#Shiro is strong on his own so he can't see the point of fighting together with someone when he can just fight on his own

[hk-magicalhumanau]

HK Human AU- Standard Love triangle Drama starring Xero's parents (OC's).

Since I really like to expand on Xero and Shiro's highschool life, I ended up expanding on Xero's family. But This is purely about his parents. Think of it as a standard family drama that involves a love triangle.

Disclaimer: At this point this is not even based on the game anymore and more like a telenovela filled with OC's. This is just a reimagining and fan fiction. Many will be so out of character and warped beyond recognition for the purpose of the plot. The only cannon character here is Xero and he is not born yet.

Now for his parents:

Zorro - Xero’s father, a policeman and later captain who also has a strong sense of justice. Left when Xero was 5.

Xena - Xero’s mother and Zorro's childhood best friend. She is still in love with Zorro even though he is married to another woman but kept it to herself for Zorro's sake. Though she still clung to that dream of having a happy family with him.

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This is set years before Xero was born. Zorro, his father, was a married man and a rising police officer, but he was also having arguments with his wife over the demands of his job. As a man dedicated to his career of upholding the law, he have a very strong sense of justice and would jump into risky situations that can almost get him killed. After he managed to diffuse a difficult kidnapping case, he got hurt badly and was hospitalized for days. His wife got extremely worried after this continued to go on, she did asked that Zorro take some time off or give the cases he is working on to someone else so he won’t end up in the hospital or worse, but he argues back that he is the only one who can be trusted with it.

Zorro is known in his precinct as one of the few who will always refuse bribes. Because he is unwilling to cooperate, Zorro tends to receive death threats which he would always miraculously evade. He is also constantly at odds with some of his own colleagues who have been accepting bribes, most of these are from rich parents who want to get their drug-using kids out of prison and to have all records wiped clean.

After a very tense summer involving a very unhappy business owner, lots of bullets flying in the precinct, and a very, very determined Zorro. All of his corrupt colleagues were exposed along with their contacts.

While Zorro was hailed as an incorruptible hero, his wife only got even more worried.

Zorro and his wife’s arguments got more heated over the months until Zorro could no longer stand the intense air anymore. He would leave the house for a few hours to calm down. If he can't return by the end of the day, he would go to his childhood best friend Xena to talk.

Xena is always willing to listen to Zorro complain, rant, and generally enjoy his company again but they never sleep in the same room. This would go on for half a year.

Sooner or later, people starts to notice Zorro leaving the house of a woman that is not his wife. Some of these people are those who don't like Zorro for being a "goody two-shoes" and not cooperating with their demands. If they cannot get him to bend, they can try to sabotage his personal life.

Eventually Zorro's wife heard rumors that Zorro was seeing another woman, and she demanded a divorce from Zorro if it is true.

Zorro is even more distraught and always denies this. The fights got worse until Zorro couldn't stay in his house anymore due to the intense air and questions from his youngest son.

Zorro decided to go to the only person he can trust and that is Xena. He stayed in Xena’s house to calm down and think of a way to diffuse the situation with his wife.

One night when the two were drinking the night away while chatting like college times, Zorro drank way too much from the stress on his job and his family. This left him in an emotionally and physically vulnerable state,

Xena, who is also drunk, she lost all self-control and only saw a way to get a night together with the man of her dreams, even if said man won’t remember it the next morning.

Xena was in love with Zorro ever since he saved her from bullies when they were 12 years old and encouraged her to be stronger in life. This led to Xena’s success in her career. Without Zorro, Xena would have never had the guts to aim high despite her family's poor background. She became the main breadwinner of her family, paying for her mother’s debts and medical bills. Now she have a stable job and enough money to pay for support her and her mother.

Normally she would keep her feelings to herself since Zorro is married to someone else. Zorro is not fully aware that Xena still harbors intense feelings for him as Xena keeps saying she is okay with Zorro’s marriage, and Zorro believes what his best friend is saying.

Even though this is far from the truth, Xena even once wrote a fanfiction of her and Zorro getting married. When she was invited to Zorro's wedding, she burned her old stories to hide it.

1 month after that drunken night, Xena started to feel sick and was confirmed to be pregnant. Internally she is happy that she is fulfilling her childhood fantasy of having a kid with Zorro. But Zorro is even more distraught now that he has actually cheated on his wife.

Zorro became a police officer due to his strong sense of justice, his dislike against unfairness that was born after living with his drunk and abusive father but he did something that is very unfair to not only his family, but also to Xena and his future child.

Zorro still loves his wife deeply and mostly sees Xena as a trusted friend more similar to a brother or a cousin, rather than a lover. He decided in the end that he will try to get back with his wife. But he kept on visiting Xena and spent some nights at her house to help her during her pregnancy. Xena is not mad at seeing Zorro again, in any case she will always welcome Zorro in her house, even though it hurts her to see him leave every time.

As soon as Xero was born, Zorro and his wife got in a huge fight and the two agreed on a divorce. Since then Zorro stayed in Xena’s house.

Despite falling out with his wife. Zorro and his wife still harbor feelings for each other and after 2 years they calmed down enough that they can talk to each other again without constantly pointing fingers. They also talked things out and rekindled their relationship.

Zorro’s wife, after 2 years of not talking with her ex-husband, calmed down enough to admit that her intense reactions and demands is what drove Zorro to leave the house. Zorro’s wife is still not exactly happy Zorro has a child with a woman she trusted in the past.

She and Xena actually got along when they met since Xena is kind and a generally fun person to be with, but now this felt like a huge betrayal. Zorro’s wife may not want to see Xena for a while. So when she and Zorro got back together, she told Zorro she would only agree to re-marry him if they start over again in a new town. That would mean Zorro will have to leave Xena and Xero.

Zorro, now aware of Xena’s infatuation for him, knows that she will not be happy about this and he fears it will affect their friendship. A friendship he values very much since it helped him survive his drunk and abusive father as a child. He also cares deeply for his youngest son Xero, who was named by combining Xena and Zorro’s names.

This is Xena’s idea. And while Zorro finds it a bit creepy, he lets Xena have her way since she looks really happy when she told him that and Zorro can’t get himself to ruin her happiness.

Zorro finds Xero really cute and sees his own energy and enthusiasm within Xero. But the situation starts to remind him of his own childhood when his father slowly became an alcoholic and unintentionally abusive when his own mother left to be with a younger man. At first Zorro didn’t understand why his parents were fighting, until he heard a slap when his mother hit his father and stormed out the door. Zorro remember nights where his father cried himself to sleep while Zorro just sat outside the bedroom door listening. Over the years Zorro witnessed his father slowly bring more alcohol, getting out less, eating far more and generally becoming more depressed until he became a shadow of the once-loving father Zorro knew. Soon Zorro’s father started to be more aggressive to Zorro over little things when he is drunk, channeling his anger of his failed marriage to Zorro.

Despite that, Zorro can never truly hate his father as he remembers he can be a great father when his mother was still around. But that was years ago and it Zorro accepted that his father is too broken. Zorro never visited his father ever since he left for college. Only returning when he was invited to do his father’s eulogy when he was older.

Zorro learned that his father died in the kitchen. He slipped and fell but his overweight body due to his unhealthy lifestyle made it too difficult for him to get up, or rather he don't any will to get up until he drowned in his own saliva.

Zorro is now scared that he is repeating what his mother did and don't want his kids to experience the same thing he did as a child. Watching their parents fight until one leaves and witness the remaining parent fall to crippling despair. He heard from his friends that his ex-wife has been suffering from growing insomnia and loosing weight ever since the divorce.

That one drunken night may have been a slip-up for Zorro but Xena never regretted it. And she still has that intense desire to keep Zorro which got even more stronger when Xero was born. So she starts looking at Zorro’s text messages when he is not looking, to find that Zorro and his ex wife are now on talking terms.

In fear of Zorro leaving, she starts guilt-tripping Zorro by using Xero as an excuse for him to stay or just abandon his previous family. Saying that Xero will be denied the love of a father his whole life compared to the 2 other kids who Zorro spent more years with, and said in her words “Xero’s future is better than theirs”.

But mentioning the other kids only made Zorro snap with the way Xena called them unimportant. He harshly explained that the 2 other kids she sees lowly off, are also two innocent naïve children who just experienced the pain of seeing their parents fight, not understanding any of it and end up blaming themselves. Before leaving, Zorro overheard his 3 year old son, who was born with a physical impairment, blame himself for his parents fighting. The young one believed the fight is because he was born missing a limb unlike the other normal kids.

Xena didn’t say anything afterwards after realizing how unhappy and miserable Zorro is. She knows of the relationship between Zorro and his father and how the situation now is starting to mirror Zorro’s parents.

When Zorro broke the news that he got back together with his ex-wife and the condition that he will leave the town once they remarry. Xena is heart-broken, but she still encourages Zorro to go. She has Xero now and that will have to be enough for her.

Xena named him by combining the names of hers and Zorro, as a way to preserve her dream of having a life together with Zorro even if it’s not a reality.

Continuation but it mostly expands the other characters.---

[ganymedesclock]

So did you see the "ice popsicle" teaser? It's supposed to be foreshadowing one of the darker moments of Season 7. Do you have any theories on what it could mean? There are people who think it's foreshadowing that Pidge will betray the team, but I can't bring myself to believe that's true.

I saw the ice pop thing, and the version I saw was hypothesizing that Pidge would be captured, which I find far more likely than Pidge turning traitor.

Let’s just, for the moment, take every other reason Pidge wouldn’t- solidarity and teamwork and friendship and how much Pidge loves her friends and loves her family and would have every reason to resent anybody still fighting for Zarkon’s cause- clear the table of all that, and just poke at the practical.

What’s the empire got right now that Pidge wants bad enough to sell out her second family for it?

‘Cause just from where I’m sitting... not much.

Earth’s safety? Oh, pshyeah, like Sendak and Haggar are gonna actually keep their word and not get itchy fingers for the keys to Voltron. Pidge specifically has been around that song and dance especially when it comes to her family, and what she learned from that was that Zarkon is a dirty liar and it’s fair to assume his lovely wife and the person he practically raised as his own are gonna be about the same.

Heck, that kinda puts a damper on Pidge even seriously considering any olive branch Haggar or Sendak might wave at her- because the last time Pidge even considered taking them up on an offer, it was baited with probably the most valuable thing Pidge could ever imagine, and they burned her, bad. That makes me pretty sure the only time Pidge would really go for an offer Haggar would seem to make would be if she’s also seeking to fulfill an unspoken term of “and in return you will conveniently put your back in my taserin’ range”

Especially if the empire tries to pull a hostage situation with Earth... that’s not gonna be surprising or shocking to any of the team. They’ve been taking it as a given since season 1 that the empire is factually going to come for Earth. The word Allura uses in the very first episode is “inevitable”. Pidge hugged her dad goodbye and sent him home because everybody’s on the same page that the empire’s gonna attack Earth. And if they try to suggest hostage swaps... again, Pidge is the last person who’d look seriously at that bait because s5e2 is basically a case study in “Zarkon is a double-crossing cheat”.

And Sendak? Sendak’s literally named his faction the most blatantly white supremacist sounding bullshit ever- the “purity” he’s touting is no non-galra, no mixed race galra- and definitely no galra who ideologically disagree with Sendak’s game plan, either. There’s nowhere in this ideology that even the most fawning sycophant who’s not a “pure” galra could survive. And Pidge is the furthest thing from a fawning sycophant. She’s done a lot of damage to the empire and to Sendak personally- he’s not going to forget for a second how much of a threat she is. Even if he had any intention of genuinely negotiating, he’s not going to be satisfied until Pidge is muzzled and defanged in every conceivable way.

Pidge betraying the team isn’t a plot twist, it’s a stupid mistake. Her selling out Lotor in s5e2 was understandable because Zarkon was demanding someone she didn’t trust or care about and threatening the safety of someone who’s been half her driving motivation since the first episode in exchange- and that made her desperate enough to overlook how obviously likely it would be that Zarkon would double-cross them. If you’re not convinced she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, I’d rewatch s5e2 and the way Pidge screams when she passes through the hologram of her father.

Pidge is going to do things that work or that at least seem reasonable from where she’s sitting. She’s gonna do something that she has a reason to believe or at least hope it’ll work out in her favor.

Right now? Empire’s got nothin’ on her.

Now, it is possible Pidge might cut an under-the-table deal with someone else, however.

The generals can nicely dodge a lot of the problems that Pidge would have with the main empire- namely the one where “I have no reason to believe you’re not immediately gonna double-cross me within point five seconds because you hate my entire existence and I’m your number one enemy.”

The whole of Team Sincline dances an interesting line of antiheroics- unlike Zarkon, Sendak, and Haggar, Sincline is able to prove reasonable to the heroes’ sensibilities, and depending on how the situation is, and where everybody stands? We’ve seen that long-term alliances between members can hold pretty strongly- at least, strong enough Allura, who’s nobody’s idiot, actually tried to start a relationship with Lotor.

And the Generals actually have some pretty good rep at this point- because when Lotor went hog wild attacking the paladins, the Generals disengaged. They backed off where he didn’t- and that’s something they could point to, if they had to thaw the heart of someone holding Lotor’s actions against them.

The generals could also have an easier ratio of offering Pidge something she couldn’t otherwise get, something really worthwhile- because they’re all about procuring unusual resources through sneaky channels.

Of course, the other side of this is it could be the Generals involved... but they might not be asking. Or offering.

It’s canon that magical entities, like the Black Lion, to save someone from death by taking their spirit into themselves. Presumably Black could do this for Shiro because he was right with them when he died and they had a mind-to-mind connection.

When Narti was killed, the camera lingered heavily on Kova, to the point that it returned to showing him next to Narti’s body at a point when every other character had abandoned the cruiser and was far away from it.

Kova also has a mind-to-mind connection with Narti and was right there with her when she died.

Narti is pretty clearly Pidge’s opposite number out of Team Sincline- the infiltrating, stealth-based “hacker”. This is something I’ve found suspicious for a while- since they obviously went out of their way to invoke her with Sincline’s final assembled form, and set her up parallel to a paladin, but her arc “seems” incomplete- which I don’t think is a testament to bad writing since no other dead character in the series, even ones who could have had interesting potential like Trigel, Gyrgan, and Blaytz feel unfinished in this way.

Especially because, again- Shiro’s return raises significant implications on Narti.

Double especially because the ships that shoot tethers at the paladins in the s7 trailer are a specific, recognizable party: both the opening that fires the grapple, and the tether itself, are obviously from the rotating-wing fighter ships used only by Lotor and the Generals.

Since the four surviving members of Team Sincline took the Sincline ships with them when they fled in s4e3, they left those ships behind on the cruiser. We haven’t seen them since- just like we haven’t seen the cruiser, implying it wasn’t retrieved.

This would imply that in order to get those fighters again, the generals would have had to return to the ship, finding Kova.

Kova, who has a decent chance of being a living phylactery for Narti, now that we know that’s possible.

So, okay, you might be saying, but what does this have to do with Pidge?

Well, I’ve already aired my theory the generals are going to be trying to steal the Lions and use them to enter the rift to retrieve Lotor. This would be emphasized if they’ve got Narti back- because Kova was specifically shown reacting with what looked like kitty concern to Zarkon declaring Lotor an enemy of the empire. If Narti’s in there, the implication is she’s worried about Lotor, even after he cut her down.

Pidge loves little cute animals. Her dog at home, the bunnies on the Green Lion’s planet, the fluffballs from the trash yard- she even adopted a few of them! She’d at least be likely to drop her guard around Kova.

And in s4e2, a repeated emphasis was placed that the Holts trust their minds, more than anything else- because as Matt smugly tells Pidge, you can hack a computer, but not a mind.

This always stuck out to me as a piece of dramatic irony... because before that episode, we’d seen Narti do just that.

Throk didn’t have the passwords for the Ulippa system base written down anywhere, or stored in a computer. He kept them in his mind. Narti used that. Because as Pidge’s counterpart, Narti is the specialist of Team Sincline when it comes to getting information- but she cracks brains the way Pidge cracks computers. And all she needs is a touch.

The paladins, of course... have no idea Narti can do that. During their allegiance, Lotor would have no reason to warn them about the powers of a woman who he personally knows died, and we don’t have much evidence he talked about the Generals at all.

It’s fair to assume if Narti escaped death by fleeing into Kova’s body, then she took her powers with her. So you have a cute, harmless looking cat, you have Pidge who is unlikely to look an unexpected friendly kitty in the mouth, and- just that easily you could have a paladin controlled. Which I think would be a much more effective shock because rather than “oh no a paladin’s being Tempted To The Dark Side” which they’re not really gonna get far on because these guys are basically tethered together to the waist by the Power of Friendship and there’s only so far you can toddle away from the group before you get bungee’d back, it’s “oh no our heroes are not as invincible as we’re comfortable believing they are and we have no idea how generous the responsible party is feeling.”

[kingofthewilderwest]

I can't stop thinking about how beautiful Lotor and Allura's children would be if they ended up being together

Oh goodness. Lotor is unfairly pretty, as is Allura. That’s quite a lot of way-too-pretty genetics all in one place! XD

Now… I don’t like raining on anyone’s parade, and I know you just want to have a friendly squee, but I hope it’s okay to bring up how Lotor and Allura have been written throughout the Voltron franchise. I want to write this as a fair warning in case people don’t realize what the issue with Allotor is. Now, technically, if we were looking just at VLD, Lotor and Allura’s interactions have been fine, so I can see why people who lack context to the full franchise would jump into a ship with these two. But the ongoing history of Lotor and Allura hasn’t been so innocent. It’s consequently why I personally would be uncomfortable to hook them up. 

The longstanding tradition between Lotor and Allura has been… Lotor lusting after Allura, and trying to force her into a romance. 

It’s not been pretty.

Beast King Golion (1981-1982) is the main source material from which the Voltron franchise developed. It set the stage for many things, including how Lotor (Prince Sincline) interacted with Allura (Fala). Even one summarizing paragraph from the Voltron wiki gives us an extremely unpleasant situation:

Sincline’s obsession with Fala was revealed that she resembles his mother and that his obsession was rooted in an Oedipus complex. Sincline’s infatuation with Fala is a constant motivation behind most of his attempts to defeat Golion to which even his father warned him to stop. Because of that obsession, Sincline kidnapped Fala’s identical cousin, Princess Amue of Heracles, rapes her, and attempted to execute her after she foiled his plans.

I own the entire Beast King Golion series on DVD, and I can confirm that Sincline does indeed try to pursue Fala and take her against his will. These screencaps all come from just one episode:

Fala is unconscious, Sincline steps over her, declares he’s going to make her his wife, and then picks up her up to kiss her. Obviously this is as “not okay” as you can get between Lotor/Sincline and Allura/Fala.

Voltron: Defender of the Universe (1984-1985) takes the animation of BKG but edits out and tones down its most disturbing content - avoiding deaths, blood, etc. - but it still keeps the concept of Lotor constantly pursuing Allura. This is the corresponding DotU episode from the BKG screencaps I gave you. “Give Me Your Princess” is also about Lotor deciding he wants to take Allura as his bride - something she obviously doesn’t want. And this becomes a recurring conflict throughout the DotU series.

Voltron: The Third Dimension (1998-2000) is part of the franchise I haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s written essentially as a sequel to DotU. Though I haven’t watched T3D, I have seen a few clips, and in E3 “Building the Forces of Doom,” Haggar shows Lotor his dreams and his fears. The dream he desires is… you guessed it… Allura…

The history of Lotor chasing after Allura makes its way into the comics and graphic novels. The Devil’s Due Publishing omnibus (2008), which retells DotU with more depth, grit, and maturity, is perhaps my favorite telling of Voltron. I’ve had my suspicions since S4 that VLD has been influenced by material within DDP, given as it contains a story where Sven (aka Shiro) is rejected from his lion, seems to get brainwashed by Haggar, betrays Voltron, and teams up with Lotor. There’s a point where Voltron and Lotor make a temporary alliance to fight against Yurak/Sendak. There’s a fight for leadership and power within the Drule (Galra) Empire. And it’s the only material in the Voltron franchise that seems to write a strong psychic bond between the Voltron pilots, their lions, and each other. Sound familiar?

So, one other thing that DDP brings up is the idea of Zarkon and Alfor initially being at peace, but then Zarkon capturing the planet Arus/Altea when Lotor and Allura were children. In this telling of Voltron, Lotor and Allura knew each other during childhood.

This gets slightly closer to what we see in VLD, but it also perpetuates the impure nature of Allotor. When Lotor reunites with Allura, he grabs her and says, “Now I’ve returned. And by rights, the spoils of war are mine for the taking.” This proceeds into a fight where Lance tries to stop Lotor from doing anything.

(Apologies for the terrible picture I took with my phone).

So what’s repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly been the case in Voltron canon for thirty years, starting back in 1981 and going well into the 2000s, is Lotor pursuing Allura and attempting to take her without consent.

The creators of Voltron: Legendary Defender have consciously cut away many of the franchise’s historic problems regarding issues like gender representation and misogyny. They’ve done away with the trope of one female character existing in an otherwise all-male team; Pidge, originally, Darrell Stoker, has become Katie Holt. They’ve written Allura far more favorably, with much less emphasis on her being the “pretty one” who’s not as good fighting because she’s “just a woman” (yes, this was in BKG). Instead of giving Lotor a harem (yes, this was in BKG and DotU, too), VLD has Lotor working respectfully with women generals. The writers have also intentionally promoted racial diversity by giving Hunk a Samoan background, Shiro a Japanese background, Lance a Cuban background, and designing Allura with a darker skin tone.

And VLD - praise God - seems to have consciously cut away Lotor lusting after Allura, trying to capture her, and trying to force her to marry him.

Now here’s the reason why I don’t like the concept of Lotor and Allura hooking up in VLD. In the DreamWorks show itself, there’s nothing wrong with Lotor and Allura’s interactions. That’s totally fine. If we look at it in a vacuum, it’s fine. And I like that it no longer writes that poisonous material between them. However… how disrespectful would it be for VLD’s creators to take a relationship that’s been written for 30 years as desired rape… and turn it into a romance? By writing an Allotor romance, they’d be acknowledging all the material that’s come before… all the very, very, uncomfortably impure material that’s come before. However you write an Allotor romance in the present day, there’s no way to deny that the firmly-embedded history of Allotor is non-consensual. 

I don’t like the concept of taking something that’s been so thoroughly written as unhealthy, and which is well-known within old time Voltron fans as unhealthy, and making it into a new healthy ship. It’s not that it would “legitimize” the old, gross Allotor stuff. But it would… sweep aside all the problems behind it. It’s far more respectful and less controversial to simply delete Lotor’s romantic interests in Allura altogether.

I mean… if you think about it in terms of real life… if you were someone who had been sexually harassed by someone in the past, and then people wrote a novel about you based upon your real life where your harasser was now a nice prince charming… wouldn’t that feel… disturbing and disrespectful… to you?

So it means that I don’t want VLD to write Allotor. The way VLD has set up Allura and Lotor, yes, it would be alluring on its own. But the problem is that it’s not on its own. And it also means that I’m not going to hop onto any fandom ships for these two, either. I don’t enter ship wars. I don’t. I always want people to have fun shipping! I’m happy with people shipping whatever they want, just so long as they don’t hit any of the following three points: incest, pedophilia, and inherent abuse/lack of consent. Allotor rubs me wrong because of point number three. 

So like you’re seeing here, if I see people hit upon one of these points, then I like to kindly inform people why I think it’s not the best ship to ship.

If VLD is going to write in a reciprocated romance between Allura and another individual (and they might not), they have some good options that also have franchise precedent, or at least franchise basis. Allura kisses Lance’s cheek several times in DotU, making him blush. Allura and Keith get engaged in Voltron Force comics, there’s a long Kallura plot arc in the Devil’s Due Publishing Omnibus, and Allura professes Keith as the one she loves in other DotU comics, too. And of course VLD always has the option of going on a new romance that hasn’t been done before, as I’m sure Shallura shippers would be quick to pipe up.

Again, I’m sorry to rain on your parade, since you’re so happily imagining how good looking Allura x Lotor children would look like! I know how much fun it is to imagine these things with our ships.

[space-mouse]

thank you for that beautiful post about hunk! i almost think that's why he and keith were paired together for the weblum episode, because keith saying they can't leave anyone behind even if they are galra is incorporating some of hunk's own philosophy (which also goes against zarkon's belief that only the strong survive, so it'll be interesting if that weblum character comes back and is still a little baffled that keith saved him.)

thank you for this lovely ask ❤❤ @ everyone PLEASE discuss the themes and connections of voltron with me

i've been meaning to wax eloquent about the weblum episode in light of my previous meta anyway, so since you kindly gave me an excuse, here goes

i think keith's treatment of that galra was actually entirely in keeping with his own mentality, not hunk's! assisting the galra stranger aligns with keith's sense of responsibility; he must save as many as possible and pursue the greater good, though his ideal "greater good" is newly extended to galra who don't do zarkon's bidding. rescuing this galra differs from rescuing allura at the culmination of s1, because here there are no obvious dire consequences; the s1 rescue mission ran the risk of dumping a superweapon right into zarkon's lap.

keith's also pretty desperate at this point to believe the best of individual galra, to give them the benefit of the doubt he wants so dearly from his team. he's projecting, big time. so he latches on to the hope that this is a good one after the [galra shoots attackers behind keith] "i... guess you can keep your weapon" exchange.

hunk, on the other hand, is focused mainly on his own wellbeing and on keith's; in first encountering the other galra, hunk doesn't even acknowledge his presence 'til he's sure keith is safe - "keith! keith, you made it! [...] who is this?" - and then he's pretty hesitant: "are you sure we should be rescuing a galra prisoner right now?"

like rolo and nyma and, initially, shiro in s1, our unknown galra isn't hunk's priority; loved ones and the self come first. hunk might have begun caring for the weblum galra had that galra genuinely tried to make friends - hunk's a good judge of character and forms attachments fast - but our boy's not concerned for a faceless entity with whom he's not even exchanged pleasantries.

keith's all-encompassing dutiful nature comes to the fore in his response: "we're paladins of voltron. we can't just leave people to die even if they are galra." so yeah, that was keith being keith all the way through. he's definitely evolving as a character, but these two boys still have two differently calibrated moral compasses!

comparing those ethical systems to "victory or death", "i fight in the name of galra" is interesting; both hunk's intense loyalty to those he loves and keith's insistence on acting for the best of the universe at large directly oppose zarkon's social darwinist bullshit, and to see them in action could inspire bafflement, scorn, or both in someone indoctrinated into the empire. if this mysterious figure who absconded with the scaultrite really is working for zarkon, i can't wait to see how this meeting affected him :')