etiquette!!1!

Here’s one for you:

Lance’s round in The Feud

[09:48]

Keith’s drawing round has been discussed pretty extensively, by me and by others, but what I haven’t seen discussed all that much is Lance’s solo round of "Faces from the Past".

We’ve established multiple times that the Feud contains a lot of meta; references to past events (Keith’s round) and foreshadowing a lot of future ones, as well as providing a lot of symbolism for the teams dynamic (Lance standing in the middle, signifying how he’s both the head of Voltron now AND that he has to choose between Allura and Keith). There’s also some meta-commentary on Bob, perhaps meant to ridicule one of their executive producers Bob Koplar, which I talked about here.

SO. All that to say, this episode is PACKED, and everything is there for a reason. This is one of the last episodes Tim Hedrick ever wrote for the show and he wasn’t gonna leave quietly. So, what does Lance’s round symbolise?

At first, I thought there might be a pattern in who was chosen to be presented for Lance to guess, but I quickly found none that I could discern. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what this was meant to show, except to show Lance’s ineptitude for remembering names. But clearly, that’s not entirely true because he starts guessing on the people he knows before the screen settles on someone else.

[10:54]

Someone he didn’t expect.

And that’s when it clicked for me. Lance is shown people he doesn’t expect, someone he might have overlooked.

The whole point of Keith’s challenge was to remind Lance of all of his and Keith’s bonding moments and things that connect him. But when Lance keeps guessing wrong, they try a new strategy, teaching him a lesson. Since the whole game show is structured like a dating show, Lance’s position between Allura and Keith emphasizing this, the lesson here is in trying to tell him who he should choose. The second to last round symbolizes this even. It stops shortly on Nyma, a girl whom he paid a lot of attention to as a way to deflect from the vulnerability he felt with Keith just the day before, before it stops on Rolo, a guy, the one he didn't pay as much attention to/ignored:

[12:16]

The point is to tell him that the one he’s looking for, the one he’s meant to be with, is the one he least expects. The one he overlooks.

Keith.

[20:07]

But what’s even more brilliant about this is that it’s all for nothing. Lance doesn’t do well at these challenges, not because he can’t see his own feelings, or realize his own sexuality, but because ultimately he doesn’t need them to realize what he’s known since season 6.

He loves Keith.

Which is why, despite losing almost every challenge, despite sending the message to Keith that he’s totally oblivious and doesn’t see him as more than a friend, he chooses him, anyway.

[19:59]

He chooses KEITH. Despite it all.

And when he has to give the reason, he doesn’t hesitate to answer. He knows EXACTLY why:

Mind you, this is the FIRST TIME Lance has ever admitted to anything positive about Keith or complimented him. SERIOUSLY. FIRST TIME. AND HE LOOKS LIKE THIS WHILE HE DOES IT TOO:

(amendment: second time. He called Keith cool in season 1 wearing this exact expression too, so my point stands.)

So the point here isn't that Lance is dumb or that Lance doesn't know what he's doing or what he's feeling. It's the opposite. Lance knows exactly what's going on. He knows that he loves Keith. He just isn't very good at showing it yet.

AND i think it's a funny and clever meta commentary on what the audience expects of Lance's endgame too. maybe not so much a lesson for Lance as it is a lesson for us and our heteronormativity. We, the casual viewer, in our heteronormativity overlook Keith as a candidate for Lance's love interest. And this lesson is emphasised when Lance chooses Keith, doing what no one would have expected of him at this point, not even his teammates:

hc that morro is south asian!! I gave him a more femme outfit because he deserves to SLAY!!

IT MAY BE GONE FROM NETFLIX BUT THE SPACE GAYS SURE AINT GONE FROM OUR HEARTS💥💥‼️

smh why is it always closets, all the brooms probably fell over 😔

My beautiful gorgous perfectest most amazingest little snuggle muffin and the ugly groom. (Ref underneath.)