#Lotura Discord Meta

[leakinghate]

The Depths to which We Sink

Disclaimer: This theory and analysis contradicts some points made in my previous metas, but what’s the fun of speculation if we limit ourselves to having it all gel together?

Nothing in animation is wasted: every action and expression seen on screen is something someone had to draw and something someone had to pay for. Everything is deliberate, from changes in expression to major plot events, and things which do not contribute to the overarching vision of the show will rarely, if ever, be included. Voltron Legendary Defender in particular moves so fast that they don’t have the space to include anything extraneous even when they want to. The showrunners have said in interviews that they’ve had to cut several of their comedy ideas for lack of space.

The exception to this that has always stood out to me as not fitting into the meta narrative is s2e2 'The Depths'. It's mostly plot irrelevant on the whole, with it being notable only for introducing the Blue Lion’s sonic canon. Sure it has some nice character moments for Lance, and the animation is beautiful, but it’s basically filler. It’s almost completely forgotten by the story, only brought up again once, when Lance references the mermaids in s3e2, ‘Red Paladin’.

In preparation for the fast approaching season 7 on August 10th I was attempting to re-watch the entire show up to the end of s6. Most re-watches I do I skip less plot relevant episodes like ‘The Depths’, but I wanted to go through the whole show this time.

But as I was watching this particular episode, post season six. I was struck by an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. So what do you do when you think you’ve stumbled upon some heretofore unnoticed foreshadowing? Why, bring it to the Lotura Discord of course! We put our heads together and came up with some fascinating observations, as well as some intriguing possibilities for where the plot might be headed in the future.

On re-watching it again, post season six, 'The Depths’ contains an uncanny amount of foreshadowing to the entire colony plot.

Two of our protagonists unexpectedly stumble upon a completely isolated and hidden settlement after traveling through a strange space anomaly. They are initially greeted by a single member of a race they previously believed did not exist (anymore).

The mermaid civilization is beneath a thick layer of ice, and the Altean colony is inside a dome.

Information received from an erstwhile ally reveals an apparently sinister truth about the actions and motivations of someone in power who had previously acted as a friend. To wit: the authority figure has deceived their loyal subjects for the purpose of killing them.

The ally that provides this information readily admits that they do not know all the facts and that their conclusion is only a theory based on the facts that they do have.

Dialogue from The Depths:

Lance: But what’s the point? Why mind-control the mermaids? Blumfump: To kill them! Lance: Really? Blumfump: Well, we don’t know that for sure, but hundreds of mermaids have disappeared and never come back.

Dialogue from The Colony:

Romelle: My brother was dead. I knew the truth, or at least part of it, but I also knew that no one would believe me without proof. When Keith and Krolia arrived they were my last chance at finding it. I told them what had happened to my brother, and as it turned out, so many Alteans that had been taken before him. As they explained their mission to me, we knew there must have been a connection between the missing Alteans and the pure strain of quintessence.

One of our protagonists is compromised by an antagonist’s mind control and is used to attack and subdue his fellows. The shadows on Hunk’s face when he is under mind control even look like Shiro’s scar.

The physical appearances of several characters are also intriguing. The one character we see fall victim to the Baku, Florona, is the only red-headed mermaid in the episode. A shade of red very similar to Bandor’s hair color.

Plaxum, the most prominent of the ‘cave dwellers’ and the one who eventually directly confronts the queen, has two ponytail-like projections on her head very reminiscent of Romelle’s hairstyle. They also share very similar body language. And Plaxum’s eyes while wearing her jellyfish are the same color as Romelle’s.

In fact, both of these pairs of characters share very similar color schemes; Plaxum and Romelle are teal, pink, and yellow, while Florona and Bandor are red, golden-yellow, and green.

These are all things which have already happened; there is no speculation here, only observation.

Hilariously, this means Bandor has been metaphorically represented by a red fish.

In other words, a Red Herring.

From Wikipedia:

"A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion."

This is exactly what we've been saying since season 6 aired. Specifically referring to Bandor’s line after his ship crashed through the dome. The one thing he manages to tell Romelle is: “Lotor... the other colony... It’s all a lie.” Which tells us exactly nothing, but is the evidence that convinces Romelle she is correct to distrust Lotor, and what sets off the chain of events that ultimately led to the s6 finale. It’s also the strongest evidence we as the audience have that Lotor has done something truly monstrous. The scene with Bandor irrefutably connects Lotor to the emaciated Alteans, even if we don’t know precisely what that connection is. It’s easy to assume the worst both in and out of universe.

In cinema characters with red hair are often made to be the red herrings. A red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. Bandor led Romelle to a false conclusion.

Both in and out of the show. Romelle concluded wrong. The paladins concluded wrong. The AUDIENCE concluded wrong.

What’s next? Well, the plot of ‘The Depths’ isn’t a 1-to-1 relation to the Altean Colony storyline, so it’s difficult to say exactly what aspects of the episode’s climactic fight and conclusion will turn out to be relevant. But, we can be fairly certain that the overall narrative is the same.

The apparent villain was actually being manipulated into taking the actions they took by a greater, silent threat. The few rebels our protagonists met were wrong about who was the real enemy. They were right about the issue, but wrong about the ‘why.’ The leader was not at fault because the leader had fallen prey to the creature first and was subsequently rendered powerless to stop it.

Perhaps even, and here we get into more speculation...

The real threat was something that loomed large in the background the whole time, assumed to be providing safety. Fallen from space.

The Baku is referred to as ‘the giver of life’.

That phrase is disconcertingly ominous, considering the only other time we've heard a similar phrase was in reference to Oriande. The Sages, or ‘Life Givers’, specifically.

And what is quintessence, but ‘life itself’.

JDS has previously compared Lotor to Magus from Chrono Trigger, a game I have no personal experience with, but @blackmoonbabe​ provides the relevant info​ here.

What if there's some kind of cosmic horror that Lotor's been fending off with Altean quintessence? Possibly, the only kind strong enough - apart from the rift sourced variety. Extracting it and storing the people in the hopes of eventually restoring them. Only, now that he's gone. There's nothing stopping whatever this thing is. Who knows. It might even be related to the rift creatures.

We still don't know what the Baku was or where it came from, just that it 'fell from space.' The new trailer for season 7 features a similar looking and very toothy one-eyed beastie.

When Lotor is pleading with Allura he says:

"Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depth of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande."

It might be that he found something bad while trying to unlock those mysteries.

All of this really makes you wonder why exactly Alfor kept Oriande's existence a secret.

Post season 1, there was an interview where the showrunners said that they had to kill off Alfor's AI because he knew spoilers. Which, okay, that’s fair.

Except... what exactly have we come to know now that only Alfor’s AI could have told us ahead of time?

Everything we eventually learn about Zarkon we find out through Allura and Coran. And everything surrounding Lotor and Haggar  are things that Alfor’s AI wouldn’t have known about because they happened after Alfor’s death. The only outstanding piece of information that Alfor could have know was the location of and the information about Oriande. But, Allura doesn't even think to look for Oriande until mere moments before she and Lotor unlock the map to it. Certainly, the AI could have provided information of the proper way to get past the trials, but that was resolved easily enough in-episode and it was never truly portrayed as a risk that Allura and Lotor wouldn’t return before the castle ran out of oxygen.

If it was true that Alfor knew spoilers... there is something BIG concerning Altean Alchemy that we don't yet know. Not something little. Something potentially game changing.

Even knowing there was a good chance he was going to his death, and Coran and Allura would be on their own, Alfor never told Coran about Oriande. Coran and Alfor have been shown to have a particularly close, lifelong friendship - strong enough that Coran keeps at least two portraits of Alfor in his room above his bed. Alfor trusted Coran to the extent that he entrusted his beloved daughter, the Black Lion, and the future of the universe into Coran’s hands.

And yet.

Alfor didn’t tell Coran about Oriande. The one place Allura might go to strengthen her alchemic abilities and reach her potential. Alfor was faced with the possibility of letting the knowledge of Oriande and Altean Alchemy die, and he chose to risk it.

There had to be a damn good reason he didn't tell Coran about it. He might have known about something bad. It seems like he wanted Oriande forgotten; for Allura to never go there. Or at least, not until she was ready to make some tough decisions. Decisions he would rather spare her.

I’ve been feeling since around season 3 that VLD’s ultimate conclusion will be to show us that there is no true good and evil, that neither violence or pacifism is always the answer, that the world - the universe - is all shades of grey. Allura is our vehicle for that. It’s through her assumed prejudices that the show is shifting our viewpoints. She began the series believing that the Galra were all evil, the Alteans good. As time has gone on she’s improved impressively on her initial bias against the Galra, but has steadfastly refused to acknowledge her own people as capable of similar actions - her response to the alternate reality Alteans was to declare them not true Alteans instead of accepting that they’d become akin to the Galra Empire from her own reality.

It’s clear that Allura will have to face Honerva eventually, and will be forced to confront what the former greatest Altean Alchemist has become. But it’s too easy to dismiss Honerva’s corruption into Haggar as a side effect of the rift - not the willing actions of someone more concerned with knowledge than morality.

For six seasons we’ve seen Alfor as a paragon of good. His one fatal flaw being perhaps too good, too trusting, that he believed his friend’s words over his own judgement. Ultimately damning the universe to ten thousand years of being ground under the heel of a brutal dictator.

Alfor paid for that mistake with his life, with the destruction of his planet and the near extinction of his people. And so, he remains what all good in VLD is measured against, both in our - the audience’s - minds, and in Allura’s.

But just as our ultimate evil, Zarkon, was revealed to be more than just a monster, so too will our ultimate good be made more complex. In season 3 we were introduced to the younger Zarkon. A loyal friend and comrade. Awkward around an attractive woman, afraid of cats, and a dedicated and concerned ruler of his people. He was humanized, for lack of a better word, but we still see in him the man who he’d eventually become.

What better way to finally break through Allura’s idealized view of Alteans than by tainting Alfor’s image in some way? To finally see our Big Good do something morally grey? We’ve already seen it foreshadowed by the corruption of the AI, and the Alteans in the alternate reality.

The first time we’ve heard someone level legitimate criticisms against Alfor was at the end of season 6. Just after Lotor begins his breakdown he says:

"What about your father? He may have been a master engineer, but Alfor was too weak to defend his home world. I’m the one who had to step up and save our entire race. Who are you to question my tactics in bringing peace and prosperity to the universe?"

No one else criticizes Alfor for his choices. Even when they acknowledge he failed, he's always portrayed as having taken the best choice. But, what if Lotor's right? It certainly looks like he is.

If Lotor hadn’t stepped in and saved those few survivors of Altea’s destruction they would eventually have been discovered by the empire and executed. Zarkon had made it his personal mission to drive the Alteans to extinction. Alfor was weak. He surrendered to his fear of what would happen if Voltron fell into Zarkon’s hands and failed to utilize all his resources to defend Altea, his people, and his allies.

This won’t be the only fault we find out he had, mark my words.

There is something dark and unsavory lurking in the truth of Altean Alchemy.

Considering Lotor readily admits that Alteans perished in the process of his quintessence experiments, it may very well be that whatever required such vast amounts of concentrated quintessence is also something Alfor had to contend with in the past. Canonically, as stated in s3e7 ‘The Legend Begins’, quintessence was only first discovered in the course of studying the rift on Daibazaal. Alfor could not have been utilizing quintessence directly, because he didn't know it existed.

So if, whatever Lotor has been having to do with the colony, Alfor may have been having to do something similar...

He was simply sacrificing people.

It’s a lot easier to hide a handful of people going missing when you have an entire planet’s population to work with.

What if this is a thing that had always been happening, and that's why Alfor never told Coran about Oriande?

The thing is, Lotor can't know that now. Or he would have told Allura. To justify his actions, if it was something that Alfor would have dealt with as well.

Lotor didn't have Voltron. If there is some kind of Cosmic Horror beastie out there he might not have been able to fight it, let alone kill it. So he was building Sincline. Hence the urgency to get it completed even after Zarkon was gone. We know he was out of concentrated quintessence as of s4e5 ‘Begin the Blitz’. He was either going to have to access the rift imminently or harvest more people.

The powers that be keep talking about things not being black and white in this show.

Alteans can do bad things. Honerva became Haggar. Allura herself has made some morally questionable choices. Like what she did to Lotor for example.

Allura will need to realize that. The truth will rise from the depths and confront her in a way she can no longer ignore.

Alfor failed. It was up to Lotor to save the Altean people. He did what he felt he had to do, and in many respects, it will turn out he was right.

Lotura Discord™ Meta! The only brand of Voltron Meta you can trust to cover all the bases. No reach is too far! We’ll make it. *

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[crystal-rebellion]

Colony Theory: Revisited & Refined

Proposition: AJ just confirmed Lotor’s colony plan.

I present my defense below the cut.

The Altean at the end of Season 7 was described as the mech’s “power source.”

The pilot is the battery.  The quintessence has to come from somewhere.  For Voltron, it also comes from the pilots, unless there is an ample supply of it nearby, such as the rift.

So the premise of pilots’ Quintessence as fuel is established already.

Moreover, there’s a striking resemblance between Sincline and this Altean mech, further linking the colony, Lotor and this machine.

(The first image is from the battle in the rift with Sincline, the second from Voltron’s battle with the Altean mech.  Voltron is blue in both cases.)

Lotor has been trying to find a way to protect his New Altea colony since before Voltron came back from being scattered across the universe.

Without the knowledge of Alchemy that Alfor possessed, he did the best he could.

“I have given everything that I have to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge - to unlock the mysteries of Oriande.” - Lotor, S6 E6

The second colony - the lunar outpost - was a military facility.  The Alteans volunteered to train to fly and fight (which accounts for why Bandor was able to fly the pod, even when Romelle said no one knew how to operate it for generations - the Alteans on the main colony did not receive this training.)

However, not all Alteans were eligible.  The machines required a Quintessence source, and Lotor has confirmed his knowledge that only some are alchemically inclined:

Eligible pilots were taken to the military facility on the moon and trained to pilot the machines.  Soldiers.  Martyrs.  And, unfortunately, sacrifices.

Without Alfor’s knowledge, the machines were too much for the pilots, and drained them of too much Quintessence, forcing Lotor to put them in pods - infusing them with Quintessence in an effort to save them, giving them the gaunt, hallowed look that resembled Honerva when she was over-saturated from the rift.

Lotor didn’t drain them.  The mechs - that the Alteans willingly, knowingly chose to fly - did, and he was trying to save them.  The special shipment of Quintessence that The Blades intercepted that was tied back to Lotor was going to the colony, not from it.

Honerva has now improved on the design.

By adding a Komar, the pilot will be able to recharge the suit - and themselves - by utilizing the Quintessence of something else - Voltron, in this explicit case.

This pilot does not look drained, nor overexposed, and her brow twitches, so she’s not dead, either.

(As an aside - those marks look faintly reminiscent of the lines on the Alteans in the colony, as well as on Bandor.)

And there does exist precedence (albeit non-Altean) for an entity to infuse themselves with Quintessence in an effort to maintain health...

In short, AJ is correct.  The Alteans are batteries, their Quintessence is being used to fly the machines to defend the last of their kind, and the Paladins just left Lotor in the Rift.

For a more detailed analysis on the colony, and what this could mean for Lotura as an endgame option, see

Leaking Hate’s Meta Here  (Thank you @leakinghate for being my meta buddy!)

My Meta Here

And if you’re curious about my crack theory about how the Komar is Altean and Alfor invented it, you can find that here.

[This is what happens when you leave the Lotura Discord alone with our thoughts for too long.]

[s4lticid]

The Shady as all Hell Whistleblower: Or why we shouldn’t take Romelle at face value.

Some firsts:

First and foremost, my deep thanks to the wonderful family at the Lotura Discord Server.  In the midst of dumping this stream of consciousness mess on you all, I may pull some ideas that were discussed there and are not original to me.  Where possible I will try and credit individuals, but if I miss anyone my deepest apologies and know that everyone there has had a great deal of influence over my thought process.  My love and thanks for all the great discussion and support – even the stuff I haven’t been present for!    

Second, this and the stuff to come right after, was the work of lots of thought and research that started right after S6 dropped.  That is a long time, and I wanted to get something out sooner but I have just been too swamped with RL, which has decided to become a giant, bloody, throbbing, pus-filled buboe blocking me from doing much of anything fun at all ever again.   Thus you will be treated to a stream of as much shit as I can spit out at once in the time I have to get this down, and it may not be in the best format or particularly well written, but here goes…  oh, and this is also another reason I may forget who said what in conversations exactly, because some of it happened nearly 2 months ago.

I am aware there have been a few metas written about Romelle.  I haven’t actually read any of them at this point, except for Leaking Hate’s awesome meta here, because  I didn’t want to get overly influenced by the ideas of others.  As such I have been on reading and participating in fandom even less that RL gave me a chance to.  So if you see something here that was said by someone outside of the Lotura Server and they are not credited, it is not me copying someone, I have just been holding on to it until I could post this.

That said, this builds off of some things LH posted in the above link, and I will do my best to credit those conversations I can remember reading and/or participating in within the Discord.

~oOo~ 

OKAY.

 I’m going to come right out and say it:  

Romelle is not who she says she is.

There are too many inconsistencies in her story.  So, let’s start at the very beginning and begin poking the holes to prove my point:

1.  Keith and Krolia find Romelle:

Keith and Krolia are in the Quantum Abyss riding a Space Whale and it brings them to a planet. Krolia takes a reading, and finds the same signal as the strange quintessence the Blade has been tracking on that planet.  

Note: Krolia first sees the readings from space and tracks them to the planet.  She doesn’t find any Quintessence signal anywhere else, she specifically states that it is strong and coming from exactly one place. 

It is coming from here:

So, if there was a moon base absolutely full of Alteans being drained for their quintessence, as they were shown later, why ever did such a larger source not register first and foremost rather than that cute little dome Romelle is in?

Speaking of that Dome, it’s pretty small, isn’t it?  It’s a bio-dome.  Meant for a few inhabitants.  Does this look like it could house a colony, or even a village realistically? No.  It can handle a handful, maybe a dozen people.  Probably, it was meant to house just one.  But we’ll get to that later.

Keith and Krolia break in and find Romelle, alone and by a riverside.  Washing clothes?  Why do that in her only clean water source when she has technology all around her? And make no mistake here, she is alone and demands help.

 ~oOo~

Now I am going to digress here for a moment before I go on to point 2, so I can point out a parallel to the original show, Defender of the Universe (to be referred to from here on as DotU for brevity’s sake, and for my fingers).

There are a LOT of nods to the original shows, (GoLion too), throughout VLD.  Some are flat out mirrors for the original, same plot ideas remade, lines taken and reused, Characters, Mechas, motives and situations, they’re all here, though sometimes reworked in very unexpected ways.  It’s beautiful seeing them all.

Finding the pretty Damsel alone by a stream, helpless, perhaps even passed out, is one plot device DotU used a LOT.  

For instance, when Allura’s Aunt Orla comes to visit, Haggar intercepts and captures her, and then takes her form and lies down to appear knocked out after an attack on her carriage.  She is found lying by a stream.  That was a plot to get to Allura:

Or how about the time Haggar herself was caught being pretty for a day – in apparently her original form – and cursed the person who saw her?  

Again, found by a river.

Fine, you say.  But this isn’t Haggar pretending to be Romelle.  That didn’t happen, right?

Oh but it did.  “It’ll Be a Cold Day”:

Ok, so she wasn’t found by a river this time.  But two out of three combined with the VLD writers’ way of reworking things make this a nice little reference point for this original trope.

Something else to note here is there is always some part of Haggar that is a tell.  Some part which she cannot disguise.  I would posit that we have one with VLD Romelle too: Her clothes.  As you go through this post, where you see images of other Alteans, please get a look at their garb.  There are several styles that are re-used among each of the people shown. However not one of them wears the same cut we see Romelle wear.  And yet someone does.  Who?  Haggar/Honerva.

No, I am not saying Romelle is actually Honerva/Haggar in disguise.  But she could easily be in league with her, and at the very least she definitely is not the innocent she appears and claims to be. Not just because of these fun little references to the original, but they are nice signposts along the way.  

 ~oOo~

2.  Romelle’s Story:  The Colony

Romelle starts her story to the Paladins by telling them she comes from a planet where there are thousands of Alteans.  

This bears repeating:  Thousands. Of living Alteans.  

Not “were” thousands, but are.  

Lotor apparently hunted down every Altean who had been off planet at the time Altea was destroyed, and their offspring, to bring them to the first Colony.  

Here is an image of the beginnings of that colony:

Here’s another:

Green as far as the eye can see and a giant ship that, as Leaking Hate pointed out in her meta and on Discord,  is easily the size of the dome we were shown above where Keith and Krolia first found Romelle.  

That ship would never fit in the bio-dome.  And as the upper picture of these two states in the subtitles, Lotor chose a remote planet beyond the Quantum Abyss, not in the Abyss.  A planet with a sun such that plants could grow, not a pulsar.

This means it cannot same planet as Romelle was found on, because she states the colony planet is beyond the Abyss, so the Abyss and the Pulsar within it already existed back then.  Neither could that ship ever hope to fit inside that dome, as is shown in her memory.

And that colony that was built, shown in the lower picture?  Is easily twice as big, or more, as the one Romelle is found in.

 3.  Romelle’s Story:  The Second Colony

Generations ago, once the Colony was very successful, Lotor began testing Alteans for special characteristics such that they could survive the journey to and live on a “Second Colony”. “To better our chances for survival”.

Let’s start with who was chosen.

Around Nine Thousand Five Hundred to Nine Thousand years ago – assuming time for Lotor to mature enough to do all this, knowing that he ages slowly thanks to the writers – Lotor would have started the first Colony.  The last people brought might have been found within a couple of hundred years of that range, but probably less.  

Think about how long a time that is.

Now, get a look at the faces that came in with some of the survivors found way back then:

 Now look at who is being tested:

(Note: I circled a few faces, but if you really look you will see many of the same ones from the above pic)

And note two of the faces I circled.

We know Alteans have a long life span.  Far longer than Humans.  But we also know from Allura’s reaction that they shouldn’t be anything like at least Nine Thousand Years or more.

So how are First-comer Refugee Alteans alive and young at the same time – ‘Generations Later’ – as both Romelle and Bandor?  

Let’s argue that they could be.  Bandor and Romelle were just younger then and not chosen.  So then Why have neither of them aged at all by the time Romelle related that eventually Bandor was old enough to be tested and passed?

And look, here are some of the first people chosen.  Recognize at least one face and clothing? (Not including Petrulius who is a contemporary of Romelle’s as she identifies him on the Moon Facility)

Sure they could be chosen much later, but then why have they not aged at all?

So were Romelle and Bandor refugees?  If so then why did Romelle say she was born onto that planet?

Were they born on the planet as she claims? 

Did Lotor start testing for special Alteans earlier than she says?  Or was it really later?  If the latter then how are these original refugees still so young?

However you look at it, her timeline does not add up,

 4.  Romelle’s Story:  The Monument

Thanks in advance to Trisha, Giobana, Crystal Rebellion, Leaking Hate and anyone else who contributed to the conversation that led to this one.

Romelle shows us in her memory that there was a memorial wall to those who went to the Second Colony. Whether she mentions it to the Paladins, I don’t know, but what is shown in the episode looks very much like a memorial to the Fallen.

The base of the Lotor’s statue is covered in names, and we see it cracked with age.  People go there to pay respects and leave flowers – and not just any flowers, but pink flowers.  

This kind of memorial is what you do for Fallen Soldiers and Fighters in a struggle, not people who are alive off somewhere on another colony and whom you hope to see again once the struggle is over. We even see this is a cross-cultural, cross-species, and intergalactic practice when we see the monument planet Pidge first traced Matt to. 

And what do we know about Pink to Alteans?  From Allura:

Fallen Warriors.  Not people who have gone to a second colony in the hopes of keeping their people alive.

Actually, let’s look at that little tale there.  Any colony, in order to be successful, requires a genetically diverse population, a breeding population.  A handful of people at a time, because they test as special is not going to provide that. Particularly not in what has been portrayed as a potentially dangerous and harsh journey and place – that alone would be safer in numbers.

Add to that we clearly see that Lotor has separated breeding pairs – Couples – in the few images we see of those chosen.  If he is trying to establish a new colony why would he logically do that?  The Alteans are intelligent and have some technological expertise, at least some of them, how did no one question that?

I call Shenanigans.  

Whatever was going on, it was not another colony and the Alteans all knew it.

This wall?  Is a War Memorial honoring warriors who the Alteans think are probably dead. 

 5.  Romelle’s Story:  The Communicator

When Bandor is chosen, he is portrayed as giving Romelle a communicator to try and stay in touch with her. 

This, despite his being portrayed by her as someone who deeply believed in the importance of not compromising the location of each colony through stray communications that could be picked up and tracked.  He is portrayed as explaining to Romelle, in such a ways that impies he has explained it to her time and again, why it was so very important that there be no communication.  He seems to understand and believe that it could be life and death.  But he creates one anyway?  

And then, he doesn’t think to give it to her until he is about to board the ship, in front of the guards:

Look at this picture above.  If you zoom in, everyone is looking at them and watching.

This whole part of the story is flat out ridiculous, and makes zero sense. There is no logic to this chain of events or his giving her the thing only at that very moment and not before testing just in case or something.  

It is a lie on the level a six year old might tell.  It shouldn’t even be considered as more than that.  And it is here, I think, that we fly into the realm of pure fantasy. Everything up till now was probably half-truths and misdirection.  From here on out though, her story really starts to fall apart and it is very likely we are seeing total and full fabrication.

 6. Romelle’s Story: The Dome

We know Romelle never gets chosen for the second Colony, or at least she never states that she does. Her never being chosen for the second colony wouldn’t be something to hide, it could totally benefit her story.  It would also help to explain why they didn’t try to warn anyone or stop the testing once they found the moon base – a fact that no one questioned, which itself is suspicious.  But she implies by her story that she remains at home, among her people, all alone and depressed because now she has no family.  

So she is supposedly still at the original colony when Bandor finally does contact her.   He has crashed by the woods.  She goes to him and what does she see?

The roof of the Dome. Which we have already established does not exist on the First Colony.  So, where is she?  Why is she now in this Dome?

What happened in the intervening time that she is not telling us, and is this story about Bandor crashing and the communicator even true?  Or are we now in fully manipulative fantasy?

There appear to be no other people in the Dome at all.  At least neither Keith nor Krolia relate having seen even one single person to corroborate her story.  No other Alteans on this original Colony she is supposed to still be on, which is where Keith and Krolia supposedly find her, and where she states very clearly in the beginning of her story that there are thousands of living, healthy Alteans.Why did Keith and Krolia not see one other person? 

Why does Romelle know about a flight bay on the outside of the Dome such that she can take Keith and Krolia to it, but they are supposed to be on an open planet?

When Romelle shows them to said pod, she actually says that “No one else here would know how to fly them if they wanted to”.  She represents in this line, once again, that this is the First Colony and there are other people here.  So where are they?

 7.  The Moon Base

Let’s begin with a question I asked at the beginning.

Why, when they were coming in to the planet, did Krolia see  

no quintessence signal at all

 from that moon base?  

These supposed people are supposedly being harvested – and Keith uses the active verb. 

These people

Are.  Not. Dead

.

The signal of Quintessence from a place so full of so many people, and the energy being harvested from them, not to mention the pods of Quintessence being harvested off in a storage room somewhere, being collected and stored for pickup, would have logically dwarfed the signal coming from Romelle and her little Dome.  They would have ended up here first, not at the Dome.

Even when they finally get there, at first Krolia only says she sees something down on the moon, not that she is getting any kind of Quintessence signal there.

Why?  Because there isn’t any.

The pods and the people are a mirage, created by them and for them; woven out of their own pre-existing prejudice and hate, and so very easy for them to believe.

Lotor never was portrayed as taking so very many people at once.  For that many people to still be alive and being drained on that station, almost every single Altean would have to still be alive and being used.  

A key thing Lotor has been portrayed as is not wasteful. Realistically, and if this were true, Alteans would have died of age.  Some even may have died from the process itself.  

Why would you keep a dead body in a pod like that for generations, and just build another?  

You wouldn’t.  You would dispose of the corpse and reuse the pod.

There wouldn’t be so very many of them if what Keith and Krolia saw was real, and was what they thought.

Let’s get a look at the pods, btw.  They are very reminiscent of Earth Batteries or Quintessence Capsules themselves, aren’t they?  Why do you think that is?  Perhaps because they are being manufactured from the thoughts and imaginings of Keith and Krolia?

Here is what real Galra Pod Tech looks like – this is the most recent example, but we HAVE seen it before in earlier seasons.  I am just too lazy to go and find it.

Lotor is a Prince, with access to resources and a scientist who designs and creates his own tech advances, ships and fleets.  To top that he has access to all of the best and latest technology in the empire.   

Does this really look anything like real, known and hi-tech Galra technology, except in a passing, functional way?

And why, after they have seen this and come to the conclusions they have, if the colony is right there and they have not only the proof but are themselves outsiders, giving them credibility….  WHY do Keith and Krolia – both Altruistic heroic do-gooders – not go and try to warn the rest of the Colony?  Get them to stop participating or submitting to the tests?

Again, that makes no sense at all according to their personalities.  Instead, they run headlong back to Allura to blow the whistle on evil, evil Lotor. No stops, no questions, no thought about the others still at risk.  

Also, no proof aside from this one little girl and her story, which without other evidence amounts to nothing more than Heresay.  No pictures, no video and no attempt to grab a jar of Quintessence to prove their case.

We find out in S7, that Keith at least sent a message to Kolivan and asked him to send a squad out there.  But what did Kolivan’s team find?

Nothing.  The place was empty.  “Cleaned out”.  And judging by the lighting when they got there, it was already probably empty and shut down.  They just imagined the pods.  How else would it be empty?  It’s not like Lotor had any time to clear it.  Neither did Honerva, if Kolivan acted right away – and honestly, Kolivan would have acted as fast as he could.

Speaking of Honerva:

 8.  On the Castle of Lions

Honerva is watching through Mommy Cam Kuron.  Nowhere in this episode is she at all surprised or disturbed to see another living Altean.

We find out later when she speaks to Lotor that she is aware that he has continued her work and succeeded where she could not.  That work was partly involving Alteans, but I will get to what that means later and probably in a different post.

So she is aware that Alteans exist, but she is still not at all surprised to see Romelle there in the castle.  At all.  As if it is part of her plan.  Could Romelle be in league with Honerva?  A part of a plan?

OR, thanks to the Blade being compromised by the alliance with Lotor – which Keith points out in S7 – Honerva found out about the investigation into the Quintessence early on into the new Alliance and traced the path herself.  She has access to all databases and resources in the Empire, after all, and we do not know what she was doing for a looong time while a lot of other things were going down in S5 and S6.

Kolivan and the blade, despite their own resources, were having trouble tracing the source and route of the quintessence.  Perhaps what they did find was carefully fed to them when Honerva was ready for them. When both she and Romelle were prepared.

And let’s talk a moment about how not one of the members of the team, including both Hunk and Kuron – both great voices of calm and reason for the team – questioned any of the discrepancies of the story I mentioned above, or Keith and Krolia’s actions, lack of corroboration and lack of trying to help the surviving colonists.  

They have started to build a relationship with the Galra, learn their culture and working hard for peace for months and months.  They were all starting to get to know and like Lotor even.  They know the careful balance going on right now in the empire.  And then one girl shows up with an MIA team member and has an uncorroborated story, and starts ordering people to shoot Lotor down, not caring that Allura is there too.  Even after she is told that Allura is there she doesn’t care.

Her story starts preying on emotion and projecting her own obvious desire to see him dead.  And the team members all get very emotional and ready for violence as well, as if the last several months never happened.  Their reasoning starts to slip, they don’t question or think out what they’re being told, not even the ones that normally do that no matter what.

And then we have this foreshadowing from waaaay near the beginning of the show:

Keith is still a hothead in many ways.  And he was too impatient to get Lotor to be focused against mind control.

He shows up on the Castle ready to rush into the rift and attack.  Even after hearing that Allura would be caught in the crossfire he presses to try and do just that and has to be bitchslapped by Lance.

The sheer venom and anger in all of the Paladins’ responses once Romelle is done with her story is off the scale.  Especially Hunk and Shiro.  Shiro’s tone when he says once Lotor and Allura land they will separate them and “Take Lotor down!” is a tone I have never once heard from him in the entire series.  It’s sheer rage fueled bloodlust.  This is not any of them.  This is them being manipulated.

A brief thought about S7…  Never mind that Romelle’s Altean frankly sucks, and she seems able to read Hunk’s mind – convenient that.  How about Romelle identifying Lotor’s fleet by sight?  When did she ever see enough of that, while living isolated on the colony, to know his ships by sight?

 SO. Who or what is Romelle?

Well, we have seen how characters are reworked from the original.  And there is one major character from the original we still haven’t seen.

Merla.

It makes no sense to bring in a new character now.  But merging her with another character already brought in, one who disliked and enjoyed thwarting Lotor as much as the original Romelle did?  That is not only possible, it is plausible, considering many of the character merges and re-works the VLD Team has already done throughout the series.

Merla is telepathic, but more, she can control people.  Partly via telepathy, but most often she uses the trope known as Emotion Bomb:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EmotionBomb

It is so much easier to control people through emotions and insecurities they already have.  And by the behavior of the Paladins that day? That is exactly what was happening. Not one of them acted rationally or completely within the current development of their character to Romelle and her appearance/story.  Not even Keith and Krolia did when they found her, as pointed out earlier.

They are all being manipulated and at least mostly, lied to. They are pawns and Romelle a tool to get Lotor out of their Alliance and out of his safe space with Voltron.  This is why Honerva was not surprised about Romelle being there on the ship.  This is how Honerva knew about the Alteans and the research when she finally got Lotor back onto her ship to try and talk to him.

Honerva is back to herself and she wants to get back to her people, probably to lead them.  She wants her son back now that she has herself again too.  To get even a chance at that she needs to get him away from his safe and stabilizing place with the Voltron Coalition.  She wants his Sincline ship, so she wouldn’t need Voltron anymore.  She certainly wouldn’t want him cozying up to Alfor’s Daughter.

Honerva has put a nice chess game onto the table, getting Romelle on her side, manipulating the Paladins, and forcing the breach in the budding New Empire and Alliance.  

Romelle is pissed, perhaps understandably, and has a bone to pick.  She may have been exiled to that planetoid by her people and Lotor, for starting shit on the Colony, and found there by Honerva, or she may have been set up there by Honerva.  In the end the result is the same.  Perfect tool.

Because Lotor had not been harvesting Alteans all this time.  Romelle, as he said in the episode, was not telling the truth and did not know what she spoke of.  What would be the point of that, there is no research in that, only death.  No, he has been developing fighters like the one we saw in the end of S7.  Fighters that fuse Altean Alchemic Magic and fighting skill from the pilot, allowing the pilot to see and experience straight through the ship’s sensors, and powering the ship through their own Quintessence – very like the Lions only more.  (My thanks to Crystal Rebellion who helped me develop this base idea with this meta.  There will be more to come on this.)

The special Alteans who went with him from the colony were test pilots, heroes to their people, to help ensure their survival.  A new protective military force.  .  

Test pilots have a dangerous job, one that is known to lead to death.  And who knows, maybe some Galra had snooped around at times. Regardless, that memorial to fallen warriors was just exactly that, and all the Altean people knew exactly what they were volunteering for.  

Even Lotor said a few were martyred for an important cause to save the future for thousands.  One cannot become a martyr unless everyone knows what they did and why.

Lotor is their greatest Hero and Savior.  And now his Mother is likely there – having forsaken the Druids – and has given the Colony a story of betrayal, and the Komar to perfect their fighters.  Perhaps a wounded and/or Comatose Lotor is with her if she managed to pull him out of the rift first.  But regardless, the Alteans are not friends to Allura, Voltron or the Coalition.  They are going to see Allura and the Paladins as enemies, who betrayed and hurt their leader and protector.

That fighter was not a part of Sendak’s fleet, she was a forward thrust.  A shot across the Paladin’s bow.  The Alteans will be hunting Voltron.

I’ll leave you with a parting thought.

The writers also said in the end, we would look back and see that Lotor was never lying.  And that he came from a genuine place, though he never had the tools and choices the rest of the Paladins were given in their upbringings and lives.  And lastly, that his feelings for Allura were indeed genuine.

I am working on a meta for Lotor.  I’ll get there soon.

My thanks again to everyone on the Lotura Discord.  You are all amazing, wonderful people and I am lucky to have met you and to be able to discuss ideas with you.

Thanks to Crystal Rebellion for helping me last minute find links at 2 AM so I can get a bit of sleep before work

And thanks to the love of my life for putting up with me being tied up so late tonight. 

Without your support I can do so little.

[royalalteans]

“The Prisoner” — S05E01

See, I feel like we havent talked about this scene before, because this is a very pivotal moment in Lotor’s character/morality. 

If we go by Lauren & Joaquim’s repetitive claims that everything Lotor has said till date has been “genuine”, then I find this scene to be very interesting, especially because it makes the belief regarding Lotor’s intentions, in the finale of S6, contradictory as fuck. To me, this seemed more like foreshadow, hinting at something related to “harvesting quintessence” in the future. We see how that plays out in S6—but going completely against Lotor’s actual intentions mentioned above (& therefore in the form of a misunderstanding on the Paladins part). This being foreshadow seemed even more likely, especially considering what Lotor says after this scene:

He asks of them, to judge him by his actions, something that they obviously don’t end up doing in the S6 finale, because his side of the story is never even heard (though of course, Hagerva played a huge role in fucking up that moment & we can admit that later in the rift, emotions were running high for everybody to think clearly). The Paladins don’t even judge him by his “actions”as he said, but from some third person’s words about him, which they don’t even bother affirming.

So, what I’m trying to say is that it’s entirely probable that everyone who didn’t believe in Lotor, got played, and the events that led to the S6 finale are not what they seem. 

Another point I want to add is that, since Shiro is present in this scene, it’s very likely that Hagerva was watching the entire exchange. And who knows, maybe she’s the one who wanted that misunderstanding, which is the opposite of what Lotor stands for, to erupt between this “galtean alliance”, since breaking apart Voltron from Lotor would work best in her favour. It’s also very likely that the colony bullshit is her doing (aka shes the one draining the alteans of quintessence and leaving them as zombies or turning them into druids - a theory someone brought up recently!) (or that Lotor actually tried to save those alteans but Hagerva caught wind of it & used them for her nefarious purposes) and she wanted to slap Lotor’s name on it to further that divide between Allura and Lotor- especially since she knows it would be something that’d hit Allura the hardest. She most likely also saw the growing bond between Lotor and Allura and wanted to sever that. (Not to mention the fact that Allura is now a very powerful Altean alchemist, like Hagerva. So this separation would also be a power play on Hags part.) (I also talked a little about Hags motives in this meta)

Another thing I want to add is the, “Clearly, you are not ready to end this war.” line. Which is interesting again, because that’s exactly the state the Paladins are in post-S6. The war is still ongoing, but now it’s even worse than before because the alliance is most likely gone to hell with the Paladins having brought the Galran Emperor down, the Galra are probably like wtf is happening? Hagerva continuing to play her evil galaxy chess and then Sendak now fucking about on earth at the Garrison. So, you know? Lmao.

Guess we’ll see what happens when S7 airs on the 10th.

Special thank you to the Lotura Discord and our speculations. If there is anyone from the discord who brought this up beforehand- please let me know so I can credit you.

[spacekittiesiguess]

Lotura and the initiation of touch

This is based on a discussion from the Lotura discord as well as my own thoughts about this, and why I think Lotor is coming back and isn’t meant to be the “bad guy” (which I never really believed he was, but yeah). Putting this under a read more because it’s gonna get rambly. What can I say, I like to babble about space elves.

For anyone who decides to get upset about this because of the whole “genocide” thing - for one, words mean things. Not trying to be bitchy here but please, read the definition of the word because I can ten thousand percent guarantee that Lotor was in no way trying to destroy the Altean people. For another, we have one version of events and while Lotor did admit that people died, we don’t know how or why. We don’t even know for sure that he was draining quintessence. So yeah. If he was, and if it was for nefarious purposes then fine, I’m just saying not to go all out on that until we know the whole story. This meta has nothing to do with that, but it seems like anything about Lotor or Lotura lately is subject to that sort of weirdness.  

ANYWAY - 

Lotor is a poster child for emotional abuse. He’s a textbook case in the way he reacts to things, and his trust in Allura followed that pattern as well. I’d go so far as to say that he trusted her much more quickly than I ever expected him to, but I guess in war the timeline does speed up.

We see them softening toward each other every time they interact, to the point where she’s willing to go into Haggar’s lair with him alone for what had to be hours on end. He did take her hand to ask her not to go while there, but he held her fingers rather than her entire hand, and she could easily have broken his grasp if she’d chosen to. She didn’t. Even on the way there, she took his arm of her own volition. He did bend it so she might, but he never asked her to nor indicated that she should, and by all rights as Emperor he could easily have done so and not been at all out of line. But he didn’t.

Oriande was yet another display of walls coming down between them. Lotor sharing with her the story of the colony he was in charge of was obviously painful for him, and while they didn’t touch there, if you watch the scene where they talk about it Allura is the one shown looking at him adoringly from behind. He turns slowly, and I think he was expecting disgust for what he’d shared, but when he saw that she was gazing at him almost lovingly he lit up. 

As a survivor of severe emotional abuse, I can say definitively that this is 100% accurate. Nothing Lotor has done over the course of the show has been in any way unbelievable to me, someone who lived through a lot of what Lotor did (although obviously my parents weren’t the heads of an intergalactic empire). His trust in Allura was quick, and some might see that as unrealistic, but I think it’s even more likely when you consider that Lauren herself said that Allura was the first trusting relationship Lotor ever had experience with. He latched on because he knew he had reason to.

And he wasn’t alone. Not in the slightest. We see it most obviously in season 6, but even in season 5 it was blatantly clear that Allura was falling for him just as much. The two of them had light in their eyes when they looked at one another, and their relationship was built on trust and respect to the point that Lotor never initiated touch with her at all aside from catching her fingers in Haggar’s lair. Every other time? Allura was the one to go for it. 

She went for the kiss in season 6 episode 2. After they returned from the Rift she stared at his lips the entire time, from the second he helped her out of Sincline. True, he leaned in first, but she was staring so deliberately at his lips he’d have been a fool not to. 

And it’s just really good to see, both as a woman (because yay, Allura having agency and not just reacting to advances but making them herself!) and as a survivor of emotional abuse. Because as great as it is that she went for it, it’s even better that she was showing Lotor he was worthy and wanted in a very obvious way, something he very likely never experienced before.

With examples like Lance who seems to see Allura as a prize rather than a complete being with her own feelings and agency, the way they show Lotor being the more passive of the two of them at least in their initial approaches has been really, really good to see. 

[princesseblade]

I gotta say, I never thought I'd thank the universe for getting spoiled. I went from heartbreak, to laugh, to actual neutral, critical thinking back again. Shot out to the OP of "You are Wrong about Lotor" - their meta is a big reason why I'm way more calm now and ready to watch the season. Really, OP has a bunch of excellent points. I'm ready to tore down that weird emotional mess they threw at us and analyze it when I'll have time. Have a nice day everybody!

That meta was the by product of  alot of us in the discord because we all went through the same emotional rollercoster lol. It just didn’t make sense that JDS and LM would be patting themselves on the back for this stupid predictable ass outcome…and now... Now it makes sense with all the kee heeing and “the fandom reacted exactly the way I thought it would” stuff. Because if we’re right and they got even US the Lotor and Lotura fans to doubt Lotor, you already know they got every one else who was being basic.  

[leakinghate]

I heard from somewhere that Josh Keaton said Aj has been dropping tiny spoilers in his tweets... which worries me since he jokes a lot of times about Lotor being in the riff. What are your thoughts? Do you think Lotor is just stuck in the rift for eternity?

Oh AJ has absolutely been dropping spoilers, and not just in his tweets.

A few weeks after the premier of s6 (in June I think?) he closed out an AfterBuzz interview with “Lotor was framed!”

Now, it was clearly interpreted by the hosts and the majority of the fandom as a joke, but at that point we in the Lotura discord had been theorizing exactly that since the day after the s6 drop. 

Now, it’s important not to take this and run with it. Yes, AJ has been dropping some spoilers, but not every tweet is a spoiler. Remember when he teased that Keith was a princess and a significant portion of the fandom decided that that meant Keith would be playing a princess in the M&M episode? Yeah, that was just a joke. Didn’t happen.

So AJ making multiple jokes about Lotor being in the rift? Well, that’s probably because that’s where we last saw Lotor. And, y’know, there’s a good chance he’s still stuck in there. And no, I don’t believe he’s going to be stuck there forever. There is no point to him being still alive if he’s just to remain stuck there.

I think, if you want to comb through for spoilers, you’re going to want to take things that AJ has mentioned or alluded to multiple times. That’ll increase your chances of being right. Luckily for you, every time AJ posts a new tweet the Lotura discord tears it apart for hints of spoilers - fairly certain that’s been happening since the discord opened, lol.

Now, I don’t have a list of all the tweet analysis or anything to go off of, but just the stuff that’s coming to mind as topics that have a good chance of being spoilers?

Lotor is not a villain. He is a good person who made some mistakes, and those mistakes are nowhere near as bad as they’ve been made out to be.

When Lotor re-enters the story he’s going to be angry with Allura, but underneath it all he still loves her.

Lotor really, truly does love Allura.

That love is going to be the key to saving him. AJ keeps making Snow White/Sleeping Beauty/true loves kiss type references - we’re not sure if that’s literal or metaphorical at this point.

Repeated references to Lotor’s clothes/lack thereof? Might be an outfit change. Honestly we can’t seem to stop going NSFW places with speculation regarding those references, so who knows what it could actually mean. 

Something else that stands out? Despite claiming to not get involved in shipping stuff, AJ likes and re-tweets a heck of a lot of Lotura art - like, more than he does solo Lotor art.

So yeah. All these little possible spoilers? Support our ideas.

(Please, please, please. DO NOT go and pester AJ for spoilers. I know Lotura fam doesn’t need to be told this, y’all are good, rational people. But I can’t make this post without asking. Please leave the VAs alone. Only send them good things. They get more than enough hate as it is.)

[leakinghate]

Who are the Modern Galra?

The Galra in VLD are a dramatically varied race, with individuals displaying physical features resembling anything from reptiles to mammals and everywhere in between.

By contrast, the Galra of the past seem to be uniformly reptilian in appearance. Were the background characters in ‘The Legend Begins’ all copy-pastes of each other? Or did something happen over the Empire’s 10,000 year history to change the appearance of the Galra as a species in such a dramatic manner?

Yes, yes, quintessence and universe conquering happened - but how about we not just hand-wave the issue? Hmm? Let’s see what the show is actually showing us on the subject.

This post was inspired by this one from @purplerubyred​! As well as @theaceofgrapes​ asking someone to grab them a screenshot of a particular character in the Lotura Discord. If I hadn’t read that post I wouldn’t have noticed that particular character’s eyes.

Who’s eyes?

Well, when people first saw Krolia in s5 many suspected that she might be part Altean because Alteans are the only race we’d encountered with colored pupils.

Turns out. We forgot one.

Trigel possesses the same yellow sclera, colored irises, and white pupils that both Acxa and Krolia have.

Not to mention, as of season 7? Trigel and Axca have the same horns.

vs

My take away? Krolia and Axca are both part Dalterian (and so is Keith by extension).

Further evidence towards this theory is that Trigel’s horns have two distinct points and prior to the timeskip between seasons 6 and 7 it appeared that Acxa had two sets of horns. It could be that she’s always had a single set the connection of the two points simply being hidden by her hair. In the three missing decaphoebs between seasons Acxa’s horns may have simply grown out, and her now longer hair is hiding the second point.

As pointed out in the post liked above. Many late-Empire Galra seem to carry physical traits that Blaytz, and presumably the rest of his people from Nalquod (the Nalquians? Nalquodians? Nalquese?), also share.

Our friend Morvok is perhaps the perfect example of this, as not only does he have the large, manta-ray like ears, he also possess  similar facial markings and white eyes - as opposed to the normal Galran yellow.

If this revelation turns out to be relevant somehow in season 8 it might be why Morvok of all characters was chosen to make a cameo in s7e4 ‘The Fued’.

So why are the Galra so much more diverse in physical appearance after the 10k year time skip?

Take a look at these three. Now tell me that between the three of them they don’t account for all the physical characteristics - besides the pupil-less eyes - that are present in the modern Galra population but not in the past.

Modern Galra are all hybrids of 4/5 of the OG Paladin's races.

We know all the original paladins were the leaders of their respective people, and we have strong evidence that Zarkon killed at least Blaytz and Trigel along with Alfor.

But in season 7 we find out that the only planet that resisted the Empire to the point that Zarkon destroyed it was Altea. If we can take this as truth, it implies that Rygnerath, Nalquod, and the Dalterion Belt all surrendered after their leaders were executed. We actually have more supporting evidence for this in season 7 - the planet in s7e1 with the Yelmores on it is referred to by Coran as the Dalterion Belt. We later see Team Voltron leaving for space in s7e2 and we’re given a wide shot of the Belt and the particular planet they were on. It looks dark, and badly damaged, but it’s still clearly supporting functioning ecosystems and life.

It makes sense that they would surrender.

If the population evacuated from Daibazaal was split between the remaining paladin’s planets there would already be a sizable amount of Galra loyal to their Emperor seeded among the population. We learn in season 5 that the Kral Zera to choose a new ruler takes place what seems to be within three days of the death of the old one. Zarkon’s death, funeral, the evacuation and destruction of Daibazaal, and then Zarkon’s resurrection... it all took place in less than three days.

What must the average citizen think?

The Galra Emperor and his wife both die unexpectedly. The news of their death is broken by a foreign ruler, one who had, until quite recently, been on strained-at-best terms with them. What’s more, this same ruler then forcibly evacuates and blows up the entire planet. In less than three days.

They evacuated and then destroyed an entire planet, with no advanced warning, in less than three days.

Can you imagine the magnitude of what they lost? From the personal to the cultural? That’s the loss of the castle at the end of season 6 only on the entire planet-wide scale. Grab your essentials, there’s no time for anything else, and go.

And then, as a refugee on a foreign planet, while watching your Emperor’s funeral, the man himself appears! Restored to life! He calls you to take up arms against the King who unjustly stole the Black Lion from him, told you your Emperor was dead, and destroyed your planet! The common citizen wouldn’t know or even have reason to believe the truth. And the citizens of the other paladin’s planets? Who does it look like is the victim here? The four Rulers who have just removed from power and destroyed the home of the one they’d had a falling out with? Or the Emperor who returned from the dead to find justice for his people? How would the common person even go about seeking proof?

No, if the populations of those planets chose to align with the Galra it wouldn’t surprise me.

While the modern Galra Empire under Zarkon is disgustingly blood purist, it stands to reason that it was not always that way. Prior to the destruction of Daibazaal they freely allied with other races, and the Emperor himself was married to a non-Galra.

So what happens when you have three planets full of people with no leaders and another planets worth of people with a leader but without a home planet? It seems to me a logical leap to say that the burgeoning Empire absorbed the populations into itself, and probably as equal citizens. The Empire is the Galra  Empire, and its citizens are Galra, but they are not the same as the original Galra race.

I think it’s likely that the Empire did not begin it’s expansion until it had over-exploited and exhausted the quintessence resources already under its control. However long that took, a century, a millennium? By that point the four peoples had blended to the point that they had developed a singular cultural identity. And thus, the Galra, a race of people descendant from four separate races, came to create a universe spanning Empire where status depended on blood purity.

But hey! We missed somebody. If this is really possibly a thing that happened, where are the Galra who resemble Gyrgan’s people?

You mean, where are the stocky, furry, single-lobed ears on top of their heads, possibly sporting an underbite with prominent lower incisors and/or interestingly colored facial markings Galra?

Oh, I don’t know.

Must be a few of them around somewhere.

Kolivan there is actually fairly interesting, because not only does he have the colored facial markings and fur, he’s also got the big, manta-ray looking ears.

Most Galra we meet are actually a mix of multiple traits, which makes sense - after 10,000 years there isn’t really any such thing as ‘part’ anything. It’s all ‘Galra’ by now.

It would make sense then, if the Modern Galra are a people composed of 4/5ths of the original Paladins’ races, if the end of VLD doesn’t see the Alteans folded into whatever becomes of the Empire in an equal partnership. Finally reuniting all the peoples who originally built Voltron.

Such as if, perhaps, their respective leaders were to have an alliance of sorts?

Just saying.