And I’ve made a conspiracy theory.
There were… a lot of moments this season where our theories could have paid off. It was like the plot walked right up to the line, peered across, and then leapt backwards again.
It didn’t escape my notice that we managed to predict damn near all of the negative moments, but none of our positive predictions panned out. (Hell, I even called the mechs fusing for goodness sake!)
Did you notice it too?
A friend said to me:
“It’s interesting, nearly ALL of the episodes had a moment or two in them where Lotor COULD have reappeared, and didn’t. Do you think he was written in to be the savior all along, and it was the higher ups that said no, good boy Lance? It seems like, given the narrative, and even given this season, it should have been Lotura, and all that wasn’t just feels… off. And not as a Lotura stan, I mean in general.”
Yeah. I spotted that too.
I could almost brush it off as wishful thinking, but for one thing.
Lotor, when robeast-ed into Sincline, doesn’t fire on Allura.
He takes aim - Lance rushes to stop him but is blocked - but then he stops. For no outside reason. That unambiguously showed that he was both in there and at least somewhat aware of himself.
And with that mind control by Honerva?
I was positive they were going to pull a DOTU reference; “My love is stronger than your mind control.”
Imagine that.
Imagine if Honerva tried to force Lotor to kill Allura, and he resisted her, because he loved Allura.
And then that would be the moment Allura could save him.
It was….
There was just so many little moments where it seemed like it was about to flip. But didn’t, and played it all straight…
We were so close. SO goddamn close.
…and I keep coming back to The Depths.
Because that whole episode is foreshadowing… but why is it foreshadowing if it doesn’t pay off…? The parallels are there they just… don’t complete.
Like… ‘Merla’ realizes there’s something wrong with Lotor. And she tells her buddy not to go near him… and he gets killed. But
but it’s never followed up on.
Take episode 6, and it just… it feels like it fits into a different plot!
There was so much we were picking up on. So much that would have played out fantastically. Good writing, which would have fit into the s1-6 stuff.
But something happened with s7 and 8, something forced some major rewrites… Because every single plot line changed and diverted. The trajectories that they were going down, it just doesn’t make sense where they ended up…like…
Those inconsistencies with Romelle’s story, they’re still there!
Lotor’s speech at the end of s6, it still sounds so much like he’s talking about something different from the paladins….
And Axca’s narrative just straight up doesn’t make sense.
And maybe we still weren’t going to get Lotura endgame…. But I’m convinced the last two seasons were supposed to play out differently
I knew 7 was rewritten on really short notice. But I’d assumed it was to include the MFEs. And maybe it was… But the third arc of Voltron doesn’t flow the same way that arcs 1 and 2 do.
The major notable thing, is that it doesn’t utilize the paired plotlines in the same ways the earlier seasons do; making the pacing seem much slower as a result.
It doesn’t make any sense to relegate Honerva to s8 when she’s the arc big bad.
If I had to guess? I think parts of s8 were supposed to be in s7. I think those two non-paladin episodes in s7 were supposed to be paired plots with the first half of the season, so that it didn’t feel so long.
It was probably supposed to seem like they were happening at the same time, until you suddenly found out it’d been 3 years and you realized all the garrison stuff was flashback. Boom! Big shock!
It was probably re-shuffled in the early stages of animation. I know there’s a s7 meta or two out there about how Shiro’s role was re-written. But something they point out that interests me: Shiro in s7 is drawn in several shots by a different animator. There’s a really obvious one where Shiro in the foreground is done by Kihyun Ryu and Pidge in the bg is done by someone else. So he obviously wasn’t supposed to be there when that shot was originally animated.
The thing is. Changing one thing can have a domino effect. We know, because they’ve talked about it, that there was supposed to be a sub-plot with Keith and Lotor that got axed in favour of having Shiro back as Black’s paladin.
Would have been cool, eh? That arc was probably why they decided to make
Keith half-Galra in the first place. If something that fundamental got
canned…
Well.
But that means they had to re-shuffle Keith into more major scenes later to get his growth.
What did his scenes replace?
What did the MFEs replace? Something big enough that they had a whole episode length they had to fill with filler.
So if a subplot gets canned…. what goes?
Is it the leadership arc? Or is it the romance?
If Lance was supposed to be a rebound…. and we were supposed to get the twist we expected. If you suddenly have to cut out something major… The easiest thing to do is make that rebound permanent - unfortunately, thus sacrificing two characters entirely and a third character’s, well, character.
Think about when these rewrites had to have been happening.
It would be sometime between say, season 4 and 5?
Who was the far and away most popular character? With the loudest fans? Demanding he have more focus, be more appreciated? Be the hero?
A big loud fandom who’d be pretty unhappy if their favorite’s crowning moment was not getting the girl.
Lotor and Allura wouldn’t even have met yet. There was no data on how that plot would be received. But there was a lot of data on Lancey-Lance.
Not saying it’s a conspiracy… But.
It’s a conspiracy.
What do you think of my new theory?
We were right. We picked up on all the strings.
Unfortunately, the things they were attached to…had been excised.
fbobvoerbvoievoirev
4everkawaiiii
quinn-dalim
justsomethingaboutme
cornflower-bluu
thesweettales
articianne
leakinghate
vrepitsamypaladudes
ruinedchildhood