#edit: cut for ease of sharing and scrolling past for spoilers

[leonawriter]

Of Non-Appearance Not Meaning No Plot Importance, And Other Matters.

Okay, so. I had these thoughts yesterday while I was out, and continued having them, and every so often I’m reminded of how these are, in fact, important thoughts!

Let’s start with Keith.

S4.1 starts us off with showing us both where Keith is in the team, and where he is going to be for a while. It shows him being distanced, by his own volition, from the other Paladins, and when people - both people he respects, mind! - try to talk him into coming back and being a bigger part of things, he refuses to budge, for his own reasons (forcing Shiro back into his role, for one thing).

Thing is, although it’s a hard thing to come to terms with, because damn if it doesn’t hurt seeing Keith go through that (“I... didn’t mean for it to happen this way” comes to mind), and it was hard seeing him at odds with these people, but the events were, like it or not, necessary.

So, Keith leaves the team. Which leaves us and Voltron seeing a figuration which hasn’t, actually, occurred before! Shiro in Black, Allura in Blue, and Lance in Red. Which is interesting for interpersonal dynamics as well, but that’s for later.

But this means we have three episodes with no Keith, not even on a screen anywhere. But wait! There’s also the fact that in Reunion, it’s mainly Pidge’s story, so all we see of any of the other Paladins anyway is Shiro, Lance and Hunk on a screen right before she leaves. Allura isn’t even mentioned, as far as I can remember, and Voltron is not formed. So this is an episode that Keith wouldn’t have been in anyway! 

Which leaves us with two episodes, one being - rather curiously - the one where the Paladins find out that Lotor is now a fugitive of the Galra Empire. This means that we do not see Keith’s reaction to this. Keith, who has spent S3 and the first episode of S4 acting on the assumption of ‘Lotor is behind everything that is put in our path’, is vacant from the episode where that assumption might be put into question. I have to assume that he gets told about this development later, however. But it is thematically interesting.

The other one he’s absent from is The Voltron Show, and... to be honest, while I was watching it, I kept feeling like he’d never stand for any of the performance stuff, he’d be frustrated, he’d probably cause arguments more than not, and it would disrupt the flow of what the writers were after, regardless of my own feelings on the episode itself. Plus, he’s constantly referred to and mentioned, what with Allura ‘taking his place’.

So, that leaves us with Nacxela, and the next time that Voltron and the Blade join forces again in a big operation. Where Keith is with a Marmora strike team, Voltron is on Nacxela, and the Castle of Lions is... half a galaxy away, according to Coran. Voltron gets stuck in Nacxela’s artificial gravitation/repurposed terraforming, and Keith brings the rebels to bear on Haggar’s ship, and Lotor saves the day.

Let’s back up a bit.

Let’s assume that Keith wasn’t there, because something that either Shiro or Allura had said stuck. Let’s assume that maybe one of the other Paladins took him aside and talked to him, and got him to rethink things. Maybe in this reality the other Paladin would have understood Keith’s idea and made the split simply go smoother, but for the sake of hypotheticals let’s say he stays.

So, a few episodes later, we have to try and imagine where Keith might be. He would be, I would imagine, in either one of two places - he’s either remained a Paladin and retaken a Lion, in which case he is stuck in Nacxela along with the other Paladins on the mission, with another Blade on the mission he’d been sent on in canon. In this case either Lance or Shiro are probably still back on the Castle. If it’s Lance, then Lance never gets to tell Allura to try her space magics, and they don’t break free to tell everyone that Nacxela is a bomb. If it’s Shiro, he might just be stuck back on the castle like he was in all missions previous to regaining Black’s trust, unable to do anything.

The other option is that Keith himself is on the Castle, with the S4 Voltron formation still being the same as it was in canon. In this case, Keith is - as Coran said - half a galaxy away, and unable to reach Nacxela in time to do anything.

Because here’s another interesting thing, is that Keith seemed to notice that something was wrong with the mission when he had no reasonable way of knowing this. Other people have said it before, but Keith has a weird sixth sense. We saw it in the first episode, and various other times after that. This comes into play here as well.

Either way, Keith is out of the equation if he is not with the Blade, on that mission! By being where he is, he is near the action, close enough that he can grab a small, manoeuvrable fighter ship, and lead the remainder of the rebels back into the fight.

And without Keith saying “hey, don’t ask me why, but we need to go back and keep fighting, something feels wrong”, leading them out.... something happens. Or rather, doesn’t happen.

There’s no rebel/coalition presence attacking Haggar’s ship, which is what is causing Nacxela to be a bomb in the first place, since that part of the ship contains the room where Haggar is performing her ritual from.

And if nothing else, those forces were doing one major thing, something that Keith in particular is emphasising - they’re painting a massive target on that one cruiser, for one person who they don’t even know is coming.

That’s right - Lotor. 

If the rebels hadn’t been firing on the cruiser and showing Lotor where the shield was, to know that there was something especially important under that shield, then Lotor wouldn't have known where, exactly, to fire. Nacxela may even have blown up with everyone still in the vicinity.

All of which means that Keith’s non-presence and lack of appearance in what essentially boils down to two episodes of being missing was, in fact, highly necessary.

As Lance said, “this isn’t a participation game, this is war.”

....and while I’m on the subject.

Let’s talk Lance.

Which should go quicker because we’ve already covered a fair few of these points!

Now, some people have noted how at one point when the pillars on Nacxela begin to rise, Lance says that he doesn’t like it, let’s get out, and - as others have stated - gives a direct order, as is his right as second in command, for Pidge to plot a course out of there. Shiro ‘doesn’t listen/dismisses’ him, and because of Shiro saying ‘lets’ see what’s going on here first’, they end up trapped, causing a lot of the conflict of episodes 5 and 6.

Again, some people have been calling Shiro out on ‘not listening to/dismissing’ Lance, and I can see where they’re coming from, given that Lance’s suggestion of getting out of there was a good one, and in a sense, Shiro could be seen as undermining some of the authority that comes with being the second in command of Voltron.

And yet two other things have to be considered here.

One is that Shiro is, after all, the head of Voltron. His decision to take a few more moments to figure out what was going on wasn't necessarily a bad one - think of how in the first episode not everyone wanted to stay and fight, and some wanted to leave, and how at the beginning of S4 waiting just a few seconds more could have saved lives and also could have lost them. It was Shiro’s call as leader to say “No, let’s see what’s going on here”, and he knew the risks. It’s not the first time they’ve had to fight something much large and deadlier than them, or been in a trap (see: their return to the Balmera).

The other thing is, as I explained above with Keith’s situation, narrative causality. 

Let’s take a look into one of Slav’s alternate realities and see what would have happened if everyone had listened to Lance!

First, let’s assume they even get up high enough and fast enough to reach freedom before the barrier completely covers the planet. Okay, they’re free, but do they know what’s going on? They can see that the planet is covered with a shield that won’t let anything in or out, but do they know why? Do they know what makes this dangerous?

Let’s assume they realise that it’s dangerous. Because them not realising it’s dangerous is both a) unlikely, it happened as a result of Galra interference and they’re smarter than to ignore it, and b) depressing, because then everyone would end up dead. 

Voltron tries to contact Coran, but according to Coran’s own readouts in the episode, he can only tell that it’s got a massive gravitational field. It’s possible that he and Allura might recognise Altean terraforming technology, but she doesn’t refer to it as such until they’re right in the planet’s core, and so I can’t say for sure that they’d recognise it from above.

So now we have Voltron trying to figure things out from the outside, Keith having a weird feeling about something and probably still bringing the Rebels back to fight again because of that, but since Allura hasn’t said ‘this is old Altean terraforming tech’ Hunk hasn’t figured out that it’s a bomb rigged to blow and they’re on a time limit... things are going to get confusing.

We’re going to have Voltron maybe figuring out where to start attacking on Haggar’s ship, but - as someone else said - we don’t know if they’re capable of forming the sword without Keith, if that is what’s needed. We don’t know if they’ll be attempting to break the shielding on Nacxela to get back in. We don’t know what Keith’s fleet will be doing, but if there’s no certain knowledge that if they don’t destroy this thing right now, everyone will die.

And then along comes Lotor, who knows that this are is forbidden because of an explosion, who may have a clue as to where to fire, but as things are, it stands to reason that the rebel fleet and Keith’s near-attempted suicide mission give him, as stated above, a bright red target so he knows exactly where to fire. And without that, the coalition is no more. Bye, bye, Voltron. Bye, bye, Blade of Marmora. And you know what? Let’s also say farewell to Lotor himself if that fails, because yeah, he’s also in the blast range, or so I have to assume.

Another thing that strikes me on a narrative level is that if Lotor had arrived and Voltron had already done the hack and slash and bang and shoot at Haggar’s ship before he got there... where would that leave him?

Voltron, or Voltron’s forces, destroying haggar’s ship and saving the day is what’s expected. Everyone congratulates them on a job well done, because at the end of the day, defeating the Galra is just What Voltron Does. If Lotor showed up after that, then perhaps they might ask why he was there, perhaps he would still be able to negotiate, but there would be none of the same willing to listen as I have to assume is going to be there, suspicion and cold diplomacy aside, in canon.

Lotor destroying/firing upon Haggar’s ship is, for Voltron at least, entirely unexpected. He has gone from just ‘Son of Zarkon, Prince of the Galra Empire, person who messed about with them and played with them like it was a cute cat and mouse game and then got fired on for Imperial Politics not working in his favour’ to ‘that one guy who saved all of our lives, and the very existence of this coalition at all’.

Lotor now has the ability to say “Here, see what I did, I saved your lives, I have worth, I am someone you want to keep around, I can do that when no one else could, I am worth something to you alive.’ Which is what he’s after really, if you think about it - he went through the entirety of the time since being declared an enemy of the empire on the run and being fired upon every time he wanted to try and rest for a moment. He needs, at bare minimum, a bolthole. Somewhere safe.

And you know what else this tells me? I firmly believe that the writers want the Voltron Coalition to see him in a better light because of this. It would have been easy for him to come to them and for everyone to be automatically and realistically suspicious, but because of this, a narrative choice, Lotor has a chance with the coalition that he can either use as leverage to ensure he has somewhere to go, people to be his allies, or mess up for whatever reasons later become apparent, which would have to be fairly hefty reasons, given how he would prefer to die on his own terms (an unstable star, flying into a zone forbidden because of an upcoming explosion) rather than face Zarkon, his father, again, and be at the man’s non-existent mercy.

In short: Keith being away didn’t actually take all that long, and was very necessary so that the plot would go forward, and everyone survived. Lance’s idea of getting the hell out of dodge, while reasonable, needed to be shot down in order for the plot to carry on as intended, and arguably so that everyone could survive. And Lotor needed to save the day, which seems to be the writers’ way of giving him a way of being even somewhat more trusted by Team Voltron, which further suggests that the writers are probably not going to have him take advantage of this and waste that trust.