What about the rift creatures?
Okay, I’m pissed about Lotor being the main villain of this season because it makes zero sense in terms of everything we already know (and it was painfully obvious and bland in terms of his character).
Here are the reasons why:
1. Lotor doesn’t need Altean Quintessence at all.
“He [Zarkon] 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 that 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.”
So why would Lotor need to harvest Alteans at all? It’s simple, he wouldn’t. He had other ways of extracting enough quintessence to sustain the empire for now. But he had apparently been extracting from them for ‘generations’ which is a pretty long time. He wanted to preserve the Alteans and their culture, and didn’t seem crazy at this time so… Why? It makes no sense, and came out of nowhere.
2. What happened to the rift creatures?
In S3:E7 we learn about Zarkon and Honerva’s decent into madness and the rift creatures influence.
Honerva discovers creatures that dwell within the rift of quintessence.
After long exposure to Quintessence, she goes mad and falls severely ill. She tells Zarkon to take her into the rift with Voltron to heal her since “Quintessence is life itself”. He does so and the creatures attack them, and possess them.
Voltron escapes, Alfor believes they are dead and destroys the Galra planet in order to close the rift. But at no point is it stated that the creatures are gone or defeated permanently.
So where are they? They surely haven’t disappeared, and when Lotor and Allura go into the rift at no point do they detect any creatures. No creature’s possess Lotor, he just switches and goes crazy in the final battle. Again, makes no sense.
3. Lotor hasn’t been exposed to Quintessence long enough to make him as insane as he went.
He just hasn’t. Honerva couldn’t help showing her madness when it took hold of her, but Lotor was normal. She was around Quintessence every single day since she was studying it, Lotor hasn’t been. Sure it could be argued he was exposed from a child yada yada, but he only started working with Quintessence properly to get into the rift. It took Zarkon and Honerva a LONG time to go mad from their exposure, as we see by how old her cat creature is, but Lotor seems to go crazy in 2 minutes flat. It’s just not coherent.
4. What was the point of Sendak in this season?
He’s trying to start a rebellion and overthrow Lotor. He says “Galra who side with Lotor will be destroyed.” Well buddy looks like you didn’t need to show up at all! Since Lotor self destructs later on!! Yippee for you! Like honestly if the point was to bring him back later on then great, but without Lotor you have nothing for this story arc, so why include it at all?
That all being said, it’s possible they’re setting up for Lotor’s return. Good or bad, I assume the latter, but I do think he’s coming back. Why? Because of this…
Honerva/Haggar’s visions:
In S5: E2 Hagger has flashbacks/visions of Lotor and him growing up, but he always has glowing yellow eyes like his parents once they were possessed by the rift creatures.
Before this season I honestly assumed Lotor was possessed from birth and that would come into play from the exposure to Quintessence, and that we’d see him slow descend (and potentially be saved), but his eyes remain normal even when he goes crazy. Being possessed would make sense story wise, but instead they just… chose to make him a homicidal maniac for no reason other than ~drama~(which wasn’t even surprising, I wasn’t shocked at all).
TL:DR - Lotor shouldn’t have been the villain in this season and it was crappy what they did to his character. It made no sense, came out of nowhere and wasn’t coherent with the previous story line. It also reinforced the idea that all Galra are bad. It was very regressive in terms of the overall story.
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