So apparently in older versions of Voltron (don’t take my word for is, I’ve only heard secondhand and I can’t be bothered to research), the Lions came from another reality and were cast out for arrogance or something. But ignoring my clear lack source checking, I’ve always found the idea interesting.
The Lions were originally one 5-part inter-reality being that got kicked out and forced into a mortal form in a single reality. It explains some things, like how they’re overpowered, why they seem to operate on different rules from every other ship in canon, why Zarkon couldn’t just make another Voltron or Black Lion. They prompted Alfor to sculpt them into forms they found most familiar, but there was another curse that came with their physical forms: they could only act when bonded with a mortal in their new reality.
The first time, they chose the best. Kings and rulers, people with power and influence that fit the Lions’ sense of previous grandeur. The Lions were immortal beings with abilities beyond any mortal’s imagination. Surely only the most accomplished, the most competent could handle them.
So they chose the original paladins. Alfor, Trigel, Blaytz, Gyrgan. Zarkon. Great leaders who had the respect and admiration of billions. Surely these would make the greatest paladins.
And they did. For a time. But slowly, and then all at once, they fell apart. The Lions may be separate, but they were One. Voltron. They were meant to work together.
But somehow, the paladins didn’t get that. They separated the Lions for months, whole years at a time, attending to their separate duties and personal interests. They no longer worked as a unit, and worse they began treating the Lions as tools, ships to be picked up or locked away as it suited them.
But the Lions were bonded, and in these mortals they had discovered new kind of being, one that connected them to the mortal world in a way they simply couldn’t let got of anymore. They were…blinded by their bonds to the paladins.
Until they couldn’t be blind anymore. Until Black was forced to turn on her pride, her soul, and. She. Couldn’t. Stop. It.
Voltron shattered that day. The betrayal ran deep. Among all the Lions (how could their paladins turn them against each other?!), but especially in Black who never seemed the same after that.
They became weak, broken even, when they had never been so much as damaged before, and separated to be hidden from the paladin who had once lead them. And so they stayed, for ten thousand years.
The first time, the Lions chose the paladins who matched their strengths.
The second time, they chose those who match their weaknesses.
The new paladins are young, uncertain. They’re scared and isolated and lonely and longing for connection. They have none of the grander of the previous paladins; the planet the could from is practically primitive and quaint. There is strength inside of them, potential of the paladins they could be, but it’s buried under insecurities and trauma and the bumbling misdirection of youth.
But they bond. Faster and stronger than the original paladins ever did. They ask questions, learn from the Lions. Their minds spark with new ideas and with hope that is as potent as it is irrational.
And, most importantly, they are Pride. The Black Paladin is the leader, who claimed all of them with an immediate “Mine mine mine mine”, a mantra of love and protection. And the others get swept up, adding and growing it. There is a new element, one that was never part of Voltron before.
One that’s born out of love, empathy, sheer determination. A pattern that is millennia deep in a species that has never stepped foot outside of its own galaxy. Something that these five in particular seem particularly strong in. Even the Black Paladin.
Especially the Black Paladin.
A new Voltron rises. The Lions teach their new paladins about flight and power and the ways to bend their reality in only ways a Lion of Voltron can.
The paladins in turn, teach the Lions what it means to be family.
They do not know it yet, but this new Voltron is going to be so very different, and so very much more powerful, than the one that came before.
Powerful enough, in fact, to free the universe.
annaxmalina
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
2087
