t wavered on this, not permanently. the one time he did waver, it was because it felt as though everyone only cared about losing voltron as a symbol of hope, while he was the only one heartbroken over losing shiro: a real, breathing person who gave keith hope — not as a legend as the other paladins phrased it, but as a friend so supportive that keith let down his walls and let him in like family.
but once he agreed that shiro would never want them to lose sight of the mission, keith didn’t abandon that mission. if you swap out zarkon’s name for his son’s, what keith said in his marmora trials is still what he believes in: “we all need to work together to defeat lotor.” this has been his goal ever since becoming leader, and marmora is willing to work together on that goal; but team voltron’s brand of “working together” has become more about the coalition than going after lotor directly. keith has tried, time and time again, to get them to follow his lead, but they aren’t on his wavelength. lotor is out of sight, out of mind, and so they don’t see pursuing lotor as the main mission.
so, when allura says that marmora can go on without keith, and shiro says that leading voltron is more important than lotor’s quintessence — that keith’s marmora training shouldn’t come at the expense of the team? both of them are implying that keith needs to choose, and that the only right choice is team voltron. it’s said more gently than the hologram of shiro, but that doesn’t mean it’s not said.
keith is essentially being asked to be a figurehead that can fill the seat of the black lion, but without any sway in leadership. just as haggar tells lotor that an emperor should be seen, that he shouldn’t stay hidden, keith feels that he’s being asked to be seen but not heard — to show up in the parades as black, to show up as black to guide refugees to olkarion, to show up as black to give supplies to refugees. but don’t lead as black, because we’re not interested in your plans; we don’t agree with your mission.
pidge: well, look who decided to show up.
lance: yeah, are you even taking this seriously?
keith: sorry i’m late.
haggar: i’m afraid that lotor has not taken his duties as heir to your empire seriously, my lord. vast stretches of territory have fallen to voltron and a growing group of insurgents.
zarkon: your decision to place him on the throne was ill-advised. but no matter. i am returned. it is time to relieve my wayward son of his duties.
keith and lotor take their missions incredibly seriously. keith is serious about weakening the empire, and lotor is serious about strengthening the empire. when they are absent, neither of them are wasting time: they are acting out their plans, not twiddling their thumbs. but they’re still treated as irresponsible because they’re doing it Their Way, ways that are equal in strength to the ones proposed (if not stronger).
if that isn’t hard enough, keith and lotor are each working with a team of outcasts. the marmora is technically part of the coalition, and team lotor is technically part of the empire. but there are coalition members who feel unsettled by marmora’s presence — they look exactly like their oppressors — and there are pure galra who see half-galra as less strong and less worthy of power. keith can pass as non-galra, and lotor can pass as pure galra; but not everyone can pass, and thus it makes sense that both teams prefer to work “in the shadows” — that both teams are built on secrecy and trust. they have to do things Their Way because there is no guarantee that prejudice won’t impact people believing in Their Way. some will absolutely follow them, but some absolutely will not. the marmora now has team voltron’s allyship, but lotor cannot count on allyship from central command. and even with the marmora/voltron alliance, there can still be a clash of missions.
just as shiro fears, the day comes when the team is in jeopardy due to keith’s absence, and shiro is forced to try piloting black again. keith is apologetic, but genuine in seeing a silver lining.
keith: this is not the way i wanted this to happen, but if there’s a bright side to any of this, it’s that my absence allowed shiro to reestablish his bond with the black lion. he can finally be the leader i was unable to be. i’m not meant to pilot the black lion. shiro, you are the rightful leader of this team — and you proved it today by reconnecting with the black lion. it was always meant to be yours.
keith sincerely believes in shiro; this is what he’s been insisting from the start, both during and after shiro’s disappearance. these aren’t simply words spoken out of keith’s doubts about his own leadership, but out of keith’s love and support for shiro as a person and leader. there is no resentment towards shiro, even though shiro sometimes approached keith’s leadership as though keith didn’t remember “patience yields focus” — as though keith needed to be guided like a subordinate instead of an equal. in S1 + S2, keith took no issue with following shiro’s orders, and there was a lightness and familiarity to answering shiro with a “yes, sir!”; but in S3 + S4, some framework was as if they were soldiers at the garrison — as if keith felt he had to be a cadet to shiro’s senior officer, instead of a trusted friend.
shiro: i’m sorry i had to step in back there.
keith: i thought i had it under control.
keith: this is lotor i’m talking about. he hasn’t been seen in months. this might be our chance to track him down!
shiro: i said we’ll discuss it later. right now, i need you to focus on the mission at hand.
keith: but —
shiro: this isn’t a request, keith. get to the fimm system. that’s an order.
“that’s an order” was once said by shiro to the black lion: he felt he had no control over where black was taking him, and panicked. once they met zarkon in the astral plane and zarkon told shiro that only the powerful could “command” black, shiro corrected his own error and zarkon’s: “no one commands the black lion!” + the relationship between a lion and its paladin “isn’t about power! it’s about earning each other’s trust!”
it’s possible that “that’s an order” was said to keith for similar reasons. shiro felt that he had no control over black’s sudden lack of trust in him + rejection, and panicked because keith wasn’t being reliable in his duty as black’s new paladin. his trust in keith wasn’t as secure as it had been in the past, and shiro had to be firm in letting keith know that he needed to maintain that trust.
whether this stemmed from operation kuron is up for debate! perhaps stage three of operation kuron was “get back to the voltron lions and get back into the black lion”, and part of that manifested in subtly chipping away at keith’s confidence in his leadership. and that’s just one theory! whatever is actually happening here, both keith and shiro think that S3 + S4!shiro is the “real” shiro — not a clone, not a brainwashed sleeper agent. shiro isn’t being intentionally dismissive — or even intentionally zarkon-esque by pulling rank — and keith doesn’t see shiro as intentionally dismissive or zarkon-esque.
keith simply sees what he has always seen: that he can never be shiro; that shiro is always going to be the person who should lead team voltron. keith has never wanted to take shiro’s place. their clash of leadership brought about everything that came from shiro’s hologram: the misreading of keith as selfish; as someone who would rather be alone than work together; as someone who does not care about saving the universe. shiro returning to black is a major relief for keith, albeit a bittersweet one: a potential rift in his relationship with shiro was prevented, but he still has to move on alone — shiro and team voltron will not follow his lead.
when zarkon takes up leadership again, the contrast could not be starker. lotor goes into performance mode, every word of support to zarkon an act. as he tells his generals, his father “is simply ready to return to the throne. he can have it. our plans have not changed.” he has no reason to fear that losing leadership will mean losing his team — he won’t be leaving behind anyone that he cares about losing.
lotor: father, it gives me such pleasure that you’ve made a full recovery. you look stronger than i’ve ever —
zarkon: silence. i did not bring you here to waste time with your flattery. you are relieved of your position, effective immediately.
lotor: lord, i beg you, do not discard me. let me stay by your side.
zarkon: your short reign will be regarded as a black spot on the galra empire for years to come.
lotor: of course, my efforts at ruling the universe seem feeble beside your inestimable accomplishments. but, perhaps, if you were to train me, i could learn.
zarkon: you are no longer needed.
lotor: as you wish.
unlike shiro, zarkon has no need for his successor, nor words of encouragement for him. and unlike keith, lotor doesn’t sincerely believe that his predecessor is the rightful and superior leader; it’s that not being the leader gives lotor more freedom to further his own mission. he is playing the part of the devoted son who wants nothing more than to be supported and to stay by his father’s side. he even pretends to think low of his own skills, when we know that he’s using his skills to secretly surpass what zarkon hasn’t even considered (since he’s so obsessed with voltron). lotor has no genuine intentions or inclinations to stay at central command — he knows that he doesn’t belong there, nor does he want to. not while zarkon and haggar are in control.
upon walking out of the throne room, lotor’s fake frown transforms into a sincere smile — more like a smirk, even. zarkon’s treatment of him (both now and pre-exile) has left lotor with no desire to follow zarkon’s path. lotor is instead determined to carve his own path, and has been doing so for quite some time.
but upon walking out of the castle, keith’s smile transforms into a frown. he does want to belong with team voltron, even if he believes in furthering his own mission; even if he knows that he has to carve his own path to do so. like lotor, keith doesn’t mind losing leadership in favor of going down that path — but unlike lotor, keith does feel he’s leaving behind people he cares about, especially the person who has taken back leadership from him.
thankfully, there is no parting resentment between keith and team voltron like there is between lotor and zarkon. team voltron misjudges keith, but they are open to hearing his defenses. if lotor uses words as weapons, shielding his true intentions, then keith — who prefers actions — uses words as though lowering a shield; the team does not understand his actions, and so he has to use his words. and those words reveal his true intentions (about not being the rightful leader, and about using his skills elsewhere).
keith: a mission is being planned to infiltrate the supply line. it could take weeks, maybe months to pull off, but if there is a chance, we have — i have to take it. i need to be on that mission.
the “we” that he then corrects to “i” is not a performance — it’s an honest slip that reveals his desire to work as a team, followed by the acceptance that that team will not be voltron. shiro hugs him, and then the entire team hugs him; they tell him that they’ll miss him, and that they know he’ll make them proud.
shiro: keith — if this is what you feel is right, then we won’t try to stop you. but just know that we’re here for you whenever you need us.
keith: i know you are — and i can’t tell you how much that means to me.
in a way, keith is being dismissed as a leader; shiro doesn’t say anything about calling when keith is needed, which one could compare to zarkon saying that lotor is no longer needed. but shiro is still doing the opposite of hologram!shiro: he doesn’t want keith to feel alone or abandoned, and he is no longer pressuring keith to choose team voltron — shiro instead assures keith that he’ll be there for him either way. keith believes it, even if his belief that he can’t lead voltron has been confirmed. though this means going down separate paths, their paths will converge: shiro will call when he needs keith, and be there for keith in return.
so: what about lotor? when zarkon and haggar discover his true intentions, it is done in a way that confirms everything that made lotor believe they couldn’t be trusted. their discovery isn’t through honest communication — through asking lotor what his words + actions have been hiding — but through haggar sending out a spy as she’s done before, and as she already knows will prompt lotor’s disdain and unease.
and how does zarkon respond? not by inviting lotor to unite forces — not by letting lotor know that he’ll be there for him if he needs help — not by expressing pride in lotor’s skills + innovation — but by ordering the empire to hunt lotor down and kill him.
zarkon: from this day forward, my son lotor is to be regarded as a fugitive criminal of the empire. all citizens are authorized to use deadly force to stop him or any of his soldiers. i repeat, prince lotor is an enemy of the state. engage with extreme prejudice. kill on sight.
SAFETY & SACRIFICE
team lotor is now desperate to find safety, but the generals feel unsafe even beyond zarkon’s threat. they just witnessed lotor taking out narti, one of their own. he did it silently and without explanation, and now he is leading them somewhere without explanation.
lotor: ezor, acxa, set a course for the coordinates i’m sending you.
ezor: where are we going?
lotor: just do as i say!
it’s an eerie mirror of keith after he was first made leader: impatient, snappish, and single-minded in his focus. clearly, when trapped and backed into a corner, lotor and keith are not so different. lotor does eventually communicate his plans as he normally would, but those plans don’t promise the usual security of calm and control.
zethrid: sir, we’re approaching the coordinates, but my scanners don’t detect anything.
lotor: they’re not supposed to.
ezor: lotor, what is this?
lotor: the ruins of planet daibazaal. i had a secret team construct this interreality gate on the rift, where [honerva’s] work began. just as voltron was able to, i will pilot us through the rift, and we will harvest the unlimited quintessence that exists in the layer between realities.
acxa: i never doubted you, lotor.
ezor: so, we can just fly right through this thing to another reality?
lotor: i’ve not yet had a chance to test the gate. my plans have been accelerated by our recent turn of events. but if my calculations are correct, by infusing our ships with concentrated quintessence, we should be able to pierce the barrier between realities.
zethrid: sir, this is all the concentrated quintessence we have left.
lotor: and i will use it to reap an untold amount more.
just like keith on thayserix, lotor is leading his team into the unknown. they’re terrified of his plans failing, and not just because of the harm that could befall them, but because of the harm that could befall them even if they do survive.
acxa: we must trust lotor.
ezor: what about narti? she trusted him. you saw where that got her.
acxa: enough. lotor will protect us.
it’s possible that acxa is clinging to something from her past — perhaps, as shiro did with keith, lotor made acxa feel like she belonged and that she was valuable, despite others giving up on her. whatever brought them all together, the generals have been treated by lotor as united teammates — until one of them threatened the safety of his plans, and was then immediately eliminated. from their perspective, this is not that different from the intimidation of zarkon’s rule; the threat of being disposed when they are no longer needed is a sword dangling over their heads.
when team voltron was concerned that keith was pulling away from them, they never feared that he actually wished them harm — just that he wasn’t being attentive to the universe’s safety. when keith explained that he believed his plans would double their efforts to ensure the universe’s safety, they were soothed by it.
team lotor no longer has the guarantee that lotor wants to ensure their safety. unlike team voltron, the generals can relate to keith’s alienation of being part-galra; they felt safe when lotor protected them under that shared umbrella, but that safety is gone, and so comes the decision to avenge narti and turn lotor in.
zethrid: i’m sorry, sir. nothing personal. this is our only way out.
lotor: you plan to give me up. i understand, zethrid. you do what you must — and i’ll do what i must.
lotor splits the team apart, flying away with one half of the comet ship and leaving behind his generals with the other. after this, lotor is abnormally silent. he has no one to communicate his plans to, nor anyone to help him put them into action. when he gets tracked by zarkon, he desperately flies close to a sun to evade him. his grunts and screams of anguish are not unlike keith’s when he battled zarkon, but keith had been reckless out of a desire to end the empire and save the universe. lotor is being reckless because he wants to save himself.
this is generally true of lotor’s plans. his collection of quintessence doesn’t appear to be about ending the empire, only strengthening it to fit His Way of ruling it. keith’s determination to follow lotor’s supply line is about finding the source and severing it, therefore weakening the empire. lotor wasn’t flying through the rift to find out about his origins, just as keith didn’t leave for marmora to find out about his — they both did it for their missions, but those missions happen to be in direct opposition to each other.
because team lotor has parallels with marmora, it’s fair to wonder if marmora’s mission also risks the safety of its members. after the following lecture, one might interpret kolivan as treating those he leads as disposable:
keith: will he be all right?
kolivan: you broke protocol.
keith: i had to!
kolivan: you didn’t consider that something could’ve happened to you — that would make two men down instead of one! every member of the blade of marmora understands that the mission is more important than the individual. this isn’t voltron.
keith: i understand that. in voltron, we would’ve gone back in to save regris. i went back to save the mission. regris had the intel. getting him and it back on the ship was worth the risk.
kolivan doesn’t want to lose any more men — he doesn’t see them as disposable. but he’s critical of needless sacrifice: he saw ulaz’s sacrifice as preventable, and born out of “a penchant for ignoring orders and following his impulses. that’s what got him killed.” it’s clear that kolivan fears the same thing happening to keith — that keith’s impulses will get him killed, no matter how worth the risk they are. the mission is more important than the individual, but an individual putting their life on the line should only happen when they have no other options (like thace); it should never be the first risk that they take.
when they get trapped on the decoy ship, keith proves that saving regris wasn’t just mission-motivated for him. he once again runs to save regris, even though there isn’t any intel to save this time — keith just wants to save regris as an individual, but kolivan knows he won’t make it; he lifts keith up and pulls him away before he loses two men, even as keith struggles against his hold.
back when thace was captured and keith volunteered to finish his job, kolivan was instantly against it, saying that he “would never command someone so inexperienced to go on a mission so dangerous.” he was willing to abort their mission and wait rather than jeopardize everything, claiming that this is how marmora had survived for so long, but allura snapped that their caution was holding them back — that caution was the reason zarkon was still in power. since then, kolivan has gradually taken more risks, and bringing keith along on missions is one of them; marmora is slightly less “in the shadows”, working more openly as themselves, with voltron, and with whoever is open to allyship with them.
he may be worried about keith’s risk-taking and how far keith is willing to go to save people, but kolivan still listens to keith’s perspective. sometimes, kolivan is right to be cautious and keith is wrong to be risky (like when kolivan said they should leave the decoy ship, but keith said they should stay to plant the tracker, leading to regris losing his life — to keith’s immense distraught). but sometimes, like during the battle of naxzela, keith’s intuition is right when kolivan’s intellect is wrong.
coran: that galra fleet heading towards naxzela stopped.
keith: stopped?
coran: yes. quite a distance away, too.
kolivan: perhaps the galra decided it’s too well-fortified to attack.
keith: “victory or death” is the galra way — they never stop attacking. voltron. shiro, can you hear me? shiro! something’s wrong. i’m gonna check it out.
keith steals a ship and flies towards haggar — a move that could become a mirror of when keith fought zarkon by himself after sensing that something was wrong with shiro.
but his time with marmora has repaired keith’s sense of purpose. now, keith feels confident enough to contact matt and the rebels for back-up — to ask them to trust his intuition and follow his lead. “i can’t explain why,” he tells them, “but we need to attack that fleet.” when shiro contacts him, their communication is easier than it had been as dual leaders — after some distance, they’re on the same wavelength again, even if keith is progressing faster.
shiro: keith, can you hear me?
keith: shiro! where are you? is everything okay?
shiro: not for long if we don’t stop zarkon’s witch. she must be aboard that battle cruiser.
keith: i’m way ahead of you — and i brought some back-up!
while keith has a team to communicate with, lotor still has no one. he only finds out about the battle through picking up radio transmissions, and as soon as he hears that a bomb is expected to go off, he wordlessly starts flying, invigorated with a new purpose after drifting through space half-awake. lotor seems to have an idea of where to go, and of what he’ll need to do when he gets there.
guess who he’ll run into?
keith sees that the shield around haggar’s ship cannot be penetrated by normal weapons. he makes the decision to break the barrier with his own small fighter, even if he’ll die in the process. if he succeeds, he’ll save the universe.
and then lotor arrives. and lotor sees that the shield around haggar’s ship cannot be penetrated by normal weapons, and he makes the decision to destroy the barrier with his cannon.
keith pulls back just in time, in complete and utter shock. this is prince lotor; this is the person he’s been trying to track down for months, only for lotor to find him first and save both keith and the universe in the process. the question is if he did it to save the universe — or did he do it to save his own skin?
naturally, S4 ends before we and keith can find out!
WHAT A WILD RIDE.
lotor: i know we’ve had our differences in the past, but — i think it is time we had a discussion.
for me, this quote perfectly encapsulates keith & lotor’s potential. they have enough differences to clash and misunderstand each other, but enough similarities that if they were to discuss them, there is potential to come together and understand each other like no one else could.
that they’re both part-galra only scratches the surface! they are both quick-fire when it comes to swordfighting and piloting, and can get so consumed by Their Way of doing things that not everyone can keep up. they’ve both had to develop survival skills out of family abandonment (for keith, loss and separation; for lotor, belittlement and banishment). both need to solve the mysteries of their mothers, and both have gone separate ways from the found families that they could have had with their teammates. keith could teach lotor not to sacrifice others, and lotor could teach keith not to sacrifice himself. keith could help lotor go with his gut in the heat of the moment, and lotor could help keith strategize in advance. they are both so stubborn about seeing their missions through, even if they often fight with opposing — yet complementary — speeds and styles.
and they are both so unpredictable, which means that a) they will continue to be unpredictable to each other, and b) whatever happens is probably too complex to predict! but we can have fun speculating!
will keith trust lotor? keith is a lot like the red lion: you have to earn his respect. remember that keith understands people by their actions, and he just saw lotor act in a way that went against everything keith had assumed of him. lotor saved the universe! this is on a much grander scale than what happened with acxa in the weblum: lotor acted in open defiance of haggar, and therefore in open defiance of the entire empire. it would be understandable if keith were now willing to hear him out, even if his trust may be a slow burn.
A SIDEBAR ABOUT THE RED LION
when the red lion was captured by the galra, it was on sendak’s ship. does this mean that zarkon considered sendak a worthy candidate of the red lion and of being his right-hand man? did zarkon even consider lotor for the position, or did lotor say or do something that made zarkon consider him unworthy? if any of this is true, it’s another thing that could make keith & lotor’s dynamic complicated, since as far as we know, keith was the first to prove himself to red after alfor’s death.
will keith team up with lotor (+ his generals, should they return)? team lotor is like a middleground between marmora and voltron: a team of galra, but a team of potential peers that are closer in age to keith. keith is even suited to the lightning-quick agility and versatility of the comet ships — and if those ships are intended to have five pilots like voltron (after the third component is built)? it looks like there’s an empty seat for someone to fill, and co-piloting with lotor would certainly be one way for keith to keep an eye on what lotor might be planning. keith may find that he relates not only to lotor, but to everyone’s feelings of being a part-galra outcast (as well as acxa’s relationship with lotor and how it may mirror keith’s with shiro). fighting-wise, he and acxa share the same seriousness about their missions + efficiency in carrying them out, a devotion that makes them reliable right-hands to their leaders; but keith also shares zethrid’s tendency to not want to lose chances to take out their enemy, as well as ezor’s flexible speed in going after that enemy.
will lotor team up with voltron? going after the teludav means that lotor can likely create wormholes, and his cyan quintessence is similar to the energy created by sacred alteans like alfor and allura. lotor may find that he relates not only to keith, but to team voltron’s other leaders: shiro, because they both know how to inspire people as fighters, even impressing the gladiator arena by evading and calculating to survive; they’ve also both been hunted by zarkon and haggar, treated as weapons for the empire’s agenda (instead of as people with their own autonomy). and of course, lotor may relate to allura because she’s the royal heir to the other side of the war, and to the culture that lotor connects to; as an altean diplomat, she knows how to inspire people with words, and she understands the pressures of living up to a father’s legacy (only to find that you don’t have to be your father to be a strong leader; lotor knows this, but keith still needs to learn a variant with shiro). as for additional skills, lotor shares coran + hunk and the holts’ knack for exploring science and technology, as well as coran + lance’s knack for flourish and performance.
will lotor team up with marmora? lotor can relate to being a galra outcast within the galra empire, and will find that some non-galra rebels are hesitant to ally with visible galra (never mind the galra prince). if lotor needs to hide his visibility from those hunting him, the marmora uniform is the perfect option. lotor already knows how to wield a blade, and he already understands kolivan’s perspective of exercising caution/stealth over impulsive action/preventable sacrifice. but would lotor pass the trials, or would they reveal his motives to be self-serving? what (or who) would he see in his virtual mindscape?
will lotor uncover operation kuron? in S3 + S4, lotor seems unaware of the operation (otherwise he would’ve known why black was absent + why team voltron was struggling). but the operation answers to command headquarters, which means haggar is likely in charge, but chose to exclude lotor from her plans (as he did to her). stage three did not seem to use shiro as a spy (otherwise haggar would’ve known about the comet ships as soon as shiro did); but if a future stage uses shiro as a spy, lotor may be attuned to it as he was with narti. further tension with keith would follow, because keith — who has promised to save shiro “as many times as it takes” — would be horrified at the thought of attacking shiro at all, let alone for something shiro can’t control.
will they get the classic trope of “started out fake, ended up real”? because lotor is cunning, he may use their similarities to manipulate keith and alienate him from team voltron, making keith feel like he belongs more with team lotor. will it stay manipulation, or will lotor grow to truly empathize with keith and want to befriend him?
WILL KEITH & LOTOR FINALLY HAVE THE EPIC SWORDFIGHT THAT THE LORD INTENDED? there’s nothing to elaborate on here, except that i doubt it’ll end like 80s!lotor hitting 80s!keith over the head with a rock. or will it?
this could go on for centuries, so please feel free to keep the conversation going with your own speculation!!! i love these two and i love all of the content that fans have put out for them; thank you for reading my geeky contribution!
The thing that I really love is that: I never thought that I’d be able to get the same emotional experience doing a voiceover animated show that I would out of a live TV show. But I have, on this show, on Voltron. The writing is great, the writing is so wonderful that — you’re also in this like, box, because you’re literally in a box, a booth, and you’re just talking to a microphone so you’re just by yourself and that means you can just imagine whatever you want. And it allows you to like, go to a place that — like I did ADR today where I had to redo this pivotal scene that’s coming up soon. And I cried doing it! Like not even because the performance necessarily asked for it, but because I was like, ‘Guys, this is amazing!’ The depths of where we’re going for this animated show that’s quote-unquote ‘geared towards kids’ — it’s not, it’s geared towards everybody.
STEVEN YEUN (KEITH’S VOICE ACTOR)
link replaced with working audio file
the above quote comes from around 1:32:43 in the podcast, but i recommend listening to it all! it’s a wonderful interview, and in terms of voltron specifically, he talks with admiration about the show’s themes, writing, animation, voice directing, and fan response (most of this is after the 1-hour mark)!
(as for the “pivotal scene” he mentions crying over, i’m not sure if it’s something we’ve already seen or something coming up post-S4, but how awesome is that!)
EDIT: see my update for the reveal of the crying scene; warning for S6 spoilers!
this is a sequel to my post about fanon versus canon keith, but with a tighter focus on keith and shiro’s relationship, especially in S2, and how fandom misinterprets it, especially in S2. the misinterpretations can be boiled down to two points:
keith doesn’t care about anyone on team voltron except for shiro
shiro has favoritism for keith that puts keith above everyone else on team voltron
both of these are just — so simplistic and so superficial, and ultimately simplistic and superficial readings of keith and shiro as characters. so let’s try to do a deeper summation of their S2 character arcs:
keith is dealing with the discovery that he is galra, and the fear that this may endanger team voltron/alienate him from team voltron (again: huge expansion of that here)
shiro is dealing with the discovery that zarkon used to pilot the black lion, and the fear that he is too weak/unworthy to be the new black paladin
if you ignore or downplay either arc, you’re automatically going to ignore or downplay why S2 focuses so much on what they give each other! they give each other humanity, stability, and protection.
humanity
have you ever noticed that keith and shiro are the only paladins who don’t talk about wanting to reunite with family?
for keith, we now know that this is partially because his family is a big question mark — when and why did he get separated from his dad, and does he even have memories of his mom?
for shiro, his backstory is more about his time as a galra prisoner. we also have glimpses of his garrison era: a “senior officer” and the chosen pilot of the kerberos mission.
lance calls shiro a “hero” and a “legend”, and then calls keith his “rival” — even after keith becomes a “dropout”, iverson still reminds lance that keith had been “the best pilot” in his class. if keith and shiro didn’t have a pre-series relationship, “garrison golden boys” is what our main pre-series impression of them would be. they would exist more as pedestals for lance instead of people with their own backstories.
and true, their shared backstory is still mysterious! i’m writing this at a time when only S1 and S2 are released, so we don’t yet know how keith and shiro met, or what their exact relationship was, though we can guess: a combination of mentor/student, friends, and found family.
keith: patience yields focus.
shiro: that really stayed with you, didn’t it?
keith: you’ve given me some good advice. if it wasn’t for you, my life would have been a lot different.
“patience yields focus” is established in the first episode of S1 (keith repeats it to himself to find the red lion, as shiro advises); and the first episode of S2 confirms that this is something shiro has instilled in him. keith is aware that he can be impatient — a hothead — and so he turns to shiro’s “patience yields focus” to slow down and look for a new angle. this is further confirmed by cast and crew, who have more access to backstory than we currently do:
lauren montgomery (showrunner): obviously in the original [keith] was the leader guy, and we just wanted to start him in a different place. he looks up to shiro, but he’s definitely not the leader that shiro is at all. and so he’s got a lot to learn, he’s still very impulsive, very rash, and he’s got a hot temper.
joaquim dos santos (showrunner): it gives him a good place to grow, too. he latches onto shiro at times because shiro’s sort of the only thing that can really calm him down and keep him in check.
(source)
steven yeun (keith’s voice actor): i actually think that [keith] was in more or less ways called upon to be a leader from the beginning. that’s not to say the leader of voltron, but to say that shiro always took him under his wing. keith always hoped that he could reach a place where shiro was and hopefully more. i think shiro saw that in him and tried to stoke those flames and cultivate that within him. there’s a nice history that he and shiro have where if shiro were to ask him to do that, he would understand where it was coming from.
(source)
the idea of keith becoming leader — of shiro passing the torch to him — is where canon gets extremely misinterpreted!
when does shiro first suggest that keith take over as leader? after seeing that keith is able to revive and fly the black lion (on top of the crushing blow that zarkon not only used to fly black, but still has the ability to take control of black and sever shiro from the cockpit)
the second time shiro suggests that keith take over as leader? after confirming that zarkon is tracking voltron through his connection with the black lion (shiro may have weakened that connection by fighting zarkon in the astral plane, but he hasn’t removed the big target on his back: zarkon still wants the black lion, is still capable of finding it, and therefore still capable of hurting, and killing, shiro)
shiro is a human being! he is not a robot, created solely to lead voltron with mechanical neutrality. he is a human being who, not long ago, was a prisoner and gladiator champion, and is still plagued by nightmares that he is a monster and a broken soldier. being a leader does not strip him of this humanity — of insecurities, of vulnerabilities, of awareness of his own mortality.
look at what he says to zarkon:
shiro: you can’t pilot the black lion after everything you’ve done! you can never lead voltron again — you’re no paladin!
doesn’t that sound an awful lot like sendak’s mind games? real or hallucinated, shiro is completely shaken by them:
sendak: we’re connected, you and me. both part of the galra empire.
shiro: no! i’m not like you!
sendak: you’ve been broken and reformed. just look at your hand.
shiro: that’s not me!
sendak: it’s the strongest part of you. embrace it. the others don’t know what you know. the others haven’t seen what you’ve seen. face it: you’ll never beat zarkon. he’s already defeated you.
shiro: i’m not listening to you!
sendak: do you really think a monster like you could be a voltron paladin?
shiro: STOP IT!
amongst other prisoners, shiro has the reputation of “a legendary gladiator, undefeated in the ring”, and haggar says that he could have been “their greatest weapon” — but “champion” is not a title that shiro is honored to embody, not like “defenders of the universe”. when ulaz frees him, he says that shiro, as both “a fighter and a leader”, gives hope. this is the legacy that shiro wants: someone who helps people, who saves people. not a monster — not someone who spreads blood and violence and destruction.
it’s unfortunate that pidge is another character that shiro is accused of “favoring”, since that is quite the warp and twist of “bonded by their ties to sam and matt holt and the desire for them to be safe.” shiro’s first “good” memory of his time as prisoner is that he acted to save matt, and pidge is tearfully grateful to him — shiro gives her hope for the survival of her family.
and now, shifting back to keith — shiro, at some point in keith’s life, became a presence that still gives keith his own sense of hope. keith’s very first scene is saving shiro, his eyes widening and shimmering: a humanizing balance against the hand-to-hand combat and knife-wielding and lance seeing him as someone who “one-ups” him. shiro makes it impossible to reduce keith to a hothead with no personal connections or emotions, and in return, keith reveals that shiro brings hope not just on a grand “saving the universe” level, but on a personal “you changed my life” level. neither of them descended to earth as gods, fully formed as mythically skilled pilots; before they even knew what voltron was and before shiro even left for kerberos, they were just everyday human beings that connected to each other. and once they do join team voltron, you can see telltale signs of that connection: playful nudges, shoulder touches, private smiles, full-body hugging, and yeah, this is just physical stuff. the emotional stuff is a whole other thing!
stability
allura says that the lions “choose their pilots — it is a mystical bond that cannot be forced. the quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in his lion.”
the black lion is:
the decisive head of voltron
the lion that needs a pilot who is “a born leader” and “in control at all times — someone whose men will follow without hesitation”
the red lion is:
temperamental and the most difficult to master — you’ll have to earn its respect
faster and more agile than the others — but also more unstable
the lion that needs a pilot who “relies more on instincts than skill alone”
in just this breakdown, it’s clear how black could be mentor-like to red: “in control” where red is “temperamental”, “decisive” where red is “unstable”. we may not know every last detail of keith’s backstory, but in his own words, shiro is someone who helped him find a different direction. shiro didn’t put out keith’s fire, but (as steven yeun says), shiro taught keith how to tame his flames into a source that lights a path rather than burns it. keith, before shiro, probably lost any solid presence that could provide that.
steven yeun (keith’s voice actor): [keith] operates a little differently than the other paladins. he’s not the only one with a difficult family history, but his centers around the way that he is. he’s hotheaded for a reason, and he’s very talented without a lot of ways or things that he can use to express that. his naïveté mixed with his sheer will to make things happen for himself means his hotheadedness may be viewed as a defense mechanism. he comes from an obviously difficult and mysterious past that pushes him to be great … keith thinks with his heart often, and sometimes his heart is very fiery, and i think that leads him to brash decisions. sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong.
(source)
it’s fair if you’re thinking, well, this is all too vague to be concrete: we need to see keith’s past to fully understand shiro’s impact on keith.
but i’d argue that we do see shiro’s impact! there’s a strange fanon myth that shiro “coddles” keith — that shiro never calls keith out, that shiro lets keith get away with anything and everything.
off the top of my head, shiro:
tells lance and keith to focus on the mission whenever they butt heads, sometimes literally (“save your energy for fighting zarkon!”); he doesn’t hold back when keith initiates, nor does he single out lance when lance initiates
tells keith that people have to want to be part of a team, they can’t be forced (when keith scolds pidge for wanting to leave and find her family)
tells allura and keith that no matter their intent (saving the team), it’s even more dangerous for them to separate themselves from the team, as the team is always stronger together, and he repeats this to keith when they’re alone: “when you and allura ran off, it put us all in jeopardy”
tells keith that he needs to learn self-discipline and control his emotions, especially if he’s going to be a leader someday (when keith blows up at the others for not being as devoted to the marmora mission)
it isn’t “coddling” or “favoritism” that shiro doesn’t see keith through a black-and-white lens (completely “cold” or completely “hotheaded”). and it isn’t “coddling” or “favoritism” that shiro knows keith is willing to work on himself. “patience yields focus” is direct proof that shiro feels he can give keith advice that keith will take into consideration. it isn’t an “in one ear, out the other” situation.
in response to all of the above, keith amends his behavior:
in the keith versus lance example where keith had initiated the fight (“gotta be quick!” and darting in to take lance’s drone shot), keith initiates teaming up with lance in the later drone battle, alerting lance to targets and replying “good eye!” when lance alerts him right back
he listens attentively as pidge explains why she now wants to stay with team voltron, and says “good to have you back on the team” with a smile that pidge warmly returns — a complete tonal flip of their earlier argument
he and allura apologize for running off, acknowledging that shiro was right — “we thought we were doing the right thing,” admits keith — and even before that, keith does everything he can to quickly get himself and allura back to the team, with results both disastrous (blowing up their pod) and miraculous (unlocking a long distance mental link with red)! the next time keith goes off on a mission alone, it’s only after informing the entire team of his plan and asking for pidge’s help with cloaking the pod (as opposed to escaping with a stolen pod and without telling a soul); shiro is still worried, but takes the heads-up for what it is and tells keith to stay in contact — he’ll give keith cover and clear a path for him (teamwork!)
in his first mission with another teammate after the marmora mission, keith tries to control his emotions as he leads hunk through the weblum, providing clear instructions and encouragement; some impatience still shines through, but the mission is a success and hunk acknowledges that keith is actively trying to reach out and encourage him
i mean — can anyone blame keith for shiro being the person he “desperately wants to see”? as explored in my post about keith’s S2 arc, the marmora trials reveal that these are keith’s hopes and fears:
THE HOPES: having family; connecting to family; feeling that he belongs with a family and knowing exactly how he belongs, whether it’s found family (shiro; team voltron) or biological family (his dad; his mom)
THE FEARS: losing family; but that wanting family — that hoping for it, that pursuing it, that expressing that he wants it — makes him selfish and will distract him from being a paladin of voltron + the greater good of saving the universe
keith sees shiro in the mindscape because he’s the person he’s closest to, yes, but that just scratches the surface: he sees shiro because he knows shiro will help him zone in on the right focus.
now, there’s a small catch: hologram!shiro is not the real shiro.
josh keaton (shiro’s voice actor): it’s not really shiro, it’s keith’s perception of the worst [case scenario]. you get an insight into what his biggest fears are … being alone. and it seems like he’s constantly scared that he’s gonna do or say something wrong, and [then] he’s gonna lose shiro.
(source)
here’s a visual breakdown of expectation versus reality: hologram!shiro is calm and collected. he doesn’t react to keith being in both physical and emotional pain — he just congratulates him for lasting so long, like a detached instructor; he doesn’t ask how keith is feeling. sure, he gives keith a hand to help him stand, but he doesn’t linger: he instantly puts distance between them. “we’re all the family you need” sounds mechanical instead of heartfelt, a professional plea for keith to keep his focus on the mission instead of genuinely making keith understand how much he cares about him. he walks out as soon as he feels that keith isn’t going to listen, not even turning around as keith yells “shiro! wait!” and tries to stop him.
the real shiro, of course, wears his heart on his sleeve: his face is wrecked with fear and concern, and he doesn’t stop holding keith after helping him up. “keith, are you okay?” he only lets go because the blade makes it clear they’re not going to let keith leave with his knife, and shiro immediately charges to fight them singlehandedly. he doesn’t, not even for a second, consider siding with anyone but keith.
that being said, shiro doesn’t always wear his heart on his sleeve.
shiro: if you’re going to be a leader, you’ve got to get your head on straight.
keith: i’m sorry. i’ve just had a lot on my mind.
shiro: i know. we all have.
keith isn’t the only one that can be guarded. as black paladin, shiro strives to be “a born leader who is in control at all times” — he does his best to cope with his trauma internally. unless it involves information that can help their mission, he doesn’t open up about his time in prison, let alone how much he fears that what he’s done as “champion” makes him an unworthy paladin. when fear slips through the cracks, it’s from a triggered memory (and keith is almost always the first person to notice that something is wrong). this is a big part of why shiro clashes with slav, who does not attempt to hide how he copes with being a tortured prisoner.
shiro isn’t on zarkon’s level, though. zarkon thinks that weakness is an infection that should be cut off before it can spread. he refers to voltron and the black lion as weapons to wield, and claims that both shiro and keith are too weak to know how to use them. zarkon relies on singular power and intimidation to rule, and with the exception of haggar, does not appear to have personal advisors to assist him, or even, really, any personal relationships. we don’t even find out that his son exists until the end of S2.
zarkon: you have no idea how to command a weapon like this!
shiro: no one commands the black lion!
zarkon: you dare lecture me? do you think the black lion would allow such a feeble creature to pilot it? only the powerful can command it!
shiro: you’ve forgotten what’s most important between a lion and its paladin. it’s not about power. it’s about earning each other’s trust!
this causes shiro’s bond with black to strengthen while zarkon’s weakens, and in the following episode, red shows keith the same devotion after keith wakes up from the mindscape, choosing saving the universe over reuniting with his family. keith and shiro are both extremely passionate about their roles as “defenders of the universe”, and though they can be guarded about their own past and their own trauma, they each hope that the other will trust them as sources of stability.
shiro, being leader, does not only do this with keith — he has close relationships with pidge and allura and is sensitive to the burdens that they try to keep private: “owning who you are is going to make you a better paladin” (pidge) and “you should be resting; i know how you feel, but you have to step away for a while” (allura). but he’s a human being, not a robot, which means he can be self-contradictory — he doesn’t always follow his own advice.
he also isn’t a mind-reader, so as well as he knows keith, he still needs keith to talk to him. before the marmora mission, shiro has no idea what’s going on in keith’s head, even if he’s the only person to notice that something is going on. where others may see keith standing apart from the group as keith just being aloof or antisocial, shiro picks up that keith has anxiety about something, and isn’t convinced when keith acts like nothing is wrong:
shiro: is everything okay?
keith: yeah. why?
shiro: you just seem a bit anxious.
keith: i’m fine. just tired. like you said, i should — get some sleep.
this is a war, but shiro shouldn’t have to approach being leader the way that zarkon does. caring about people is not a weakness. shiro should not be forbidden from being close to someone or forced into emotional distance: into depriving keith of the emotional support that has canonically turned keith’s life around for the better.
which doesn’t mean that he deprives the others of emotional support! it just means that shiro has been aware of keith’s need for guidance even before voltron, even before kerberos, and that doesn’t translate into “isn’t aware of keith’s flaws” — it translates into “better awareness of where keith’s flaws come from, and how to approach them”, something the others aren’t as tuned into yet.
and you know what the best part is? keith gives shiro that same emotional support!
of course, the same goes in reverse: keith can’t know what shiro doesn’t tell him. when shiro looks troubled in the healing pod, keith doesn’t understand: “he just got blasted by a space witch and mauled by giant lizards. what dream could be worse than that?”
even though keith can tell when shiro is vulnerable, he doesn’t know every memory that flashes through shiro’s mind, nor how unstable the memories can make shiro feel. keith tries to open a conversation when they first reunite (gentle and tentative, but still curious). shiro, however, is as lost as keith is:
keith: so, what happened out there? where — were you?
shiro: i wish i could tell you. my head’s still pretty scrambled. i was on an alien ship, but somehow i escaped. it’s all a blur.
shiro changes the topic to “how did you know to come save me when i crashed?”, bewildered but in awe, and this is actually a good point to segue from. because shiro gets profoundly moved by saving people and being saved, and this can sometimes lead to shiro losing focus on the bigger picture and bigger risks.
the first example doesn’t cause any harm, though it has the potential to: they’re on sendak’s ship, and pidge wants to rescue the prisoners, saying they can’t just leave them there. it’s hurting shiro too, but he says they don’t have time — in war, you have to make tough choices, and right now, that choice is to find the red lion and leave. it isn’t until pidge reveals that sam holt is her dad that shiro changes his tune, telling pidge he’ll come with her and that keith will find red on his own. keith doesn’t like the idea of going by himself, but off he goes (“patience yields focus” on his mind), and everyone gets out alive.
the next two examples are more complicated:
shiro says that they aren’t going to destroy zarkon’s empire overnight and that hitting him where he lives would be a huge mistake — and then allura gets captured, sacrificing herself to save shiro. shiro immediately changes gears: they’re going in fast and without warning, and they’re not leaving without her. hunk points out that shiro had said this would be a suicide mission, but it’s keith who flat-out suggests that they shouldn’t go on the mission at all: “we’ll be delivering the universe’s only hope to the universe’s biggest enemy.”
when shiro recalls that ulaz had helped him escape prison, he’s determined to find him again. everyone objects to this, especially allura, but it’s keith’s objections that are obviously colored by a personal history with shiro: “shiro, are you sure you can trust this? i mean, after all the galra have done to you, they — they took your arm. you know i trust you, shiro. but this doesn’t feel right.”
keith almost does a boomerang of “patience yields focus”: he gets why shiro is emotionally moved in both of these examples, but fears his judgment is clouded by those emotions. and like keith learns from shiro’s call-outs, shiro goes through a trial and error period: in future missions, he constantly points out the dangers of bringing voltron to places where zarkon can track them and take control of the black lion.
also, this is a more comedic example, but still relevant: keith is right there with the other paladins in pulling faces at shiro when allura says she doesn’t need shiro’s permission to go on a mission. it’s small, but it’s further proof that keith doesn’t object to shiro being challenged, whether he or someone else is doing the challenging.
i think all of this can be misconstrued as “keith and shiro advise each other to keep their emotions in check, which means they don’t care about each other’s emotions.” they absolutely care! but they’re painfully aware of how not having control can lead to chaos, and in a way, they overestimate each other’s hold on having control. this is partially why they’re so adamant about each other’s leadership strengths: they each see the other as someone who can attain stability and inspire it in the rest of the team.
but once the marmora mission happens and keith’s fears are laid bare, shiro doesn’t ask keith to be leader again. and while keith does work on applying shiro’s advice, he still unwaveringly thinks of shiro as leader and black paladin, as he has from the beginning: “shiro’s the head.”
shiro: your father must have trusted [the galra] once. zarkon was the original black paladin, wasn’t he?
allura: that was a long time ago.
lance: wait, what?
keith: didn’t you see how he stole the black lion right out from shiro? or that he could do all that cool stuff with his bayard? shiro’s bayard? you know, the black one?
lance: whoa, what did you do?
shiro: i’ve got zarkon’s bayard.
keith: you mean you’ve got your bayard.
the mutuality of keith and shiro’s stability is perhaps best summed up in this parallel:
SEASON ONE
keith: it’s good to have you back.
shiro: it’s good to be back.
SEASON TWO
shiro: good to have you back, keith.
keith: good to be back.
whatever happens to them, whatever they win and whatever they lose, they have each other to come back to. and there’s an in-universe example of someone noticing this: allura, who has her own relationship of stability with shiro as co-leaders, witnesses shiro hugging keith goodbye, just as she hugs coran, her own found family. she knows that shiro has been traumatized by the galra, and it’s his word that she trusts in reaching out to the galra as allies. and here she sees shiro trusting keith, enough to hold him close and to want him to be safe. again: this is a relationship that helps to humanize keith and shiro, not only to the audience, but to the characters that notice it.
protection
keith: after getting booted from the garrison, i was kind of — lost, and — found myself drawn out to this place. it’s like something — some energy was telling me to search.
shiro: for what?
keith: well, i didn’t really know at the time, until i stumbled across this area. it’s an outcropping of giant boulders with caves covered in these ancient markings. each tells a slightly different story about a blue lion, but they all share clues leading to some event — some arrival happening last night. then, you showed up.
it’s a common headcanon that keith got booted from the garrison after the kerberos mission was announced a failure due to pilot error, killing shiro and the holts. the timeline adds up: pidge doesn’t become a garrison cadet until after she starts investigating, and by that time, lance has just been made fighter pilot (“hasta la later, keith!”); lance himself says he was upgraded to fighter class “thanks to [keith] washing out”, and iverson describes the situation as “had a discipline issue and flunked out.”
however that “discipline issue” manifested, it’s rather touching that keith — no matter how “lost” he felt — still managed to remember “patience yields focus”, throwing his entire concentration into following the lion’s energy and all of the cave clues about an arrival. and that was without even knowing that shiro would be the arrival.
so, imagine how devoted keith is to protecting shiro when he knows it’s shiro! actually, we don’t have to imagine it, because it’s such an ongoing thread. it happens a lot, y’all.
MONTAGE!
as soon as he realizes that this is shiro, that this is shiro alive and back on earth, keith doesn’t linger: he’s emotional, yes, but he snaps to it and cuts shiro free and lifts him up; and though he’s bemused by the involvement of lance/hunk/pidge, he adjusts to having them on his bike, coming up with an on-the-fly steering strategy and flying off a cliff just to outrun the garrison and get shiro somewhere safe
even though shiro can’t answer keith’s questions about where he was and what happened to him, keith notices shiro’s memory trigger on sendak’s ship (and thus begins a pattern)
shiro has another memory trigger while fighting the altean gladiator, and despite having just himself been knocked out by the gladiator, keith resurfaces to put himself between the gladiator and shiro, sword drawn and pushing against the gladiator’s staff — all of this as he looks back at shiro and asks if he’s okay
keith notices a robeast coming to arus while he/lance/hunk are separated from pidge and shiro, and instantly goes from relaxed to panicked: “oh no! we gotta get to our lions!” you see the first sign of keith taking leadership, too: “lay down some covering fire so they can get out of there!”
he then realizes that shiro has zoned out while facing the robeast, remembering him from the gladiator ring: “shiro, we gotta move! shiro, are you there? shiro!”
after the castle has clearly been corrupted by the galra crystal, keith’s first thought is that they’d left shiro with sendak, hinting that he knows this could put shiro in some form of danger (even if he doesn’t know exactly what’s said in sendak’s mind games): “sendak … wait — has anyone seen shiro?”
he doesn’t object to shiro and allura going on a mission alone, but his face is scrunched up with some sort of worry that eventually reveals itself as “how are you going to get shiro on board?”
when they go to central command to save allura (a mission that keith is already aware of being Peak Risky), he tells the others to save her without him because “shiro’s in trouble! i’m going in!”; he again asks “shiro, are you okay?!” as he hears shiro’s grunts of pain while zarkon overpowers the black lion, and simply tells lance that he’s going to do “whatever he can”, not even stopping when he knows it’s zarkon and that zarkon is the original black paladin (and remember, this does not remotely shake his view of shiro being the true black paladin and that being shiro’s bayard, thanks very much): literally the only thing that stops the fight is shiro regaining black and scooping up red — “i got you, buddy!”
you can basically put the entire first episode of S2 in this bullet point, but i’ll try to summarize: once he gets used to his post-wormhole surroundings, keith starts worrying about shiro; tries to get in contact with shiro and smiles and laughs when he does; worries about shiro’s wound; recalls “patience yields focus” to come up with a plan to get to shiro; tells shiro to stay with him and lets out more relieved laughter when he sees the black lion; and, as a final desperate measure, approaches the black lion and asks to be let in: “i know i’m not shiro, but he’s in trouble — we need to help him”
once shiro is safe and sound, keith still asks after his wound and doesn’t find shiro’s jokes about it funny — and really becomes 100% serious when shiro starts talking like he’s not going to make it (“stop talking like that”), which happens again when shiro brings up leader!keith a second time: “why are we even talking about this? nothing is going to happen to you”
he stays by shiro’s healing pod as his wounds heal, and looks openly soft and relieved when he wakes up; seeing shiro wounded so recently probably adds even more ammo to keith’s fears that ulaz is untrustworthy (“they took your arm”), but once he knows that shiro had been right, he’s the one to track down shiro and comfort him about ulaz’s sacrifice, apologizing for not trusting ulaz
when they get back from the space mall, keith looks around and, not finding shiro, asks where he is; and as soon as shiro gets back, he asks him if he was able to form a stronger bond with the black lion
several factors lead to keith’s decision to give up his knife, but what makes him regain his strength and tell everyone to stop fighting is seeing shiro activate his galra hand against the blade of marmora
remembering last time, keith is attuned to shiro during the big battle with zarkon, yelling “fight it, shiro!” as zarkon yet again tries to control black and invade shiro’s mind; and when it looks like shiro has passed out and zarkon has succeeded, keith gets himself together and directs the team: “something’s wrong with shiro — guys, we can’t let zarkon get the black lion!”
he notices shiro isn’t moving after the battle and he and pidge carry the black lion back to the castle, where — well, you don’t need me to remind you of keith’s desperate run to the empty black lion as he calls out for shiro, but: yeah, that sure does happen! :(
keith is a mirror of the red lion. on the surface, they are both hotheaded; fast; impulsive; instinctive; and difficult to open up. but at their core? they channel all of that not into destruction, but into protecting who they love!
and keith protects people beyond shiro (click for detailed examples)! keith 100% cares about people other than shiro, and shiro being his closest relationship doesn’t negate that, just as allura and coran’s relationship doesn’t negate them caring about the paladins.
but don’t forget the framework of the virtual mindscape. shiro walks out, and the mindscape becomes keith’s dad, whose dialogue implies that he and keith have been separated for a long time: “so many years have passed. don’t you want to catch up?” keith says of course he does. the setting is the desert shack — the last place keith could call home or his own. add the loaded baggage of keith not knowing where his knife comes from, or, apparently, much about his mom, and you get the image of someone without a lot of stability in his past. this hasn’t made him resentful of people: slow to open up to anyone and everyone, yes, but still yearning for connection and for people to call family. shiro, in the absence of traditional family, has become the closest presence. of course keith is protective of him, of course he fears losing him! he’s lost family before and he’s lost shiro before!
think of how much it means to keith that his fears aren’t reality: that shiro isn’t going to abandon him because he makes mistakes, or because he doesn’t always do or say the right thing. it cannot be overstated that this isn’t “coddling” or “favoritism”: it’s being a friend; it’s being family; it’s not giving up on someone. shiro doesn’t look at the fact that keith has been omitting things from him — the knife, and his fears about it — and decide to leave keith to fight that fight on his own. he may not completely understand keith’s past, but he’s willing to protect keith’s right to explore it; he doesn’t think it makes keith selfish, or someone to walk out on. this doesn’t change with the galra reveal, no matter how surprised he is: it only makes him hold keith closer.
when shiro talks about something happening to him, it’s because of his own fears. he isn’t saying “i’m going to willingly leave you”, he’s saying “i may fail” — and it’s a complete sign of trust that he thinks keith is someone who can pick up those pieces and put them back together. this isn’t the garrison. this isn’t about keith being “the best pilot” in his class. sure, he relies on keith’s flying to get them out of tight spots (asteroid fields, black holes), just as he relies on hunk’s strength or pidge’s hacking or lance’s sharpshooting. but it’s so much deeper than that.
i mentioned that without their relationship, keith and shiro “would exist more as pedestals for lance instead of people with their own backstories.” and i think some people still see them that way; and i get it, because lance’s fears are what some deem the most “human” — not all of us can relate to being alien orphans or alien prisoners, but can relate to not feeling as valued as other people (or one specific person). that’s completely valid, but, to me, becomes invalid when it turns into acting like keith and shiro aren’t human, or like their “alien” plotlines strip them of humanity and all that comes with it, including flaws and fears. a lot of us can also relate to PTSD; to struggling to maintain stability; to not just biological family but to found family; to fears of being alone and abandoned.
think of how much it means to shiro that after a year of captivity and having to fight for survival, he knows he can rely on keith to protect him. sometimes keith does it without being asked, like fighting zarkon, and sometimes shiro asks him to, like fighting the lizards. it’s true that shiro looks at the whole team as fighters that are stronger together — who can win together if they work together — but on a personal level, he has been shown that keith doesn’t want him to fight alone and that keith not only wants him to survive, but will fight for him to survive.
like i said: this post is only being written based on S1 and S2. i don’t know what’s going to happen in S3! shiro’s disappearance is a major curveball for keith; he’s going to want to find him and protect him, now more than ever. i’m sure mistakes will be made. i’m sure he’ll have to be reminded that patience yields focus. he’ll need help, and he’ll have to let in that help. the ideal is that he won’t internalize everything as his own burden: that he’ll work with the others, because unlike shiro’s first disappearance, keith isn’t alone — he has a team, and he has to be willing to open up to them. they’re never going to be what shiro is to him, but they can develop relationships of equal strength!
keith and shiro are flawed people and therefore their relationship is flawed: they both need to work on communicating and on not bottling up emotions. but even so, they have a mutual understanding that the other will be there for them throughout those emotions (bottled up or exploded), and that’s so important after everything they’ve been through.
sometimes, fandom plays a game of telephone: fanon characterizations become so widespread that canon characterizations get lost in the chaos. this only increases when there are half-year gaps between new seasons, as that allows a lot of time for fanon to overshadow canon.
canon!keith is super overshadowed by fanon!keith. i’m going to clarify that, because i know some people may misread it as “yet another keith stan who can’t handle fandom talking about keith’s flaws.” that’s not what’s happening here. there is a difference between “let’s talk about keith’s flaws as they actually are in canon!” and “let’s act like fanon interpretations are 100% canon.”
keith is, without a doubt, one of the more guarded characters, which means he’s bound to be misinterpreted not only by fandom, but by the other characters! and that results in people taking those misinterpretations as fact instead of trying to unpack keith on their own. this skyrocketed after S2, because people had expected the galra!keith reveal to involve every character’s reaction. and when that didn’t happen, people were disappointed, because that’s what they’d been most looking forward to from the storyline.
and that’s fine! i’m not saying you can’t still want to see those reactions. but again, when there’s so much interest in How People Interpret Keith, there’s less interest in Interpreting Actual Keith.
since S2, fanon has watered keith down to a hotheaded emo who:
doesn’t care about being a team
doesn’t care about his teammates
only cares about himself and maybe shiro and is only ever out for himself and maybe shiro, ironically painting keith as the unfeeling monster all of that fanon galra!keith stuff argued against
it’s — frustrating. so if you’re up for it, i want to delve into keith’s canon characterizations in S1 and S2, and why S2 is literally about how much he cares for others + wants to connect to them and protect them! keith’s flaw is that he doesn’t always communicate that in ways that everyone understands, and that’s 100% something he’s going to have to work on. but S2 does show him willing to put in that work, even if there’s still more work to be done. and if you’re interpreting him from the baseline that he doesn’t care at all, you’re already missing half of his development.
i’m taking a detour back to S1 because some of the anti-S2!keith sentiment is like “S1!keith would never, i don’t know S2!keith, i only know S1!keith” when S1 actually sets up everything that S2!keith is and then has S2 challenge him on it, strengthen it, and hone it. in other words, it’s a basic character arc.
keith is Super Serious about being a paladin of voltron and has been from day one!
in the first ever episode, the team argues about whether they should stay and face sendak, or leave via wormhole. hunk and lance are on Team We’re Leaving and pidge and keith are on Team We’re Staying; pidge, specifically, says that the galra will capture more prisoners if they don’t stop them, and the audience and the characters eventually learn that she’s thinking of her own imprisoned family. keith does not have a comparable personal motive, which is made very clear when pidge shifts to Team I’m Leaving (to Find My Family) a few episodes later:
keith: you can’t leave!
pidge: you can’t tell me what to do!
keith: if you leave — we can’t form voltron. and that means we can’t defend the universe against zarkon. you’re not the only one with a family! all these arusians have families, everyone in the universe has families … you’re putting the lives of two people over the lives of everyone else in the entire galaxy —
shiro: keith! that’s not how a team works. people have to want to be a part of it, they can’t be forced.
shiro understands that this isn’t keith being an unfeeling monster: it’s keith wanting his teammates to be equally determined about their mission, and therefore not wanting the team to break apart. when pidge later realizes that she sees team voltron as a potential new family — that she wants to work together and “stop zarkon for all of our families” — keith smiles and says, genuinely, “good to have you back on the team.” hunk simultaneously realizes that he no longer wants to leave; that he wants to return to the balmera and save shay and her people. the fact that hunk and pidge need these personal motives to fully embody the mission doesn’t make them less noble than keith, nor does it make keith heartless. it just means that keith doesn’t need to literally see/bond with zarkon’s victims to be motivated to do the right thing. you can absolutely argue that shiro’s trauma gives keith that extra edge — extra determination to seek justice for what’s been done to someone so important to him — but keith is still motivated by the greater good itself.
(if you’re sitting there thinking “lmao but buddy, that’s probably going to change when shiro goes missing” — i am very aware of that risk, and it will be discussed in this post + my keith and shiro post! but for keith’s priorities to be tested, they have to start from a different place to begin with, right? and that’s what this scene with pidge sets up: that to begin with, keith is able to prioritize the greater good over personal motives and feelings. we’ll see what happens when he’s in pidge’s position!)
i know i just said it, but since this is where fanon loses its grasp on him, i feel like i REALLY need to stress that being motivated by the greater good does not make keith heartless. keith can prioritize the greater good and STILL care about people. in fact, he’s pretty openly into bonding with them, whether they’re teammates or the allies they meet along the way (and these are just S1 examples):
a good place to start is the red lion itself! red may not be a “person”, but the lions are sentient magical beings that form connections with their paladins that cannot be explained by science alone. keith is the last paladin to find his lion, and he’s anxious about it enough to ask the others for guidance, and they all chime in, even lance. keith is also obviously anxious when shiro tells keith to go on ahead — “by myself?” — further underlining that keith isn’t as Lone Wolf as he may superficially appear. as his frustration grows, he relies on shiro’s “patience yields focus” to calm himself down and zone in on red, and once he gets there, he’s all smiles. “it’s me, keith! open up.” red doesn’t, not immediately, so cue the frustration again: “it’s me — keiiiiith, your — I AM YOUR PALADIN!” this is one of those blatant examples of how keith may not exactly be the smoothest talker — he’s what most would consider socially awkward — but his intent is very much to bond; to work as a team. “I’M BONDING WITH YOU! come on, we’re connected!” you even see him try to knock like lance did to open up blue’s barrier, revealing how much keith watches people and absorbs their methods. he’s an adaptable learner and fighter, passionate and relentless, and this is what gets red to finally open up.
“it’s been an honor flying with you, boys!” — despite only having a close relationship with shiro, keith says this to all of them when it looks like they’re on the brink of death. when the mission ends up a success, he’s thrilled: “heck yeah we did!” to shiro’s “we did it!” keith is not at all hesitant to embrace teamwork. he’s committed to it during the bonding/training exercises — he’s only distracted by a) shiro freezing up in front of the gladiator, keith running to shield and protect him; and b) lance’s rivalry-fueled goading. he tries to stay level-headed and keep lance focused on what’s important (working together): “just concentrate on keeping me safe” + “you’re not listening”; but keith totally caves when lance challenges him during the nosedive exercise, speeding up to match lance and beat him — which may not necessarily be “bonding” in the sense of them now being best friends forever with matching friendship bracelets, but it does show keith’s capability to lose his grip on being Super Serious to give into something fairly light and ridiculous.
this extends into the food fight, keith literally taking a stand against allura and thanking lance for backing him up. he and pidge also work together to toss the first batch of food goo — “go loose, pidge!” — and they delightedly cackle throughout. he’s again super smiley when allura points out that they’ve finally worked together as one — “hey! she’s right!” — and when lance says he doesn’t actually hate keith right now. keith rides that wave, smiling as he tells lance that he’s going to be “lights out” as soon as his head hits the pillow, and he fondly teases hunk (“g-forces mess with your head a little bit?”) after hunk rambles about how connected he feels they all are. and though he’s surprised when hunk pulls him into a side-hug, keith doesn’t remotely flinch or lean away from it. he just smiles wider! he’s happy!
keith is still Super Serious about the mission, though. unlike the others, he isn’t instantly swayed by how cute and small klaizap is — “i’m not taking any chances” — and he’s confused when allura says that the paladins are going to visit the arusian village, because isn’t their mission “to get off this planet and fight zarkon”? but allura elaborates that part of their mission is “to spread peace and diplomacy”, and it’s clear that keith isn’t as intuitively comfortable with this as he is with flying and fighting. allura/hunk/lance let the arusians flock to them and hug them, but keith walks away. nevertheless! he accepts a hug when an arusian leaps at him, even if he admits this is uncharacteristic for him: “i don’t usually hug strangers, but — man, you are cuddly.” he softens afterwards, quietly enjoying the village and only breaking away when he sees that pidge and shiro are in trouble.
the castle party is quite the Social Event for keith! he talks to his arusian cuddle buddy, and he hangs out with hunk and lance, trying out the team cheer + joining hunk in poking and prodding at lance when he faints from the nasty space nectar. keith later spits out the same nectar in hunk’s face, but hunk rolls with it, making keith and the arusians laugh. it’s all really fun and therefore really sad that this is the same night hunk/lance/pidge all express wanting to leave!
when the galra invade, keith is the first person to volunteer to help the arusian village: the “weakness” of “valuing the lives of others” that sendak had counted on. keith is also worried when lance is wounded, and despite blowing up at her earlier, keith works to help pidge take back the castle. he’s glad when she chooses to stay and be a team, as shiro had said it should be done, and smiles supportively when she reveals that she’s a girl, joining the others in lessening her nerves.
he’s also glad when he goes to make sure lance is okay and lance says that they are a good team — glad to the extent that keith is the most impatient for lance to get out of the healing pod, and then pretty bummed when lance acts like their Bonding Moment didn’t happen. “i cradled you in my arms!” this doesn’t make him suddenly turn on lance, though; he has no objections to saving the blue lion from rolo and nyma, and he gives back lance’s teasing as good as he gets it: “what’s that? i, uh … you’re cutting out, i can’t — i can’t hear you.”
speaking of rolo and nyma! keith is more immediately willing to trust them than he’d been willing to trust klaizap, which sort of sucks for him, because rolo and nyma actually do have a hidden agenda. he sticks with shiro and allura as they talk to rolo, and when rolo says that there isn’t much galra resistance, keith attempts to assure him with “well, we’re gonna change all that!” he even leans against rolo’s ship as rolo “works”, not antisocial in the slightest. so, understandably, he’s pouty when rolo and nyma’s true natures are revealed, and is the one to repeatedly tell hunk “okay, we get it!” before the rest of the team joins in. this has really been a day of Bonding Betrayal for keith, huh?
he’s also betrayed when shiro participates in the laser gun sound effects, but keith still offers hunk a tiny finger gun even as he tells hunk to calm down. shiro points out that hunk is just excited because it’s his first rescue mission, and shiro and keith share a smile that makes you wonder if they’re reminiscing about something in their past — or, maybe they’re just hyped that everyone else is hyped! either way, it’s a cute moment that tells us keith doesn’t mind how enthusiastic the others are even if he tries to be the Only Sane Man.
he’s teamed up with lance for the balmera mission, but isn’t bitter when lance has a better strategy than he does: he smiles, and then smiles again when he and lance come up with the same strategy later on. keith definitely wants to be “a good team” with lance — with all of them, but it’s a different kind of noteworthy with lance because of lance instigating their rivalry. keith would have reason to not particularly care about cooperating with him, but cooperate he does!
the remaining S1 eps are too action-packed to offer much downtime bonding, but when allura has to let go of hologram!alfor, keith is the only one not looking at her: his eyes are closed and his arms are crossed, as if trying to repress emotion; he seems sympathetic to her pain. this is similar to when pidge reveals that commander holt is her dad: keith doesn’t say anything, but his face is sympathetic. considering what we later learn of keith’s own dad, it’s possible that these are subtle signs of empathy.
i’m going to talk about keith’s objections to the Rescue Allura Mission further down, but this is the more appropriate section to point out that keith still shows how much he cares: he’s the first to notice that shiro comes back without her, and even though the others shut down his objections to the mission, he doesn’t sulk in a corner. he still involves himself in the planning, and the only reason he tells the others “you guys get the princess without me” is because shiro also needs saving. his awareness of how risky the mission is doesn’t stop him from taking risks once they’re in the thick of it — from looking out for his team.
you get the idea! i didn’t give too many shiro examples, both because i have a separate shiro post and because i wanted to prove that the fanon version of keith — “hotheaded emo who isolates himself from people who aren’t shiro” — does not exist. if S1!keith does isolate or differentiate himself, it’s almost always because (you guessed it) he’s focused on the overall mission. this doesn’t mean he Hates People + doesn’t want to bond with them, it means that he’s charged by a unique drive, just as they all are.
keith’s drive can manifest in fairly straightforward things like using his free time to train alone, or to go on a self-appointed druid sidequest. or to, you know, FIGHT ZARKON ONE-ON-ONE BECAUSE HE THINKS IT WILL END THE GALRA EMPIRE! but his drive also sometimes manifests in chiding his teammates, especially lance. because lance wants to one-up keith, lance takes keith criticizing his footing as “i did something cool and you can’t handle it” when keith’s actual concern is “your kick ruined our balance. we fell.” this is pretty emblematic of how keith doesn’t relate to lance’s drive for fame/adoration/being the best, literally telling him “it’s not about the glory, lance — it’s about freeing prisoners from zarkon.”
i know it’s tempting to look at keith’s aesthetic (fingerless gloves, cropped jacket, crossed arms, The Pout) and simplify him to a mysterious Bad Boy archetype (doesn’t care about following the rules + breaks off to defy them); but i think that we as a nation need to face the fact that KEITH IS ACTUALLY A BIG NERD who is very serious about staying on track and whose “off-track” moments are still doing things that (he hopes) will help the track of their mission. and don’t forget that he’ll be the one to tell the others to get back on track, to the point of getting straight-up mocked for it, but that’s jumping ahead to S2.
so, maybe you’re wondering: if S1!keith is Super Serious about their mission, then why the hell does this happen:
keith: or maybe we shouldn’t go on this mission at all. think about it: we’ll be delivering the universe’s only hope to the universe’s biggest enemy.
hunk: keith, that’s cold even for you. what if it was one of us? what if it was me? you wouldn’t leave me, would you? would you?
keith: i’m not saying i like the idea! i’m just thinking like a paladin.
lance: no, you’re thinking of yourself because you’re too scared to do what’s right!
maybe you’re with hunk and lance; maybe you think this makes keith cold and cowardly. as pidge says, everyone is upset because they lost allura, and emotions are running high, even shiro’s (especially shiro’s, because he feels personally responsible). but keith is striving to stay logical and rational. he isn’t saying “i don’t care if we leave allura to die!” — he’s saying that if they go to central command with voltron, they’re not going to be able to save allura or the universe if they’re overpowered. allura agrees with him and zarkon counts on it, because they know what team voltron doesn’t: that zarkon is connected to the black lion and therefore has the power to overtake voltron. keith doesn’t discover these specifics until he fights zarkon directly, but again, keith doesn’t need nitty-gritty details to be wary of a plan that could lead to the destruction of their mission and therefore the universe as a whole. it’s the exact opposite of not caring about saving lives; it’s wanting to ensure that personal feelings and personal motives don’t prevent that life-saving from happening.
and then S2 is like, “hey, let’s make keith PUT HIS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS.”
S2 & the reveal of keith’s personal motives
remember “if S1!keith does isolate or differentiate himself, it’s almost always because (you guessed it) he’s focused on the overall mission”? this gets MUCH more complicated for S2!keith, because personal feelings — personal motives — are rapidly emerging, and they scare the quiznak out of him.
shiro: is that a hologram?
kolivan: his suit has the ability to create a virtual mindscape, reflecting its wearer’s greatest hopes and fears. and, at this moment, your friend desperately wants to see you.
a recap of keith’s virtual mindscape:
hologram!shiro helps keith up from where he’s fallen, exhausted and in pain from fighting the trials of marmora. he praises keith’s endurance, but says it’s ultimately time to get out of there — that keith should just give up his knife. keith insists that he can’t, because it’s the only thing that ties him to his past and to who he is, to which hologram!shiro says coolly, “you know exactly who you are: a paladin of voltron. we’re all the family you need.” keith affirms that shiro is family to him, but he still has to do this, and now hologram!shiro gets mad. “just give up the knife, keith! you’re only thinking of yourself, as usual!” keith pauses, eyes wide, but gathers himself and says he’s made his choice; and hologram!shiro snaps that this means keith has chosen to be alone. he walks away, and keith runs after him, yelling for shiro to wait —
— and then the scene transforms into keith’s desert shack, where his dad is waiting for him. unlike hologram!shiro, hologram!dad is all about keith and the knife. “you’re home, son. so many years have passed. i have so much to tell you. don’t you want to catch up?” (“of course i do,” says keith, soft and vulnerable.) “your mother gave [the knife] to me.” (“mom?” asks keith, soft and vulnerable.) keith is clearly invested — “you gotta tell me, dad! i have to know!” — but he is also clearly invested in the galra attack that is happening outside, the red lion waiting for him. hologram!dad tells him to ignore it, that keith’s mom will be there soon — if keith doesn’t wait for her, if keith walks out that door, he’ll never find out who he is. but keith can’t take standing there as the world crumbles, and though it’s obviously making him crumble, he says goodbye to his dad and walks out that door.
THE HOPES: having family; connecting to family; feeling that he belongs with a family and knowing exactly how he belongs, whether it’s found family (shiro; team voltron) or biological family (his dad; his mom)
THE FEARS: losing family; but that wanting family — that hoping for it, that pursuing it, that expressing that he wants it — makes him selfish and will distract him from being a paladin of voltron + the greater good of saving the universe
this is Heavy Stuff, so i’m Heavily Confused when people say “S2 wastes a lot of time on keith only for us not to discover anything new — we all guessed galra!keith and it just ended up being anticlimactic because we didn’t see every last character react to galra!keith.”
i again wonder if the problem is that post-S1 fanon built up expectations for the main conflict to be keith openly despairing that team voltron would see him as a purple monster, and then team voltron soothing keith that team voltron is still his family.
but S2 canon is telling us that outside of a virtual mindscape, keith is still scared to express that he wants family! he absolutely wants it, but keith wants family so badly — fears losing family so badly — that those personal feelings/motives have enough power to make him lose focus. and he can’t do that, which means it’s frustrating for him to watch others do that. this all expands on the drive you saw in S1!keith. S2 confirms that he hasn’t had a traditional upbringing; that unlike pidge/hunk/lance/coran/allura, he can’t comfortably open up about how much he misses his family and wants to go back to them, because he doesn’t have that solid frame of reference! if “so many years have passed” since keith last saw his dad, then keith lost his family before voltron and before kerberos. the closest tangible presence is shiro, who he’s lost before, and who is now talking like keith will lose him again! (spoiler alert, he will!)
let’s rewind, because i jumped into the marmora trials without talking about the important S2 bits leading up to the marmora trials. important S2 bits that people see as keith being out of character — as in, the writers forgetting who keith is? — instead of keith within the universe acting uncharacteristically because (it bears repeating) keith is scared that a) he’s going to lose found family (shiro), and b) the truth of his biological family will destroy his part in their mission. and this makes him act in ways that S1!keith didn’t, because he didn’t yet have those personal feelings/motives gnawing at him. does that make sense?
generally, keith doesn’t hesitate to follow shiro’s leadership: sometimes he even does it with a prompt “yes, sir!” as he flies off. but in S2, whenever shiro suggests that keith take over as leader, keith responds with the opposite of ease: “stop talking like that; why are we even talking about this? nothing is going to happen to you.” this isn’t about keith worrying that he doesn’t have the skillset; this is about keith fearing that keith + leadership = losing shiro. this is keith putting shiro over the mission. he also hesitates when shiro wants to find ulaz, even though shiro says the risk is worth it if they can find new allies: “shiro, are you sure you can trust this? i mean, after all the galra have done to you, they — they took your arm.” keith remains worried even after seeing ulaz’s blade and knowing that he has the same symbol on his own knife (and therefore knowing that he has a key to his past): “you know i trust you, shiro. but this doesn’t feel right.”
A SIDEBAR ABOUT KEITH & SHIRO
keith wanting to protect shiro isn’t news! S1 has several hints, but S2 fleshes them out further. there’s still backstory to uncover: how did they meet, and how did shiro change keith’s life for the better? and are the fan theories accurate — did keith get kicked out of the garrison because he started acting out after the kerberos mission “failed due to pilot error”?
backstory gaps aside, we’re still given enough to understand that keith sees shiro as a great source of safety and balance, which i write about in more detail here. in S1, though, keith doesn’t let his personal feelings for shiro overpower the mission: he doesn’t even know that he’s going to find shiro when he follows the energy in the desert, so he isn’t solely motivated by shiro, either (even if finding him is an obvious emotional relief). the one time he slips in S1, it’s when he doesn’t want to find red without shiro, but he still goes through with it! and that’s the thing — S2 may instill the fear that something could happen to shiro, making keith hesitant to say “yes, absolutely, i’ll do it!” when shiro talks about his hypothetical departure. but when the hypothetical becomes reality — shiro in danger — keith has proven time and time again that in the heat of that moment, he won’t at all hesitate to go after shiro. he’ll even fly the black lion to do it — so maybe that motive will push him to fly black when shiro truly does disappear!
it isn’t until keith gets irrefutable proof of ulaz’s loyalty that he’s willing to trust the blade of marmora, and he apologizes to shiro for doubting ulaz. and this is where keith subtly starts having personal motives concerning himself (i.e. not just shiro), even though the other characters don’t know it. but keith knows that he somehow has a connection to the blade, and now that he’s convinced they aren’t evil or manipulating shiro, he wants to chase that connection. he defends ulaz against allura and throws out that they should “meet up with the rest of ulaz’s group, finish what we started”; it’s shiro who has to remind him that they can’t go until they find out how zarkon is tracking them, otherwise they’ll risk losing the blade as allies. remember how S1!keith would normally point out something logical and rational like this? oops.
keith continues to chase answers, even asking coran about the galra coming to earth; this is the first time keith has ever brought up earth, and it’s to figure out his history, not to reminisce about it as the others have done. he gets cut off by pidge detecting the olkari’s sporse code, and he sits apart from the group as she rambles, looking angry — this isn’t his default “crossed arms but still listening” pose, he’s impatient and frustrated about being torn away from his own “research”, so he basically snaps at pidge to get to the point.
i don’t mean to paint S2!keith as constantly on edge, because he isn’t! he has a blast during the spore fight; he seems quite at peace in the olkari’s forest; he’s right there with lance in wanting to go swimming; and he and lance actually have a lot of nice teamwork during these eps, both in the elevator and outside of the elevator.
a particularly sweet keith moment is how deeply he’s affected by “we’re all made up of the same cosmic dust”: “so, that means — we’re all related. this ship, those stars, the olkari … even the galra.” it’s similar to hunk’s “we’re totally connected: no secrets, no barriers, no nothing!” + keith’s teasing “g-forces mess with your head a little bit?”, so hunk gets him back this time — “i think keith just blew his own mind!” — but we, the audience, again know what the characters don’t: that keith is not only trying to make peace with maybe being galra, but trying to soften the others into the idea — into not seeing him any differently, because he’ll still be connected to them. they’ll all still be made up of the same cosmic dust. guys. :(
but the squishy feelings can’t last forever! reality ensues: zarkon is tracking them without mercy, and keith wants to face him — “enough running!” — but shiro and allura say it’s too dangerous; and sure enough, when they do face him, zarkon again tries to overpower shiro’s mind and take the black lion. allura is convinced this is her fault — that zarkon is tracking them through her — but keith says it’s him, because zarkon must have imprinted on him when they fought, or something. the lies! he even lies to shiro, though shiro approaches him privately and kindly to ask if anything is wrong, since keith seems anxious; but keith brushes him off and says he just needs sleep. and this is where S2!keith has perhaps his biggest departure from S1!keith:
HE MAKES PLANS TO LEAVE TEAM VOLTRON. this is everything he once exploded at pidge for considering! to be fair, keith isn’t leaving to find his family; but he is worried that having galra family is how team voltron is being tracked, and he’s prepared to remove himself from the team if that’s the case. it’s understandable that this fear is on his mind, with the nightmare he just had: the red lion attacking him; a military galra uniform replacing the paladin armor; and zarkon — who in reality told keith that he fights like a galra soldier! — threatening that he can find keith anywhere. in the pod, keith asks allura if they even can go back if they’re the ones being tracked — except who would pilot the castle or create wormholes? — and though keith had been the one to remind pidge that her leaving would mean not being able to form voltron, it’s allura who has to remind keith that he’s a paladin and is needed to form voltron. yikes.
A SIDEBAR ABOUT KEITH & ALLURA
this can be a hard dynamic to analyze, because until now, they haven’t had much one-on-one interaction; but i’d argue that their characters have a lot of parallels. if keith and shiro are Team Patience Yields Focus, then keith and allura are Team Action Over Caution. make no mistake, they can be cautious if they think something will hurt the team as a whole — remember that they both saw the risk in bringing voltron to central command, even if it meant rescuing allura. but as this pod plan proves, they don’t mind acting on their own. when it comes to putting themselves in danger — acting individually for the greater good of the team — then they’ll put Action Over Caution and throw themselves into the line of fire. so, says allura: “i’m not going to stop you. i’m going to join you.”
the one time they work together in S1, it’s because they’ve both been tricked into thinking the arusians are in trouble, and though they end up barred from the castle, they still do what they can to help pidge on the inside; and as soon as they can get back in, they only allow themselves a brief second of happiness before getting serious and running into battle, with a plan of action already formed. plus, we’ve seen that they’ll put aside their own personal feelings for the greater good: they both leave behind the holograms of their dads, as much as they miss them and want them to be a presence, because the choice is between that and people being in danger. and of course, allura sacrificed herself to save shiro and the team; and keith fought zarkon to save shiro and the team. shiro is often a calming balance to their fire, which is why he tells them that their running off puts the team in more danger — that the team is always stronger together.
however, it’s worth noting that allura isn’t prepared to leave team voltron permanently: unlike keith, she doesn’t bring along all of her belongings. she has every intention of returning. allura, though she’s lost her family, is still motivated by them, and often mentions her dad in speeches about continuing his mission. she doesn’t feel a need to completely divorce her drive from personal feelings/motives, even if it’s painful for her. you can see this in how she talks in the pod: allura is very open about the trauma zarkon has wrought, saying she knows too well how quickly galra can turn. but keith does everything he can to sound impersonal; to sound objective, like a diplomat. like he has no personal motives behind “it means something to me! it means some of [the galra] are actually willing to help! and we could use all the help we can get!” they’re coming at this from extremely different family histories (one grew up knowing who they were and what their purpose was; one did not), and therefore coming from extremely different perspectives, even if both perspectives are about losing family and wanting family. neither of them are wrong for the way they feel, but they’re not going to reach closure overnight. and yet they still work together to survive the sudden explosion into zero gravity, so! it’s a tense situation, but they’re still teammates, and they’re still bonded by their devotion to the overall team.
phew, okay, so that happens! as does finding out that zarkon is tracking them through the black lion, which means keith can go back to researching the history of his knife, and he does just that at the space mall (instead of looking for teludav lenses, their assigned mission). and then finally comes the time to go to the blade’s headquarters, which holds keith’s entire focus. he increasingly loses patience with lance/hunk/pidge for going off-topic, and lance goes from mocking him to “okay, jeez, calm down.” listen to the difference between S1!keith and S2!keith in arguing that they have no other option, that this is their mission and they can’t turn back: the difference is that S2!keith has a strong personal motive. shiro is again tuned into keith’s behavior being out of the ordinary — “you kind of blew up at everybody back there” — but he still understands that keith’s devotion is to the team, even if his communication of that needs fine-tuning via self-control and self-discipline. and he still wants keith to accompany him to the headquarters, which lance doesn’t take very well!
A SIDEBAR ABOUT KEITH & LANCE
or, more accurately, “a sidebar about how lance sees keith”? i’m going to be blunt: i think a good bulk of fandom misinterpreting keith comes from lance being the fandom favorite + seeing keith through lance’s eyes. and that makes sense, because lance canonically has a biased viewpoint of keith, but that’s the keyword: biased. he isn’t always right!
which doesn’t mean he’s always wrong. they have the building blocks of a fire/water dynamic — there’s even a visual metaphor when their lions first reveal their elemental powers: keith’s fire almost hurts the balmera, but lance’s ice stops it. this extends to some of their personal interactions. lance is another balancing character who will point out when keith is running too “hot”, potentially putting others at risk — like when keith almost attacks without considering the balmera, or when keith’s druid sidequest could blow their cover. and in a shiro-esque move, lance says “we’ve got to stick together! what are you doing?” when keith says he’s going to do “whatever he can” to stop zarkon by himself.
this all shows great potential on lance’s part, but unfortunately, it’s still just potential. for the majority of the time, he doesn’t balance keith out because he’s too busy losing his own cool when it comes to keith!
lance: so, any thoughts on who’s gonna join you on this little mission? i’m thinking things might get a little hot, so you’re gonna want someone who can stay cool.
shiro: you’re right. keith, you’re coming with me.
lance: keith’s a hothead! he’s probably going to shoot first and ask questions later! and they’re not gonna be able to answer his questions because they’ll be dead!
from lance’s perspective, he’s been in keith’s shadow since the garrison: “i hope i don’t need to remind you that the only reason you’re here is that the best pilot in your class had a discipline issue and flunked out.” so while it’s understandable that he has this blind spot, it doesn’t make it any less of a blind spot that prevents him from seeing keith as a fully realized person with his own personal feelings and motives. this definitely needs to be a two-way street — if keith isn’t opening up, we can’t ask lance to magically read keith’s mind — but someone being reserved doesn’t normally stop lance from trying.
lance can be a perceptive People Person: for example, he realizes that iverson bringing up the kerberos mission always sets pidge off, and he tells pidge that they’re going to have to bond and share secrets if they want to be a good team. but he has yet to extend a similar hand to keith (at least, not a hand that he doesn’t yank back), because to lance, keith represents someone he wants to either Be or Beat.
and that results in provoking keith and projecting onto keith, because he assumes keith feels the same way; that keith wants what lance wants, and is always going to get it. when we first meet keith as a character, it’s through lance assuming “that guy is always trying to one-up me!” and that they have an epic mutual rivalry that plagues keith as much as it plagues lance. but it doesn’t! yes, keith will at times rise to it, defend himself, or even instigate it, and he isn’t shy to point out when lance doesn’t have the right focus or is acting recklessly (“just concentrate on keeping me safe” + “it’s not about the glory” + imbalancing power kicks); but he isn’t actually out to make lance feel inferior or to steal everything lance wants.
other examples of lance projecting onto keith:
lance assumes that keith talking to coran about the blue lion means that keith wants to pilot the blue lion (reality: keith wants to know if the blue lion has a link to his galra family, and lance is the one who acted like he was going to be given the red lion as well as the blue lion!)
lance assumes that keith and allura run off together because they’re “sitting in a tree” (reality: they’re trying to see if zarkon is tracking them, but lance wants to “sit in a tree” with allura! in S1, nyma plays lance’s paranoia like a fiddle: when lance seems like he won’t take her out in his lion, nyma muses that maybe keith will, and lance instantly trips over himself to get them flying. never mind that we’re never shown keith interacting with anyone but rolo from that team; nyma is savvy enough to, at some point in talking with lance, pick up on his keith problem. it’s that obvious!)
sometimes he just full-out assumes the worst of keith, like keith doesn’t care enough about the mission and therefore he’s going to kill everyone on sight, or keith is too scared to do what’s right and therefore doesn’t want to go to central command to save his own skin. all wrong assumptions, and all indicative of how much he misinterprets keith.
to give lance credit, sometimes he almost fondly thinks of hotheaded!keith, like when he laughs about the time keith was ready to fight tiny little klaizap (“he was their bravest warrior!”). none of the above means lance hates keith/doesn’t care about him. his voice + expressions are very worried when it looks like keith is getting hurt at the blade’s headquarters, and he privately gushes about keith doing cool things like flying through asteroid fields and black holes (which has added sweetness when you realize this comes after finding out that keith is galra and that he would’ve had new ammo to badmouth him). this, on top of several moments of working together mid-battle, absolutely implies that they’re going to get better and that lance will eventually lose his keith blind spot; and keith, in return, will realize that lance isn’t all about fun and games/girls/glory/wanting to be cool — that he’s a caring person with a big heart.
right now, i’d compare it to the harry potter versus ron weasley trope: character A has lost their family and desperately wants family, while character B has always had family, but still envies character A because they have glory and are never seen as second (or seventh) best. and i do think that lance will one day be a great friend to keith, once he understands how much keith Doesn’t Have Everything; that keith wants family and/or needs support (don’t click this if you don’t want S3 spoilers). but they’re not at that place in S2, even if they’re working towards it, which is why it isn’t lance that you see in the virtual mindscape, even if you hear his words (“you’re thinking of yourself!”): lance isn’t on shiro’s level of understanding keith/reaching out to keith, and lance is still himself in a mindscape where he sees keith being chosen for something as one-upping him, when that has never been keith’s driving force, least of all during the marmora mission.
so, yes, lance is wrong when he assumes that keith is so hotheaded that he’s going to kill everyone when they get to the blade’s headquarters (even if he’s basing this on keith’s king lubos bluff, which was more about a) keith’s horror that lubos was such a horrible leader that he’d turn his back on his own people, and b) keith not thinking the galra would be so evil as to actually not care if keith went through with the bluff, but anyway). keith doesn’t take action against the blade until they do so against him, and even then, he refuses to leave and is willing to do whatever it takes to earn their trust and knowledge!
so, as i broke down 10,000 years ago, keith goes through the virtual mindscape that makes him confront his hopes and fears, which are — well, i’ll just copy and paste them again:
THE HOPES: having family; connecting to family; feeling that he belongs with a family and knowing exactly how he belongs, whether it’s found family (shiro; team voltron) or biological family (his dad; his mom)
THE FEARS: losing family; but that wanting family — that hoping for it, that pursuing it, that expressing that he wants it — makes him selfish and will distract him from being a paladin of voltron + the greater good of saving the universe
shiro is the opposite of hologram!shiro: he barges in there right along with the red lion, ready to attack the blade if they continue to harm keith and “mess with his mind”. but only keith is able to stop the chaos with a firm:
keith: wait! just take the knife! it doesn’t matter where i come from. i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.
he awakens the blade, confirming that he has galra blood in his veins, and from here, there’s a slight turning point. it’s not that all of keith’s worries have vanished, but the part that made him so desperate — the uncertainty — has been somewhat cleared. he still doesn’t know all of the details of his past, but he’s setting that aside to focus on the mission; to prove that being galra doesn’t make him any less devoted to the mission.
he’s visibly and audibly struggling. when he and hunk fly to the weblum, keith tries to cling to routine — “everyone has a job to do and this is ours” — but when hunk starts firing questions about keith being galra and explains why, exactly, allura is so shaken by it, keith changes the subject: “let’s just watch the video coran uploaded and stay on task.” this isn’t purely because he wants to focus on the mission, but because he wants to avoid expressing how emotional this is all making him. how inhuman it makes him feel: “i’m not an alien.” when they see the dead planets, he looks and sounds almost guilty; he’s galra, and it’s likely that galra are responsible for killing those planets.
keith has always been devoted to the mission, but now, he’s pushing himself to really show what he’s capable of, because he wants his teammates to feel that nothing about him has changed — that he wants to help them, not hurt them. over the course of this mini-arc, you especially see him do this with:
hunk: keith and hunk may not clash as much as keith and lance, but the yellow lion is described as “caring and kind … its pilot is one who puts the needs of others above his own … as the leg of voltron, you will lift the team up and hold them together”; meanwhile, the red lion is “temperamental and the most difficult to master … you’ll have to earn its respect.” remember that a lion’s quintessence is mirrored in its paladin: hunk, like yellow, is an openly caring person who is also very open about his own emotions, lacking much of a brain-to-mouth filter; but keith, like red, does not open up easily. keith is very physically expressive, but rarely verbally expressive when it comes to the depths of what he’s feeling, and there’s perhaps no clearer example than his responses to hunk’s attempts at Galra Talk. hunk isn’t going to sugarcoat that he finds the galra reveal to be Too New and Too Weird, a pretty difficult approach for keith, who doesn’t want to talk about it at all. “can you just lay off?”
so it’s a rocky start for keith and hunk — especially when you consider that hunk already sees keith as a “cold” person — but keith finds his feet once they get into the belly of the beast. maybe he’s thinking of what shiro told him before the marmora mission: “you’ll have to control your emotions if you’re going to lead this group someday … i know what you’re capable of, if you can learn some self-discipline … if you’re going to be a leader, you’ve got to get your head on straight.” keith doesn’t transform his entire personality to do this, or go too out of his comfort zone (translation: he isn’t suddenly opening up about his galra angst), but he does try to combine a mix of his own philosophy with hunk’s. keith says coran’s instructions seem “simple enough” while hunk says they seem “under-explained” — so keith, in how he tries to lead hunk, combines simplicity and clarity. he sees that hunk is freaked out by the weblum, and just as hunk doesn’t sugarcoat galra!keith being Weird, keith isn’t going to sugarcoat that their surroundings are disgusting: but “we’re gonna need that big brain of yours if we want to make it through. will you be all right? i gotta be able to count on you.” he is by no means flawless at this (“i said, will you be all right?”) but he continues to try to calm hunk down, even casually opting for humor, prompting hunk’s shock, ongoing laughter, and the famous “wow. galra!keith is way funnier than regular!keith.”
like keith later says, he “didn’t just turn galra!” — he’s always been this person, Super Serious about the mission and working as a team, but he’s aware that he hasn’t always been communicative about that in a way that everyone finds warm and inviting. so during the weblum mission, he doesn’t just try to be simple and clear in instructing hunk (“you’ve gotta find a way out of the circulatory system — meet me in the third stomach; let’s get what we came for and get out; what do we gotta do to get that scaultrite gland to goop?”), but also in encouraging hunk: “by the way … you really came through in the clutch back there. without you, the mission would have been a failure.” hunk is obviously appreciative of keith trying to be “a better human”, so this holds potential for keith to gradually feel more comfortable in being open about himself in addition to how much he wants his teammates to feel they can be comfortable with him.
weblum!galra: they may not be on team voltron, but keith accepts them as an ally once weblum!galra proves that they’re willing to be a team (keith thinks weblum!galra is aiming their gun at him, but instead, weblum!galra shoots the Evil Bacteria; “i guess you can keep your weapon,” says keith, surprised). this is a very interesting dynamic, because weblum!galra is faceless and voiceless, which means keith can judge everything based on their actions — exactly what he’s hoping people will do for him. but at the same time, he others himself from weblum!galra (even beyond that first meeting when keith sees their galra crest and takes their gun, accusing them with a flat “you’re galra” even though he’s galra, too). he’s slightly hesitant to tell hunk that weblum!galra is, well, galra, and then makes a face when hunk jokes that all galra must know each other.
but after hunk asks if they should rescue a galra soldier, keith reorients his focus: “we’re paladins of voltron. we can’t leave people to die even if they are galra.” his voice betrays him — he’s emotional — so this is another example of keith not speaking totally objectively. it doesn’t matter if someone left alone and in need of saving is galra; that doesn’t mean team voltron can dehumanize them. he’s not 100% talking about weblum!galra, nor is it only weblum!galra that he’s worried about being abandoned. so uh, needless to say — after working alongside this person and having each other’s backs, keith is pretty damn upset when weblum!galra betrays him. “you’re just like the rest of them,” he says, doing exactly what he hopes allura and the others won’t do: he lumps all galra together. keith has very much not yet made peace with being part-galra. even so, he still says weblum!galra can’t be too big of a threat — it doesn’t matter what they do with the scaultrite, because “whatever the galra are planning won’t matter after we defeat zarkon.” his mission mindset remains “destroying zarkon means destroying everything underneath him.” (it’s almost like keith doesn’t know that this is only S2 and that the empire has a prince who may even be connected to weblum!galra, but hey, moving on.)
allura: with allura, keith is at odds — he does a mix of staying quiet and speaking up. when he does speak up, it isn’t to talk the talk, but action-oriented “let me walk the walk and prove my loyalty”: i’m here, what can i do, how can i help, how is your side of the mission going? hunk even reminds allura that keith is doing his part, but allura cannot fully trust it until this crucial scene:
kolivan: we’ve not yet heard from thace. he was supposed to contact us two vargas ago.
antok: he could’ve been captured.
kolivan: or killed. we need to abort this mission immediately.
allura: abort? no! we cannot back away now!
antok: the blade of marmora does not take chances. it’s how we’ve survived for so long.
allura: it’s held you back. your caution is the reason zarkon is still in power!
kolivan: we would rather wait than jeopardize everything. besides, it’s too late to get someone else on the inside.
keith: i’ll do it.
allura: what?
keith: i’ll sneak onto zarkon’s ship. i’m galra, so i’ll be able to interact with their technology. pidge, you can rig up one of those pods with a cloaking device, right?
pidge: well, yeah.
kolivan: going onto zarkon’s ship is a suicide mission. i would never command someone so inexperienced to go on a mission so dangerous.
keith: no one’s commanding me. i’m doing it.
i wrote that all out because it has Poignant Parallels to when allura first speaks to hologram!alfor:
allura: i don’t know if we should run to preserve what we have, or stay and risk everything. i want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone. i know what you would do.
hologram!alfor: i scattered the lions to keep them out of zarkon’s hands. you urged me to keep them and fight, but, for the greater good of protecting the universe, i chose to hide them.
allura: i think i understand.
hologram!alfor: no, daughter, you were right. i made a terrible mistake, one that cost the universe countless lives. forming voltron is the only way to stop zarkon. you must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.
it’s therefore not surprising that keith showing such a determined display of Action Over Caution resonates with allura: it’s exactly what she would do. and keith isn’t just risking his life for a mini-mission — this is essentially the Final Boss Fight that will end in defeating zarkon. to us, the audience and not the characters fighting this war, allura may seem like she does a quick turnaround — but it’s quick because it’s the quickness of keith rising up and refusing to give up that makes allura realize that they have the same drive.
she doesn’t have to go to the extent that she does: approach keith, explain why she’s been so hesitant and scared, and hug him and assure him that she sees him as part of her new family, so please come back. but she does, as both leader and head of that new family who would’ve had every right to not want to risk another galra teammate turning traitor, making her relive her trauma. this is why it’s her reaction to galra!keith that is so focused on; this entire galra!keith arc — for both allura and keith, who are Intensely Invested in the success of their mission — is about what they’re willing to do for the greater good of their mission. keith still isn’t pouring out his own emotions — he’s not at that comfort level yet — but he can absolutely respond with a firm nod and an “i will”, vowing to do his part and to come back and continue to do his part.
allura: i just wanted to say: the galra, they’ve done terrible things. destroyed entire civilizations. they took my family. but, in time, i’ve grown to consider you and the paladins my family. so, when i learned you were galra … i didn’t know what to think. i wanted to hate you.
keith: allura, it’s —
allura cuts him off before he can finish, so we can only guess what keith would have said. was this his attempt at verbally communicating his own perspective of losing and wanting family, or was this his attempt at verbally communicating that he understands allura’s perspective? whatever it was, allura thinks keith’s actions speak for themselves: “you’ve proven it’s not what’s in your blood; it’s who you are that counts.” and because this is something that’s said before battle — where keith could very well die — it’s understandable if this shifts in the future: if allura needs keith to verbally communicate in addition to communicating via actions. but for right now, the actions are enough for her.
i’m sure this will carry into S3, not just in terms of keith still confronting the fact that he’s galra, but in terms of allura being an altean who now has galra allies and altean enemies — haggar and probably prince lotor. it’s a mess! how this war began was obviously not cut-and-dry (one group versus another group with zero overlap), which means allies and enemies aren’t going to be cut-and-dry. all they can do is hope that the trust they’re placing in people they never thought they’d work with is earned. that it’ll further their mission, not destroy it.
keith gets a taste of this when he meets thace:
like ulaz, thace is willing to improvise and act quickly — and ultimately sacrifice himself for the greater good. “paladin, this is where my journey ends. but as a member of voltron, you have a bigger mission. you must understand that.” their time together is brief, but after fighting the druids and shutting down zarkon’s ship, it’s more than enough for keith to tell thace, with emotion, “it was an honor to meet you.” (just like “it’s been an honor flying with you, boys!”) unlike with weblum!galra, keith is able to feel that he’s successfully teamed up with an honorable galra. (and kolivan and antok are learning, too; they go with allura to fight haggar, finally putting Action Over Caution.)
after allura gets hurt, it takes a We Can’t Give Up speech from shiro to get all of the paladins moving again: “i’m all in,” says keith, grinning. and when shiro gets hurt, keith steps up and leads the others (even though this is something he fears!) and the others follow him without hesitation: “something’s wrong with shiro — guys, we can’t let zarkon get the black lion!” you can seriously see why the red lion and keith share the same quintessence: it may not be easy for them to open up, but when they have a goal, they’re all in, and when they have someone they want to protect, they’re all in.
it’s very heartbreaking, then, but very fitting, to see them win the battle but lose shiro — to see keith run breathlessly towards shiro’s lion and call shiro’s name. for added heartbreak, remember this pre-battle conversation:
shiro: you realize, once we defeat zarkon — the universe won’t need voltron anymore.
lance: we can return to earth.
pidge: i can look for my family.
keith: i guess i could look for mine.
keith still doesn’t have pidge’s strong and sure conviction about looking for his biological family — not because he doesn’t care about them, but because his headspace is still in his #1 mission: defeating zarkon and defending the universe. what happens after that; where does he even begin to look for his biological family? he’ll have time to figure that out, because now the worst has happened and he’s also lost shiro, his found family. team voltron still has work to do.
beyond S1 & S2
i doubt keith’s arc is over, at all; i think it’s just begun, and that keith will continue to be challenged and will continue to grow. in S3, keith is going to fully experience what pidge has experienced: someone he loves is missing, but keith still has this mission of being defender of the universe — possibly, even, the temporary leader! — and he’s going to have to be decisive about team voltron’s goals: saving countless people and planets, or saving shiro — one person over everyone else in the entire galaxy. can they manage a balance of both? can keith manage a balance between what he sees as selfish (personal feelings/motives) and what he sees as selfless (the greater good)? can keith open up to the rest of the team, furthering his bonds with them, or will he put up a wall?
will his relationship with shiro be used against him by antagonists? what about keith’s willingness to work with galra who display signs of allyship — will a galra take advantage of that, only to betray him? will keith think he’s doing something for the greater good, only to have it come back to bite him, hurting not just him, but everyone he cares about (his potential new family)?
WHOMST KNOWS, but to bring this to a close:
tl;dr
this is not a post saying “keith has done nothing wrong, ever, in his life.” but it is a post saying that, quite often, this fandom cares more about how other characters interpret keith than about paying attention to keith as he actually is! which ignites a cycle of paying more attention to how fandom interprets keith instead of to who keith actually is! so, if you think your perspective on keith has been muddled (“Careless Action Boy Who Could Not Care Less About People”), please rewatch S1 and S2, because everything you need is there.
and “quiet” things like nature and books! we tend to associate keith with action — with speed, with instincts and impulses — that it can be easy to forget his quieter side. after getting booted from the garrison, it must have been undeniably lonely (that’s not even getting into shiro being pronounced dead); but i think it’s interesting that keith still looks back on his little shack as a home, not just in the team voltron mind meld, but in the mindscape where he meets his dad. it’s a space keith feels connected to; it’s where the energy drew him out, where he found and researched the lion markings in the caves, and where his whole voltron adventure began.
and look at the books! he’s got them:
on shelves
on top of his radio tower
on the floor
underneath a table
on his computer desk — one is open and has some sort of sticky note!
you can even see a bunch of books in the space mall earth store, so maybe keith will get his hands on some, or maybe he’ll find a space library! LET HIM RELAX AGAINST A FOREST TREE AND READ BOOKS @DREAMWORKS.
tyler labine (hunk’s voice actor): with keith — that is really, just now in season 2, starting to develop. i think before, [hunk] took the side of lance where [hunk] was like, “you’re kind of a hotshot, hothead, whatever, you know, and lance doesn’t like him so i don't like him — not don’t like him, we get along because we have to, but he’s not, you know, our favorite person.”
but then in season 2, i think especially in that belly of the weblum episode, when keith and hunk go to get the scaultrite, it’s a real breakthrough for them! you know, with hunk being like “i like galra keith!”, which basically is just “i like keith.” but it’s a realization for hunk: “you’re not so bad, galra keith!”, which is just hilarious because keith is just like “i’ve been galra the whole time, man.” but hunk is like “no, this new version of you is better.”
(source)
this is lovely insight that confirms what a lot of us already suspected: that “galra keith” is more of a shorthand for “a keith that feels more approachable, because he’s becoming more open about who he is — he’s still reserved, but he’s trying more.” it will be really sweet and heartwarming if this continues into S3, especially with shiro gone; it seems like it’s time for keith to bond more with the garrison trio and to become more and more comfortable in these friendships! to be the person he’s always been inside, but with others. if they didn’t have that at the garrison, they can have it now. bless hunk for trying to help keith in that transition!
the first 3 caps are from S1, during the bonding/training exercises, coran directing them with advice like “the paladin code demands you put your team members’ safety above your own!” and “protect your teammates, or no one will be there to protect you!”
the remaining 7 caps are from S2, and while keith and lance still sometimes rile each other up or try to outdo each other, i think these moments prove how much better they’re becoming at watching out for each other and keeping each other safe. the elevator scene has gotten a lot of focus, perhaps because of its prolonged focus on their teamwork, but i think smaller moments like these do a lot in the long run to provide foundation for future bigger moments. you could consider them examples of subtle showing, not just telling, that will make their future scenes as a good team/partnership all the more effective and believable! their rivalry is a lot of fun and i doubt it will ever go away completely, but it can be balanced into something more mutually helpful that doesn’t end with getting too caught up in bickering and crashing and burning.
for fans of conspiracy theorist!keith, this is steven yeun (keith’s voice actor) talking on the nerdist podcast about his fear for the future: that aliens will attack and humans won’t know how to defend themselves because they haven’t trained in hand-to-hand combat
BONUS VIDEO: steven yeun defending the existence of aliens
