VLD Theory: Lance vs. Keith Season 8 Fight
Alrighty, this is more self-serving than anything, but given what we’ve seen of Lance and Keith’s tense relationship after S7, I have a feeling we’re on our way to stand-off between these two boys.
As mentioned before, Lance and Keith are set up as a Rivals-to-Friends (to possibly lovers) trope. The Rival to Friends layout is incredibly popular in media targeted at young men, but it’s everywhere.
The three most popular duos of this would be Goku & Vegeta from DBZ, Naruto & Sasuke from Naruto, and Aang & Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
And in each of these relationships we always see the same thing - The Rival Fight.
It’s a cornerstone of the trope, and Lance and Keith are rivals.
Over the course of the show we’ve seen the two of them become not only more friendly, but co-leaders of Voltron.
However, that doesn’t mean they still don’t have their bits of tension.
They’ve come a long way, but they’ll still throw elbows. They’re Friendly Rivals.
Going into the final season, we know that Honerva is going to be the big baddie. She’s the only one left for the Paladins to defeat to finally end the war with the Galra, and the cliffhanger in season 7 showed us that the Robeasts are being powered by Alteans, probably from Romelle’s colony.
Honerva has never sought power, she doesn’t want to take over the universe or the Galra Empire. Honerva wants Quintessence. That has always been her singular motivation - to learn more about the universe and harvest as much Quintessence as possible. That’s why she went to Oriande.
And which paladin has always had a large amount of Quintessence and highly sensitive to it (enough to feel the Blue lion from all the way out in the desert)?
Keith. The only Half-Human/Half-Galra in the entire universe.
Here’s a great breakdown of how Honerva has been working to get Keith for the last few seasons, including the Druid from S7. Season 8, we’ll see Honerva finally get her hands on Keith for her experiments. You know who would be the perfect honeypot to lure Keith right into Honerva’s hands? Especially if Honerva also had in her possession a certain long-haired Galra prince she saved from the Quintessence field?
So, how does that tie into Keith and Lance fighting?
Well, just like we’ve been getting hints of Keith’s sensitivity to Quintessence, we’ve also been given hints to how Keith and Lance’s relationship mirror that of their predecessors, Zarkon and Alfor.
In season 1, it’s Zarkon who first notices that Keith fights like a Galra. He says this almost with pride. Like he was impressed with Keith.
In Season 3, after Keith takes over the Black Lion and the Red Lion roars for Lance, Allura explains the relationship between Alfor and Zarkon.
In the flashback episodes “The Legend Begins”, Zarkon and Alfor’s relationship was close, but they had a similar friendly rivalry.
But were teammates and Alfor was Zarkon’s right-hand-man in Voltron.
However, their relationship is severed once Zarkon and Honerva are corrupted by their Quintessence experiments.
And as they part, it feels eerily similar to scenes we’ve seen with Lance and Keith.
Keith is half-Galra, and has been learning more about his heritage during his time training with the Blade of Maroma and spending time with his Galra mother, Krolia. During this time, Lance was getting closer with Allura, and was able to unlock Alfor’s broadsword form from his bayard.
Although the constant parallels between Alfor and Lance by Allura could be seen as hints for their eventual romance at the end of Season 7, that doesn’t explain why after Lance first unlocks his sword in Season 5 we’ve never seen him used it.
And that’s because he’s never had to - he’s been able to be the team’s sharpshooter and when on the ground, Keith can handle the close combat while Lance watches his back, like we see in Season 7.
But what if Lance had to fight someone in close combat? Someone who doesn’t use a gun (because he’s a terrible shot)?
If Honerva gets what she wants, and is able to get her hands on Keith and corrupt his Quintessence, it can trigger all sorts of things in him.
We’ve already gotten a glimpse of the power he’s capable of being half-Galra during his fight with Shiro. Someone will need to save him, because Keith has already saved everyone on the team before including:
But who will save Keith? That will be Lance. It will be a fight between them where Lance will use his Altean broadsword and Keith will use his black bayard. It will mirror the battle between Zarkon and Alfor.
But unlike Alfor and Zarkon, Lance won’t give up on Keith.
Because while Alfor walked away from Zarkon.
He won’t give up him, no matter what, even if it means he’ll have to fight someone he cares about. Someone who he picked to save out of the entire team during the game show.
Due to the Quintessence corruption, Keith will send the two of them to fight in the Astral Plane. Just like he was able to access it before when Shiro was trapped in the Black Lion in S6 and how Zarkon was able to fight Shiro in it during S2. Besides Keith, Lance is the only other person who was able to access the astral plane back when Shiro called out to him in Season 5.
That’s what the blue and red stars are there for.
It’ll be a fight between rivals, but it’ll also be a fight for Lance to rescue Keith from Honerva, because he deeply cares about him.
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