#macidus

…I would need to rewatch Season 8 to remember for sure, but I believe the Blade of Marmora and Druids fought each other in a flashback in “The Ruins.” Macidus and Kolivan were all who remained of the battle, meaning all the other Druid fell. 

Every nightmare will be over someday. Happy Halloween!

Listen I’m so excited to talk about Keith and Macidus!! First things first though, I’m going to try to get a handle on what happened on that planet originally, so here’s how I see it:

The thing about flashbacks is…we’ve never seen imagery of a flashback that lied in Voltron, and I don’t believe we’re about to start now. The voiceover here, Maciudus being an extremely unreliale narrator–that’s what’s false. But until proven otherwise, I’m taking all the visuals as fact. And so, here’s the interesting thing. We see Macidus say that his people helped the BOM establish their base. And the animation there supports that. But later, when he lies and says his people helped the Marmora fight the Druids? You’ll notice only the Marmorans are shown attacking Druids, and Macidus’ people are nowhere to be seen. So yeah, I’m taking everything here to mean–we can trust the visuals of the flashback, but not Macidus’ whole narration of it. That’s key.

Now, that being said, there’s something very…heartbreaking to me if you look at the events with this view. Macidus says this is his home planet, and I don’t think he’s lying on that front. I genuinely believe this is where Druids have either originated from, or are born and raised–trained. The Druids also look very much like the people originally from the planet. You can see their hands look the same, and that their forearms and legs have the same bandaging, the fact that they all wear masks–just, little visual cues here and there. Anyway, when the battle starts, Macidus mentions that “his people” tried to escape, but they were slaughtered. And we have animated visuals to corroborate that. We have a stillframe of what appears to be very young, child druids being led away in an attempt to escape some sort of brutal slaughter. 

And you know what? They appear to be running from Galra ships. I don’t think the BOM would ever just murder children, Druids or not. So then, what’s the alternative? Were there some who didn’t want to fight, and tried to escape–only to be hunted down by their own as deserters? Were a good number of these people Druids that had broken from Haggar’s service after she disappeared and tried to live better lives, only for those still loyal to Haggar to turn on them? I have to wonder, because…there’s really a lot of interesting implications here, none of them positive. And whatever happened to these people–did Macidus see them as traitors who deserved it? Did he truly believe the BOM were at fault for what happened and resents them for it? Was he with them or against them? I can’t help but wonder. 

So, moving on to “druid Keith”!! I’ve said this many times before, but there are tons of indications that Keith has some druid-like ability, and that this manfiests as a kind of quintessence sensitivity–you know, like being “Force Sensitive” in star wars. Because, right from the beginning, you have Keith demonstrating this inexplicable affinity for quintessence. He senses the Blue Lion a whole year before her own pilot, and in the very same episode, we see Haggar also sense Blue in a similar way. For a time, he was the only one able to connect with his Lion over a long distance, and he did it literally five seasons before the other paladins. 

Keith goes after Haggar’s ship when she tries to destroy Naxzela becasue he can just feel that something’s wrong and he needs to be there. It’s the kind of prophetic intuition that is certainly very reminescent of quintessence based magic. Fun fact, in the comics, an alien civilization even refers to Haggar as the “haruspex,” which is basically like an ancient Roman prophet who foretold omens. When they’re fighting Lotor in season 6, as soon as Lotor disappears, everyone’s looking at the spot where he vanished. Keith’s gaze, however, is suddenly drawn elsewhere–and he literally turns and looks in the spot right where Lotor appears before he even begins to materialize. We see him later demonstrate this same ability to kill Macidus. And of course, there’s this:

Listen, I got chills watching this!! (They threw in a lot of horror movie type scenes here by the way, and I loved every moment of it, lmao). But!! Macidus called out this instance of Keith healing his own hand with raw quintessence, he made a specific reference to it–mockingly–as if there’s something more going on here that he knows and Keith doesn’t. And I’m talking about more than just his identity. The way he mentions Keith’s hand, he says it like it’s something that just shouldn’t be possible. And he can’t help but comment on the peculiarity of it. 

And you know, it’s also really interesting that Kosmo is brought into this fight to put Keith and Macidus on more level ground. Keith’s not a Druid, but the fact that he’s able to sense Macidus, that Kosmo is teleporting him to make up for the fact that he can’t, that Keith is given all these “pseudo druid” abilties as these parallels are drawn–it’s certainly interesting. 

Back to Macidus’ comment on Keith’s hand–I honestly don’t think he would have said something like that if he didn’t find it to be intriguing in some way. I mean, not for anything, but Keith used raw quintessence to heal his hand–we’ve only ever seen Druids and Sacred Alteans capable of things like that. His hand shouldn’t have just healed like that, and Macidus knows it. It’s also very interesting to me that Macidus’ fight with Keith stuck out so much in his mind–even though it was clearly a losing battle for him. 

There’s still something about Keith that left a mark for him, and the fact that he has so much animosity focused on Keith specifically is a sure sign of it. I mean, he’s so loyal to Haggar, and Haggar very obviously had a clear grudge against Allura, so beyond that one confrontation, what’s his bone to pick with Keith?? Is it simply because Keith is now a BOM member, or something more?

Because, speaking of personal grudges–yeah, let’s look at that one line, as cryptic and hard to decipher as it is: “Our high priestess, Haggar, has forsaken us because of your treachery. But after I kill you and the other paladins, Haggar will allow me to return!” Personally, I’d love to believe the “you” here is singular and there’s something about Keith specifically that’s sparking all of this, but I’m honestly lost as to how?? How has Keith personally slighted Haggar in such a way that Macidus is convinced he betrayed her?? Unless he’s a Druid but that’s probably just me being wishful,, 

At first, I wondered if maybe it was an overarching statement of how the BOM are all traitors to the empire?? But then how do the paladins factor into it? I’m honestly dying to know just what sort of propoganda Macidus was raised off of and why he longs for Haggar’s acceptance so fervently, just what is this “treachery”…was part of Haggar’s “cult”–she is referred to as their High Priestess–did some of that worship include Voltron in a way?? Using Voltron to reopen the rifts to some sort of gateway to paradise?? Were they all promised entriy into Oriande or something like it?? Is Keith’s “treachery” leading Voltron as it closed off the rift and “destroyed” Haggar’s son, driving her to desert the Druids? 

As for where Haggar went, I think most of us can probably agree she went off to the Altean colony, grabbed them all and took them elsewhere. And you know what? The fact that Druids like Macidus feel abandoned is something that rings very true to me, because honestly…I think the Druids were like a temporary replacement for Sacred Alteans. I think that, as soon as Haggar had access to “real” alchemists, she realized she no longer needed the Druids. I think she’s probably been spending years training Sacred Alteans on the colony and taking the chosen ones to Oriande. I think she’s got an entire army of alchemists at her finger tips and she’s reveling in it. I think she left the Druids after building up an entire religion wherein they were wholly dependent on her simply because she found a new set of people to manipulate that worked better for her.