im rewatching vld from the beginning and i just got to the episode where allurais about to fly the castle into a dying star and has to destroy the thing that holds her fathwrs memory and after the episode ends she just acts like nothing happened so im just stuck here wondering how she was actually handling it and how much it must have sucked for her to have to be the one to do it
I’m sorry I took so long to answer this. I just didn’t have the time to sit down and properly address this because I have so many feelings about this episode.
Anyway.
I do kind of agree with you. In that episode, Allura’s emotions were so intense. But then it’s almost like as soon as that episode ended she went through like all five stages of grief for her father in an instant, and then she was at the acceptance stage. Which isn’t very realistic considering that episode took place so soon after she first found out her father was dead and she’s been in a cryo-pod for 10,000 years. It stands to reason she’d have a lot of grieving left to do after that episode. And while I’m sure that episode helped the grieving process for her, there is no way, realistically, that she moved on as much as it was portrayed. Especially since she was so volatile in that episode, it stands to reason that she would keep up that behavior, or at least moments of that behavior, in future episodes, but she really doesn’t. Which is kinda cool on one hand because it shows that she can be really good at keeping her emotions in check but on the other hand it’s so unrealistic to the grieving process……
However, I do think the writers attempt to address her grief in later episodes. I don’t think they particularly do it well or enough, but they do it.
After that episode the writers do show that she still misses Altea occasionally, like in season 3 episode 4 where they go into the alternate reality and Allura is very easily swayed by the Alteans even they are very obviously BAD NEW BEARS to everyone else.
It’s points like this where the audience does get to see her missing her home and her culture. But, for the most part, she’s keeping it all in, which is very noble and amazing, but again as I said, compared to the volatility of her emotions from that episode in season 1, it’s just not realistic to me. However, it’s scenes like this where we do get to see glimpses of her grieving process occasionally.
I think her grief is mostly shown through her anger at the Galra. Specifically, she did not initially trust the BOM, and even more importantly, she stopped trusting Keith for a while:
And, I guess an argument against that is (not that anyone is even making this argument but I’m gonna counter it anyway), “Well many of the other alien races didn’t trust the BOM either,” which is true. However, Allura is generally very quick to trust. We see this in season 1 episode 1 where it takes her all of two minutes to go from not trusting the paladins to saying, “Hey, I’m gonna reveal the locations of the only things that can save the universe to you guys, who I just met and know nothing about, so you go get them and we can save the universe together, okay, sound cool?” Like literally:
So, her not trusting Keith and not trusting the BOM just because they are Galra means a lot.
Despite all this, as I said, I do think it’s quite unrealistic how put-together she was after that episode in season 1. But, the writers are doing their best. Can’t have everything, I suppose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯