One of the many, many things that bugs me to this day about Voltron’s infamous Season 8 was just how good of a job it did at not answering anything important (and instead dedicating its time to hating everything.) Like, what the hell was up with Axca? What was the point of having her on the Atlas? What was the deal with Zethrid and Ezor?? Is Earth back to normal, or does it have a single, governing body now? Why did everyone, save a single Commander from S6, ignore the fact that Voltron has fucked up on multiple occasions????
While we might never have answers for these questions, I’m going to headcannon the HELL out of them to try and find some of the answers we (read:I) need.
Starting with this first one: What the hell are Druids??
Well, in short: I believe they’re Zombies
Most of this headcannon is based on Haggar/Honerva, and her own druid-ization. As the first druid ever, and as the creator of all of the others, I think she’s fit to be an example of what a typical one would look like.
The main event that turned Honerva into a druid was the same event that turned her into Haggar: her overexposure, death, and subsequent revival due to the Rift’s unstable quintessence. After she was revived as Haggar, she developed the vast amount of quintessential magic that’s associated with being a Druid. Her insane rift magic could be assumed to be a byproduct of her being an Altean and the hyped up quintessence that’s found in the Rift. However, the only time we get to see another Druid without their mask off, back in the mess that was S7, they were Galran - it makes sense for an Altean to be doing magic, but how can a Galra?
If it has nothing to do with Honerva, then it’s most likely something to do with the Rift itself. One interesting part of the rift to take note of is the rift entities - those little black floating orby-things that, according to most of our heroes, were the root of all evil.
Except, what if they aren’t?
When we see Allura take in that rift entity in S8, we see her automatically get an upgrade in her quintessence magic - within minutes, she’s able to track down Honerva and devise a plan to enter her mind. Because of this, it’s also logical to say that absorbing an entity makes a person a druid. Except - Why did Allura, a newly formed Druid, not suffer any of the negative drawbacks of Druidhood, such as fully yellow eyes and a slightly malnourished appearance similar to Haggar? Better yet, how would Allura become a Druid if she didn’t die first - after she passed out, we see her in a medical ward, where we would absolutely know if she died sometime in her coma. While I think that entities are in the right direction, I don’t think it’s the full answer.
Before I share my idea, though, I want to ask - what ARE the Rift entities??
While, because this is Voltron, we may never actually know, all we can assume is that they’re a kind of organism unique to the Rift dimension. The context that the show always pushes whenever it brought up the Rift critters is that they were corruptive and dangerous, leading us to believe that they might be some kind of parasite, one that when absorbed into an organism’s body, takes full control over the host and uses it to its own benefit. But if this is the case, though, then when Honerva is initaly Druid-ized, does she still have the ability to remember her past thousands of years after the druid has made itself comfy in her brain? Hell, Zarkon himself fits the bill of a Druid, yet he remembers everything about himself the moment he’s re-animated. And how does the Rift, which is full of quintessence, a physical form of life itself, kill these two in the first place?
And thus, I developed my theory: what if Zarkon and Honerva didn’t die, but were turned into Rift entities due to their bodies being too small for the amount of life-energy they were being pumped full of? And after being ejected into the void, managed to trail their bodies back out of the rift, using up some quintessence while doing so, and squeeze themselves back into their bodies, turning them into creatures now-capable of using a vast amount of magic due to the loads of quintessence their spirits now produce?
What if all a Druid is, is an organism who’s been pumped full of so much quintessence, their spirits are ejected from their now small bodies, only to have a itty-bitty bit of life drained back out of themselves and re-bonded with their bodies. Instead of some Rift-native varmint, what if the entities were actually the ghosts of the dead, and Druids the unholy marriage of life and death: a Zombie.
