I don’t know if someone’s pointed this out already but I just realised something….
So, as we know, Keith is the right arm of Voltron, and Shiro forms the head.
Shiro’s right arm is Galra tech. Not his full arm though: it seems like the part where the Galra arm ends and real arm begins is just about halfway, slightly above his elbow.
This means Shiro’s right arm is half-Galra.
SHIRO’S RIGHT ARM IS HALF-GALRA.
The foreshadowing was there the whole time. Dreamworks played us like a damn fiddle.
My wishlist for Voltron season 3 as well as speculation as to where the series is going, what’s happening, what we’re going to learn, some meta etc etc…
(cut for spoilers)
– Galra Keith who actually turns purple is a serious wishlist item, like I’m still over the moon that we got confirmation but I am here for the transformation angst. I also feel like one of the reasons we got the disappointing “non-reaction” from the team is that the revelation isn’t very… impactful? Like Hunk says, we don’t even know if it’s a grandfather or otherwise distant ancestor. I know the fans are disappointed but finding out that someone had a distant alien ancestor is kinda only mildly interesting, to be fair. Like, we’ll see how this plays out but it doesn’t impact their day to day lives. Hunk’s questions, Shiro’s natural acceptance, and Allura’s period of adjustment to the idea really are the only reactions one can have at this point. Nothing actually changed about Keith yet, so it’s just a footnote about who he is but it really doesn’t mean anything yet. (Also, I find Allura’s reaction completely acceptable for a three dimensional, well-written character I don’t even know where the idea that her reaction doesn’t make sense or is “bad” comes from).
But if we get some purple and ears like the fandom art, then we’ve got grounds for some actual reaction from the team members, because then it’s going to start influence Keith’s day to day life. Infiltration missions with the Galra become easier, but missions like going to the mall or to help oppressed aliens are going to change dramatically. Allura’s initial acceptance may hit a speed bump. The other team members are going to have to deal with a dramatic shift in the visual makeup of the team, with Keith looking like their enemy, and that’s a harder thing to cope with.
My prediction? Like Alteans, Galra can change their appearance (they have no reason to at the moment because they’re the dominant Empire and don’t need to go undercover that we’ve seen). Keith has been unconsciously doing this his entire life, something will happen that throws his control into chaos, we’ll have an episode or two while he adjusts to the full consequences of his heritage, and once he accepts it he’ll reclaim his ability to look the way he is more comfortable with (as the Keith we know). Further predictions, both his mother and father are Galra, his father was just shifted to look human at the point. Further, more mainstream prediction, his mother was the mysterious Galra in the crystal harvesting episode and she’s part of the Galra resistance.
– No Prince Lotor/Allura, please: apparently was pursuing Allura in the original anime. Now, as much as I would love the Keith/Allura/Lotor “love triangle” to be shifted to a Keith/Lance/Lotor one, and I would really love it, I can understand if that doesn’t happen. That being said I am firmly against Lotor/Allura. Please just let them be childhood enemies or just plain antagonists towards each other. The last thing Allura needs is a plotline where she is just a prize to be won or a woman to be seduced. I get that a lot of men think that’s an “empowering” plotline, and maybe at one point it was, but it has been done to absolute death. One reason Pidge is such a great and revolutionary character is that their gender really wasn’t brought up again after the initial revelation, it never comes up during a fight. Please let Allura’s identity not be reduced down to a love interest, even if it’s by a “bad guy” and therefore a “bad” thing. It’s just exhausting at this point. So please, no Lotor creeping on Allura. Just let them hate each other if anything (eventual friendship, now, that could be interesting…)
– No Keith/Allura either – Somewhat feeds into the previous point and is one reason I’d love to see the Keith/Allura/Lotor replaced with Keith/Lance/Lotor, because quite frankly even in this season of not much Klance, Keith and Lance had more chemistry than Keith and Allura. They were literally floating romantically in space, carrying one another bridal style, going through the revelation of the other’s past, etc etc. all things that could be a decent romantic arc and I felt… absolutely nothing. Maybe friendship? It was nice to see them bonding? But there just wasn’t a hint of spark there and I don’t even say that as a shipper. Shiro/Allura seems to have the most actual connection, even with the little we’ve seen I just can’t imagine Keith making a move there with Shiro gone and second, making a move at all. For all of Lance’s flirting, Keith has been pretty self-contained and disinterested if not oblivious to the idea of relationships. Even Pidge and Hunk have at least talked about significant others (Pidge with the “girlfriend” photo misunderstanding and Hunk with Shay had a little something going on, even if it was denied). Keith is an absolute blank on the romance front, and it showed even more in the traditionally “romantic” scenes we saw with Allura. Let’s also mention that Allura could not get out of his arms fast enough, and there was no crush-y blush to go with it. It was pure lack of interest and I really hope they let it stay that way.
– Better Hunk & Lance – At first I didn’t quite get what people were talking about, since Shiro is sort of my darling and Galra Keith was my favorite theory, I found the season extremely satisfying. But going back to rewatch season 1 I can see, yeah, their characterization got Flanderized to Guy Who Flirts and Guy Who Eats, rather than as the engineer and pilot etc that we got in season 1. The worst culprit was the scene of Pidge’s Galra Prediction Engine. It’s a tired out trope already to do the whole “speak English not Science!” and I rolled my eyes that it was there at all, it’s just bad writing, but that fellow members of the academy like Lance wouldn’t let Pidge finish their sentence was just too much. It would have been better for Hunk, who in season 1 was shown to be extremely intelligent, to finish Pidge’s sentence for them. Hunk and Lance aren’t my focal characters, I think some level of their lesser exposure is just because there is a limited amount of time. Keith had almost no personality or plot in season 1, it’s just the trade off of developing characters and Hunk and Lance got a huge amount of development in season 1. But I do get where their fans are coming from now. I feel like this is an outcry the writers will hear though, I think we’ll get a better story around them next season and this was just a lull to set it up because…
– Shiro disappearing is a big deal – Shiro is literally my favorite character but I was still 1000% ok with his disappearance. First of all, there’s no way he’s dead, if he or any other character does die we’re going to get a really big scene if not an entire episode around it, not just an anticlimactic vanishing. So no fear there. Something is definitely Happening with Shiro. That being said, as much as I love Shiro, the team couldn’t mature with him there any further. Hunk, Lance, Keith, Pidge, etc are going to get their maturation arc against the backdrop of Shiro’s absence, there’s just no doubt about it. He was just too good at his job of being the Space Dad and Leader for them to grow very much on their own, he helped everyone a lot and they didn’t have to go through any sort of painful maturation as a result. Season 1-2 got them through the awkward stage of being kids to being full Paladins, now they have to grow further into those roles without that crutch. Shiro has to grow too, and a lot of his pain is tied up in what the Galra did to him, something he can’t really explore so long as the whole team is protecting him and he’s got people around that he has to keep it together for. So that’s good too for character development.
What we’re going to get is this: Keith is going to be the new team leader, and there will be some friction and growing pains around that. We’ll have a period where they can’t form Voltron, which will hurt their effectiveness. Ideally, rather than Keith becoming the Black Lion pilot (which doesn’t make sense in this iteration of Voltron given the importance of the personalities and bond) we’ll eventually get Allura stepping up. As a bit of a Shallura shipper, I’m thinking she and the Black Lion will bond over missing Shiro and basically she’ll get it to work with her on the basis that it’ll help them find Shiro (cue badass pilot Allura, hell yeah!), which is better than bringing in a new team member.
On the other side of the story, and this is my perennial angst-writer heart speaking, we’re going to get Shiro in captivity. Him vanishing IMO isn’t just a random accident, so he’s not going to just be stranded on some random planet (after all, that was already the opening of season 2). Almost certainly this is the work of Haggar or the Galra using magic, since no way Black would let someone board and kidnap Shiro. So he was probably transported right off somehow, possibly using his arm as a tracking device. Whatever happened, I’m really, really hoping we get Shiro as a captive again of the Galra. We know a lot of awful things happened to him the first time, but we’ve still only got glimpses. I think we’re going to get what really happened fully fleshed out, it’s going to tie into rescuing Pidge’s family, we’re going to learn more about the arm, and generally we’re going to see Shiro broken down and allowed to be vulnerable in a way that he hasn’t been as a leader of the team (because he hasn’t been able to, which has limited the growth of the character). We’re probably going to get a few episodes next season where Shiro is just missing and we don’t know where he is or if he’s alive. Then we’ll find out how he was taken, where he’s been, what’s been happening to him and if I have my way it’s going to be dark dark DARK. We’ll also get a lot of revelations of what the Galra empire looks like from the inside, something easier with a POV character situated there.
– The relationship between Alteans and the Galra is going to be revealed to be much more complex than we thought. Allura is a princess, which means she probably has a fairly idealized view of Altea. I know people are speculating that Haggar is her mother, I find that impossible for the same reason that Thace (sadly) isn’t Keith’s dad (though could be a relative) – even with a disguise, we can expect family members to recognize one another. No, Haggar is someone completely unknown to Allura (but maybe not to Coran?). My money at the moment, given no real information, is that she’s someone lower class, perhaps even a servant or slave, since she willingly took part in the destruction of her own planet, which indicates a serious grudge. Now, with episode 2.2 we saw a queen we thought was evil turn out to be mind controlled by a parasitic artifact, it is possible that Haggar isn’t evil but controlled. However, it’s also possible that she’s a victim of the darker side of Altea and therefore would gladly see it fall and work to that end.
Zarkon used to be the Black Paladin, so at one point the Galra and the Alteans had a close alliance. My theory is that the Paladins used to each be from a different planet, a bit like the Sailor Scouts from Sailor Moon, and protected the galaxy as a visible alliance of the rulers of those kingdoms before it broke apart. We don’t know what made Zarkon shift, but given the vitriol towards the Alteans, either Haggar influenced it or the Alteans did something we don’t know about.
Another thing that’s curious is the space mall. We’ve seen a lot of aliens on the fringes being oppressed and tormented, but the Galra have to believe they’re in the right somehow. If we have stability and peace at the heart of the empire, a place we haven’t really seen yet, it would create an interesting moral gray area and beg the question of whether the Paladins and Allura, who has admittedly been disconnected for 10,000 years, are actually on the right side of this war or if they’re just terrorists. Now, given who the good guys are and that this is a kid’s show, it’s unlikely we’ll go far with that line of questioning, but I do find it curious.
The Galra being more complex than we know is one reason that I just nodded the minute we were introduced to the Galra resistance. Look, you can’t just kill one guy and expect everything to be fixed, even in a kid’s show. There needs to be a structure already out there to substitute in to fix the Galra Empire, otherwise the only method of ending their reign is genocide which I doubt is going to happen either in a kid’s show. So we need rebels who will take over and start the path to peace once the bad Galra leadership is taken out, just like in Avatar the Last Airbender with the good Fire Nation members like Zuko and Iroh. It’s just natural from a storytelling perspective that we’ll get people like the Galra resistance, and Keith being likely descended from members of that resistance (though not recently enough that he was recognized) just brings it full circle.
– I have a feeling the show is going to kick off with season 3. Season 1 and 2 have given a great proof of concept, it’s a huge success and very well received, they’ve shown they can sustain an A+ narrative. Now we’re getting more Galra Empire, more backstory, more moral gray area. This show is on the route of Legend of Korra and Avatar, so while we have to understand some things won’t happen or be fully explored because it’s aimed at children, we can be somewhat hopeful of themes being dealt with maturely. I for one can’t wait.
Avelera 