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ganymedesclock · 7 years

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Why do you think Keith was so frantic to find and stop Lotor throughout S3 and well into S4?

Keith and Pidge are both very concerned with truth, but, there’s a fundamental difference in how they approach it. I’ve discussed this before that roughly, Keith is a compass while Pidge is a map- for Pidge, she wants to jot down every detail in the certainty that eventually she’ll have a full picture.

Keith doesn’t really look at the smaller details as much as he finds magnetic north, and then, he chases it. One particular thing in a situation stands out to him like a beacon.

With Lotor, Lotor spends s3 and s4 behind closed doors. He’s an enigma to the team. They don’t have any of the guarantees they had with Zarkon- and with Zarkon, there were a lot of guarantees. Zarkon’s forces proceeded directly towards the paladins as much as possible, hitting them like a sledgehammer every time. They would attack until they were defeated, and then, if they ever retreated, it would be to regroup and rapidly try again.

Lotor? The first thing Lotor does that the paladins are aware of is sneak behind their back and take Puig- completely, decisively. He asks their leader for allegiance, but when that is refused... Lotor calmly sets a trap to attack Voltron without harming the people themselves. He didn’t even retake the planet permanently- we see in s4e5, Puigians, and their leader, watching Allura’s broadcast.

Even then, once Lotor catches Voltron, he pulls out and withdraws, at a point when he was not even defeated, or inconvenienced. And this keeps up- Lotor is all too content to disappear at odd times, even when victory is seemingly his or Voltron is indisposed and at his mercy.

What does this mean? For Keith, he has his beacon, arguably- Lotor is what’s at the heart of all of this. But he can’t make sense of any of the other stuff. None of them can. The further they go the less it adds up and Lotor isn’t an ineffective opponent, he’s an incredibly smart, incredibly effective one. S3e4 is a fantastic testament to this- Lotor pretty much sets things up, says “go, fetch” and Voltron fetches like a trained dog and drops the comet nicely at his feet. He gets away scott free, with virtually no effort expended on his part.

So Keith can’t get a read on Lotor, he knows that the rest of his team also can’t get a read on him, and that leaves Keith with this very restless sense of animosity, because this is not a trustworthy person, he’s dangerous, and they can’t even begin to fathom what his agenda is. Even now, with Lotor coming to them as an ally, he’s still massively enigmatic. Why did he save them? Why is Zarkon so determined to kill him now? Why was Lotor attacking an imperial base to steal a teludav?

As an audience, Lotor’s a lot less of a mystery because what we know that Keith doesn’t is that all of Lotor’s veils of obfuscation were trying to make sure Zarkon and Haggar didn’t know what he was doing for as long as possible. Lotor’s real agenda is outfoxing his incredibly powerful, and quite abusive parents- in that end, Voltron is just a pawn on the board, so, of course Lotor’s not committed to hunting them the way Zarkon is- of course he’s touch-and-go, because his strikes against them have been largely either bluffs to evaluate their nature, or counterattacks to try and protect his own assets from a marauding Voltron.

But Keith doesn’t have that knowledge. And out of that, he just has a sense of misgivings that Lotor’s up to something, big, and unable to put his finger on it, Keith falls back on his main virtues of instinct, of that internal compass- the unifying thread here is Lotor, so rather than trying to run around in the dark and unearth what Lotor’s up to, it’s faster to just cut out the middle man and go straight for him.

Which... works quite to Keith’s misfortune, because Lotor’s also spent years honing his edge specifically for people who try and rush him headlong.

Putting it simply, Keith isn’t ignorant, but he has a desire to view situations in a very no-frills efficient manner. He doesn’t like to waste time with things he doesn’t see as valuable, so, his response to Lotor’s evasive, confusing behavior has been to try to strike as close to the heart as he can, which is Lotor himself. And he gets very agitated when Lotor disappears because, again- his whole hunt of Lotor is trying to fix what he sees as the problem- that Lotor’s planning something big and they have no idea what it is, and the longer Lotor is able to chug away at that uninterrupted the worse it’s going to get.

So while to a degree, going forward, Keith is probably going to be placated at having Lotor right where they can keep an eye on him, I think it’s still gonna make Keith’s skin crawl a little because he doesn’t see the part where Lotor has lost everything else and basically fled half-awake through the emptiness of space trying to escape his father and taxing himself to the limits- Keith just sees Lotor, confidently, amiably, handing himself over to the coalition in a way that seems like just another step in his plan all along.

How quickly that illusion of Lotor as an untroubled mastermind breaks down, and under what circumstances, will, I think, affect a lot of how Keith feels about him going forward.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Keith #Lotor #readmore #moonaft

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