#theorytime

Lance isn’t the most observant of the Paladins. He’s not the most sensitive. He’s not the most intelligent. He can think of good plans, but he’s also an impulsive little shit too and isn’t the most patient.  Lance’s greatest strength is the fact that he’s adaptable. Lance, from episode one, has been shown to learn from his mistakes. We see this when he crashes a simulation but learns from it and adapts, and is able to better fly Blue later.

We saw this when he went from claiming he would never follow Keith’s lead to being the first one to vocally support him. We saw this when his gun turned into a sword and he rolled with it.

Lance learns and adapts like no one else, especially when he makes a mistake. And we know a part of him feels guilty about what happened with Shiro.

That’s so important with Lance, because he’s not going to make the same mistake again.

I want to talk about Keith for a second now.

I’ve been one of the ones with the on-going theories that something is going to go down with Keith, that Honerva wants to get her hands on him for some reason that likely has to do with his connection to quintessence (and the fact that he was soaked in an entire vat of it). It’s very likely that she’s going to try to corrupt him in some form.

As we know now, in moments of extreme emotional distress, Keith does seem to get access to more Galra characteristics. The sclera of his eyes turn yellow, his irises become slits, it looks like he gets fangs, and, from those two moments during his fight with Shiro, he seems to become stronger.

While fighting with Shiro, those two moments were there for a reason. Keith was thinking about his actions, he was entirely on the defensive, but Shiro pushed him once and he lashed out, and that’s when we saw the Galra eyes and Shiro saying “There’s the Keith I remember”. It’s not because of Keith’s eyes, it’s because that’s literally the Keith he remembers, the one who would run full-tilt into a fight rather than play defensive.

The second time, Keith’s life is in danger, and Shiro says that the others are dead and Keith once again acts on instinct.

That part of him that shows up isn’t necessarily ‘feral’ or bad by any means, but when Keith’s in whatever frame of mind he gets in to prompt the physical changes, he moves by pure instinct.

A lot of people who don’t like the theory that Keith’s going to be corrupted or something argue that it’s playing into the ‘Galra are animals’, ‘Galra are all bad’ and stuff like that, but no, in this case, it’s not. Galra have never one been shown to react the same way Keith did. Not once. Galra have never once been shown to be able to shift their forms without quintessence. And that’s why I bring it up in this at all.

And Haggar/Honerva never showed any interest in Keith prior to this, where she would have been watching from Kuron’s eyes. We know this, because she wants Kuron to kill him. Keith’s eyes changing is the only thing that really would have caught her interest. She saw something there, something that made Keith stand out, and I doubt it was just the fact that he defeated Shiro.

I think that Honerva’s been targeting Keith ever since. The last thing she told her druids to do was to target the Blade of Marmora. Pidge assumes that the destruction came about because everyone in the Blade was exposed after Lotor fell, but what if that wasn’t the case? That was just Pidge’s assumption and we do face unreliable narrators all the time in this show. 

Honerva doesn’t know what happened to them, but she was watching through the clone’s eyes when Keith introduced his mother to Shiro and called her ‘a member of the Blade of Marmora’. Not hard to extrapolate that Keith was one too.

She’s a puppet master. She doesn’t need to do everything herself. So she sends her Druids after Keith – taking out the Blade of Marmora in the process, but keeping Kolivan alive to draw others in.

The fact that the druid doesn’t target Krolia immediately in The Ruins tells me something was up with that. She admitted to training a ton of Blades. She’s a high ranking member. She should have been target #1. But she wasn’t. Keith was. Yes, Kosmo separated Keith from the others, and the druid threatened to kill him – but I don’t think that would have ended up being the case.

I think that a part of him maybe hoped to hold Keith (like Kolivan) until he could find ‘Haggar’ again.

Except, she was gone doing her own thing with the Alteans, growing her own Empire. And she didn’t leave it at that. I think that Acxa too is working for her (in a show of loyalty towards Lotor most likely…to try and help him), and has been trying to track Keith specifically. She literally tells us this.

Unlike the Druid, Acxa helps them. Acxa puts herself in a position where it seems like Keith and everyone else can trust her. She plays on Allura’s feelings for Lotor too – relating to her over the entire thing. It works.

Now, why am I talking about all of this? Because something’s up with Keith.

1.He doesn’t appear much in the trailer. Two scenes (get to your lions and when he’s fighting). The last time they pulled that with Keith, it was because he left Voltron. Now, I also think they only showed us footage from maybe 3-4 episodes, so that’s still a lot, and there was plenty of Voltron shown so Keith has to be there (not to mention stuff from NYCC), but the point still stands.

2. In this first pic of the group, he’s up front and center. Keith doesn’t shy away from being the leader now. His posture is open, confident, and he’s ready for anything.

Then we got the picture from what’s likely the filler episode, and it was pointed out that something looks terribly wrong with Keith’s eyes. 

There’s no shine to them, which is a pretty good indicator that you should be wary of a person, that something’s wrong with them. At first I thought it was just an error, cause budget, but they’ve added in that detail in smaller scenes before.

 It’s not there on purpose. (This series of pics came from this post here on twitter!)

It’s very likely that something or someone is working to ‘corrupt’ Keith in a sense. Probably his quintessence. Who does he currently trust that was shown looking for him specifically at the end of S7? Oh, right. Acxa.

It wouldn’t be hard to isolate Keith. Get Pidge and Hunk doing their own thing, Shiro busy being the Captain of the Atlas, and Lance and Allura off with one another? Not to mention the hurt Keith probably feels about that whole thing? Yeah, he’s going to be spending time with Acxa, likely being more isolated from the others and slowly corrupted.

The newest picture tells me this too. 

His eyes already seem dull there, and he’s physically very separated from the rest of the Paladins (outside of Shiro, but that makes sense given the layout of the ship). Pidge, Lance, and Hunk look ready to throw down with whatever they’re looking at, Shiro too, and Allura looks super concerned, but Keith doesn’t even look like he’s looking in the same direction.

He’s Voltron’s leader. He should be front and center if there’s a threat there (plus that’s the Keith-thing to do). He’s not. This is the second image where he looks off. Something is wrong.

In the trailer, we see him alone. He has nothing but his Marmora Blade with him. He looks cornered and desperate. That’s not a good thing. Something is wrong.

Now this started as a Lance post and turned into a Keith one. Why?

Well, if Keith’s subtly being corrupted, subtly starting to change and act differently, no one’s going to catch onto this, right?

Unless, of course, there’s someone around who almost caught onto a very similar scenario, but ended up just shrugging it off and felt terribly guilty over that. Someone who just happens to be defined by being adaptable and learning from his mistakes. Someone who seemed to lose part of his own story arc out of nowhere.

Lance was never going to be the one to save Shiro, because he’s going to be the one to save Keith. THAT is what the entire thing is building to. I mean, you can take it from a platonic standpoint if you wish though I don’t see it that way.

Keith being ‘corrupted’ is super similar to what happened with the clone, and that’s the entire point. Lance wasn’t able to help Shiro and sees it as a personal failure. We know he does because he was in tears about it. It’s especially important that Shiro tried to reach out to Lance in the Astral Plane – because that moment turned into a failure, and ultimately, that’s the place that Lance is going to actually save Keith.

I still think that we’re very likely to see a fight between the two of them – and no, I’m not romanticizing violence between a pairing. Jesus. The assumption that the fight in and of itself is the exciting part is disgusting. Keith won’t be in his right mind at all, and in the end, it won’t be Lance defeating Keith the way Keith defeated the clone that decides the ‘winner’. Keith outclasses Lance as a swordsman by a long shot, and Lance isn’t going to be able to defeat him.

Keith tried to reason with Shiro, tried to talk to him, but it didn’t work. In this case, Lance is going to try to do the same. He’s going to try and reach Keith because he doesn’t want to fight him. They’re not enemies. At the very least, they’re friends. And it’s going to work. He’s going to get through to him, because no, violence isn’t the answer to this at all.

That’s what makes it so powerful.