I have extremely complicated opinions and thoughts on how the characters and plot of VLD were handled. My thoughts contradict themselves, they're inconsistent, so I’m writing this to put them down and sort them out. This also serves as the start of me introducing my theories/headcanons that were never fully confirmed and my AU which is more like a completely different show than an AU, but whatever.
I have a strong belief that the Lion switch was always intended to happen, I’ve noticed multiple seeds that were planted early on in the show that hinted towards the switch. But I also strongly believe that the show runners never intended for it to be permanent, and that’s where it started going wrong.
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The “Before Hints”/Foreshadowing
The color coding of the Paladins outfits.
This one is pretty straightforward and obvious, yet there were some that I haven’t noticed other people point out. There’s the ones that everybody knows, Shiro wears mostly black, Keith wears a red jacket, Lance has blue hints in his shirt, shoes & pants, Pidge wears mostly green, and so does Hunk with yellow. But there are also hints of the paladin's colors changing for the Lion switch. Allura’s dress is almost entirely blue and she becomes the Blue Paladin, Keith’s outfit actually has more black than red on it(but this could also be a nice touch to show his connection to Shiro), I unfortunately couldn’t find any for Lance.
Shiro and Keith’s strong relationship(this one is a bit of a stretch).
Shiro and Keith are practically brothers before the start of the actual show. Shiro practically raised Keith. Because of this Keith took after a lot of Shiro’s traits. His morale of the mission coming first, his determination and dedication to a goal. These are just two of them, but you get the point. Simply put, Keith heavily takes after Shiro, it would only make sense that Keith would start to notice how Shiro leads and unintentionally take after that as well.
That scene where Allura is describing the lions and showing them to the Paladins.
As Allura is describing each Lion, said Lion is shown in front of their intended Paladin. Biggest example and the one that supports my theory is the Red Lion floating in between both Keith and Lance, Keith who is Red’s intended Paladin, and Lance who becomes the Red Paladin in the switch.
How the show depicts the Blue Lion in general and how it connects to Allura.
Compared to the other Lions, the Blue Lion is made the center of attention on multiple occasions in many ways. In the first episode Keith describes how he could sense the Blue Lion but didn’t know what it was, and then the Blue Lion was the very first Lion to be found, it also bonded with Lance extremely quickly compared to the others. It is also responsible for finding all of the paladins, not just their own. Keith also brings up the mysteriousness of the Blue Lion being on Earth, especially knowing how far Earth is from Altea and the other planets, and later learning that the Lions can only travel so far on their own. We also never learn of the Blue Lions traits or what they look for in a Paladin(in the show, we learn it in a book later on, and that’s after the lion switch). With Earth in mind, the cave that the Blue Lion was found in had hieroglyphics everywhere detailing the war and other mysterious events, none of the other lions hiding spots did this. Allura also stands out like the Blue Lion, but amongst the other Paladins. She’s royalty, has a strong connection with the lions despite not being a Paladin, and the only female(before the Pidge reveal and Romelle), she’s also an alien(alongside Coran)
Lance has a lot of parallels to Alfor in the show.
This one is brought up in the show itself, but I feel like it never actually fully explored just how deep the parallels went. There’s the one that the show handles, and it’s how heroic and noble Lance is. When Lance unlocks the Altean Broadsword, which was Alfors, Allura talks about how much of a savior and warrior Alfor was and how Lance is as well. Lance’s nobleness comes from his willingness to sacrifice himself to save people and his bravery to always join the battle, Alfor was noble in that he wasn’t just royalty but he was extremely brave and always saw the best in people. There are others that I’ve seen other people bring up, like Lance bringing the team together just like Alfor did. Alfor built the lions and Voltron, he created the alliance, bringing the og paladins together despite their differences. Lance was the sole connection between all of the paladins, he was friends with Pidge and Hunk, he looked up to Shiro like a hero, and held a grudge with Keith from when they were younger. He was also the first Paladin to be found, being the one Blue chose before she even saw him, the others wouldn’t have made it to the castle if it wasn’t for Lance. They both share similar characteristic traits, they just show differently.
-They are both reckless, Alfor completely succumbs to his excitement in the moment, and Lance, as already mentioned, has sacrificial tendencies.
-Their love for Allura, Alfors is that of a father, and Lance’s that of romantic and friendly intent.
Allura’s strong connection to quintessence and the White Lion/Her bond with Blue and being a Paladin.
To put it simply, Allura being the Blue Paladin and fully embracing being the reincarnation of the White Lion at the same time is messy and puts even more stuff on her character than there already is. (I should note that I don’t have a problem with “Mary Sues”, I feel like the phrase is a cheap way of reasoning why a person doesn’t like a female character or any character really. I also only believe that a character can be cluttered depending on what’s being put on them.) It’s important that Allura be a Paladin, and even specifically, the Blue Paladin, for some time so that she could connect with the Paladins, feel the toll of being in the battlefield, and getting to fully experience what a bond with the Lions is really like, it also helped to give her the ability to take a break from her princess status and get to act her age alongside the other Paladins. Why Blue? Well, that’s also simple. The Blue Lion is the middle ground. The Blue Lion is below Black and Red in authority, but is also above Green and Yellow in Authority as well. The Blue Lions element being water symbolizes its flexibility in many things, such as already mentioned authority, combat, social status, etc. Being Blue means that Allura can still be a commanding figure herself while being under command as well. But that’s an arc that can be done very quickly, and quickly is what the show did. Allura learned and experienced these things in a quick but meaningful amount of time. Beyond that point, her being the Blue Paladin is no longer necessary to the plot unlike the others. Her having to leave her place as a Paladin and her bond with the Blue Lion would also, once again, give her the opportunity to be like the other Paladins, as Shiro, Keith, and Lance suffered it with the switch.
Allura was hinted to have a particularly strong sense of quintessence sense the beginning of the show. In the first episode, when she locates the Lions, Coran states that she was “directly linked with the Lions life force, she is the key herself”. Later in the Balmera episode, she uses her own quintessence to communicate and heal the planet of Balmera. Her quintessence isn’t mentioned again until after the Lion switch, which it is shown multiple times. When Lance takes the blow for Allura in the Omega Lock, she once again uses her own quintessence to heal Lance. When they find Shiro alive in the astral plane later on, she moves his quintessence to one of his clone bodies, essentially bringing him back to life. And then even later, after she connects to the White Lion, she finds out that her very being can purify dark quintessence. It is also slightly hinted at throughout the show that a lot of the abilities that Allura unlocked in Blue were due to her extremely high amount of quintessence.
While there are some connections between Allura being the Blue Paladin and the White Lion, most of it happens completely separate. It doesn’t help that after Allura sacrifices herself, the Blue Lion projects herself to Lance instead of the White Lion, the only reason why I can think of that making sense would be the fact that both of them were Blue Paladins at some point.
When the current Paladins fought and talked to the previous Paladins.
I’ve already seen some people mention it, but I haven’t yet, so I’m going to. After they fought with Haggar, the Paladins got stuck in the Astral Plane where they fought the corrupted previous Paladins of their respective Lions. When they managed to get through to them, the previous Paladins spoke to the current ones and gave them advice. That’s all cute and all except for the fact that the speeches that Blaytz and Alfor give to Allura and Lance don’t make sense. What Blaytz tells Allura is perfectly suited for Lance, it isn’t even an argument on how much Lance needed to hear. This hints towards the idea that the Paladins were supposed to return to their original Lions and so Lance would be the current Blue Paladin and get to hear the speech from Blaytz. Alfor’s speech for Lance is very short and kind of insulting, in that it boils both Lance and Allura down to their relationship with each other being the only important thing about them. That’s especially a low blow considering how much of a weight it is that Lance is the Red Paladin, in both negative and positive ways(I talked about them a little in one of the above sections at the top). This gives me heavy vibes of this speech being written last minute with little care for how it actually sounded.
