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artsyjesseblue · 2 years

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Decoding Voltron’s Rosetta Stone

Paladins, I think it is time we had a discussion

For some time, I’ve had this theory about VLD floating in my mind (it has to do with Lotor’s story arc) and I’ve been itching to write it out. I noticed some recurring themes (I’ll refer to them as leitmotifs) that are sprinkled around strategically, both in the TV show and in the VLD comics, and they always made me think that they mean more than just entertaining, silly subjects for cute kids’ stories.

Disclaimer: this theory I am proposing does not claim to hold the absolute truth and I might be proven otherwise if some day we’ll get the #realVLDS8, but it’s nevertheless fun to explore. It comes out of a place of love for Voltron and its talented creators. It explores the complexity of the scripts, the amazing creativity that lies within them, and touches on what could have been, if these allegorical stories were allowed to fully manifest in S8.

Also, some parts of what I am about to present have been discussed either in the general fandom, or written as metas, and I will quote and attach links to each of the sources. If I might have missed any references, please let me know and I will add them.

Buckle up, as this is not short, but it is FULL of symbol reveals. If you’re not ready to read the full article, bookmark it for later, but don’t skip parts, as they are all related to each other.

—> In the TV series, we are blessed with a few of what you would consider… filler episodes. Think “Monsters and Mana”, “The Depths” (yes, that one with the mermaids), “The Voltron Show” (the one where Coran-the-showman gets a brain worm)”, “The Feud” (the Garfle-Warfle Snick show).

—> The VLD comics are basically fillers in their own right, in that they do not affect the main plot in any way. I’ll briefly go over the symbolism from the main show episodes and then dive into a deep analysis of the comics.

There are several types of leitmotifs floating around in these ‘filler’ parts and they are tied to specific (and symbolic) entities. In no particular order, here are a few that stood out to me:

- the show-runner

- the dragon / monster enemy

- the witch

- the food source for the monster

- the oppressed people of a certain planet / realm / village

- the brain-controlling beings (brain worms, mushrooms, mind-swishing aquatic plants)

- certain colors and color schemes.

(You might wonder by now why I don’t use the word “trope” instead of “leitmotif”, which seems a bit academic and antiquated. Trope also refers to a recurring theme, but, imo, it’s a more recognizable topic, it makes you quickly understand where it comes from and what it hints at, whereas these leitmotifs I’ll be discussing are embedded into the story in a very subtle way. Surely, you can say that the Dragon is a trope for the Big Bad Guys, but peel off that layer and you’re entering into a whole new level of meta. “It’s super meta, it’s like inverse meta” - is something that one of the Voltron Executive Producers mentioned in an interview, referring to certain episodes of S8. I’d say there are many other places where they apply the “super meta”, as I’ll further analyze. Layer upon layer of meta. Especially the dragons and monsters. Just like snakes shed their skin, these dragons will start shedding their scales meta-layers and… reveal to us something else.)

These mysterious repeating themes make me seriously think about the foreshadowing role they play. Because moving around the same idea, so many times, embedded in various story formulas, gives me the impression that someone is trying to say “shhh, watch out, there’s more than meets the eye.”

And to quote Pidge in one of the comics… “Stupid symbolism!!” (in the same scene, she also remarks: “The whole place is a map”). Hmmm… Are these ‘filler episodes’ some sort of actual clues, ‘stupid’ symbols for something that was to be revealed? (but we never fully got, and that’s another story). The irony of the word ‘stupid’ is not lost on me and I’ll circle back at some point to the subject of Socratic irony in VLD, because I think it’s also really important and intimately linked to these subtle leitmotifs.

Before I begin, one more thing I’d like to point out about comics illustration and animation, in general. Almost nothing that is used in the process of animation is random. It is calculated within the resources given: you have a certain amount of airtime and a certain budget, so you have to use them wisely. A full team of story writers, producers, concept artists won’t make a character say something that has little meaning, and pay a team of animators to work for an entire week, just for a useless piece of conversation. Sure, there are parts that are meant just with small roles, of tying together different scenes, for creating a comic moment, etc, but when a character says something that sounds out of the ordinary, do pay attention to that. With that in mind, let’s focus on the following adventures of our Paladins: MONSTERS AND MANA So I’ll start with the easiest and most obvious one, because this was discussed and analyzed already: S6E3 “Monsters and Mana”. This is a slam-dunk, as you can probably already imagine.

And since I’m lazy enough to not start talking again about something that has already been dissected in great detail, here’s the most relevant stuff from the Voltron wiki page:

“This entire episode uses the trope of having a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons-like game predict future events in the real world. Key elements include:

The Innkeeper (Dakin) to whom Pidge and Hunk bring their crystal represents Lotor and his use of the trans-reality comet. The Innkeeper's betrayal foretells that of Lotor, as also his using of the heroes' energy represents his harvesting of Altean's quintessence. Shiro's dying and being reborn as an identical Paladin foretells the revelation that he himself is one of many clones. The Innkeeper's transformation from fast-moving sorcerer into Coranic Dragon foreshadows the forming of the Sincline Beast which has a similar appearance complete with tail. Use of the Blazing Sword foreshadows the reappearance of Voltron's flaming sword, just as its destroying the Coranic Dragon by fire foreshadows Sincline’s being defeated by quintessence overload.”

Adding my own note to the above:

At the end of the episode, Coran tells Shiro: “The game isn’t over yet. Wait until you find out who Dakin was working for. Maybe you’ll finally be able to avenge your master.”

So the game is not over yet, after they destroyed the Coranic Dragon (the Sincline). Just like in the real story, where even after defeating Lotor, they still had one more enemy - Honerva. Wait until you find out who Dakin (Lotor) was working for (i.e. who had power over him/what he was really up to/what were his real intentions, etc).

Something that intrigued me is the fact that the Coranic Dragon monster has a sort of bathelm similar to Honerva’s (including the color scheme). We might not see only a battle with the Sincline, but this might suggest another layer of meta: the final battle with Honerva.

You might think I’m seeing too much in this, but another intriguing part is the flying unicorn that Shiro Gyro rides in the end, which, yeah, has the color scheme of Atlas, a purple horn (uh-oh!), purple hooves (oops) and an orange mustache on its chest. A Coranic unicorn?

THE DEPTHS

Another good example of foreshadowing is S2E2 “The Depths”, which was thoroughly analyzed by @leakinghate, in this article.

To summarize the episode: Lance and Hunk find themselves in the underwater world of a very friendly Queen Mermaid, called Luxia (symbolic for Lotor), who invites them to eat food from the Baku gardens.

After watching some mermaid dances, Hunk and Lance fall into some sort of hypnosis. Lance is later abducted by a secret group of mermaids who claim they have a theory about how Luxia is able to control people’s minds - they think it’s through her voice and eyes and by training her people to use hypnotic dances (which sounds quite credible, since Lance remembers a dancer that apparently caused him to fall under the spell). This secret mermaid group is symbolic of Romelle, Keith and Krolia and their conjectures about Lotor.

We (the watchers) find out that the queen indeed brainwashed mind-swished her people and she is secretly killing some of her subjects by sending them to “take a swim in the gardens.” (parallel to how we find out from Romelle that Lotor has been ‘harvesting innocent Alteans’). Florona is one of the victims, and, as explained in detail in the aforementioned meta, she bears resemblance to Bandor: red-haired and with a similar color scheme of her clothes. Another similarity is between Plaxum (the lead mermaid from the secret group) and Romelle (same color scheme of clothes and also wearing two ponytail-like projections similar to Romelle’s hairstyle).

Ultimately, we find out that the real enemy was not Luxia (Lotor), but a sort of sea dragon (note that it resembles a dragon) that lives in the Baku gardens, using the food as a mind-control weapon to lure people into its gardens to eat them. As Luxia explains in the end, “The Baku has been harvesting us all. We are its food source”. And according to Lance, “the queen was the first one to be mind-controlled.”

Which leads us to the conclusion: are we (the watchers) really seeing the truth through Romelle’s eyes, or are we being deceived? Because it turns out that Plaxum’s theory about Luxia using voice hypnosis was false, which Plaxum actually acknowledges: “Well, I did say they were theories. Mer-science isn’t always about getting the right answer.” So then, it stands to reason that Lotor was not the bad guy after all, as we were lead to think, but there’s something more dark and devious lurking out there - which there was, indeed, it was Honerva and the Dark Entity she was possessed by. Unfortunately, the part where Lotor (Luxia) gets redeemed was blatantly skipped in Lotor’s case. Also, to this day, the Altean Colony is still a mystery (“an empty facility”, according to Kolivan); but we could infer parts of the truth from all these foreshadowings).

—> The really interesting detail in Hate’s meta was the “red herring” theory - which was actually the spark that turned my attention back to the comics.

As quoted from Wikipedia, “A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion.” Florona is… a fish mermaid with red hair. Both Bandor and Florona have red hair… and we, the readers, are led to believe what Bandor has said: “Lotor… the other colony… It’s all a lie.” And, wait, I just remembered. Guess who brings Romelle to Allura’s castle: Keith… the Red Paladin. (OK, I’ll probably get side-eyed for this one, but I’m just saying: what if red herring Keith was wrong about Lotor, and through him, we were all deceived?).

And this is where I started to see more… red in a purple world.

Every time I got to see a red-colored character, I had to question it a little bit and dig deeper. (including Coran - well, his hair is not red-red, it’s more orangey, but you could traditionally call him a red-haired guy if you saw him on the street, right?). And guess what Coran said at the end of “Monsters and Mana”: “I also made it all up, Shiro. That’s the magic of Monsters and Mana.” Well, so Coran acknowledges (to us, the public?) that he’s a bit of a fabricator… “I’m Coran-Coran, the non-truth telling man”, says the little Coranic head popping out of the Whac-a-mole console, in the “Clear Day” episode. And now go back to the flying unicorn and see that it has a red mane.

“The Voltron Show” and “The Feud” don’t really pertain to the subject of this article, except there is a detail that falls into the category of the mind-controlling leitmotif: the brain worm that infects Coran, enslaving him to the will of that tiny creature. Which proves that the writers had a clear inclination towards this dear subject: something small that can take over your mind and incapacitate you, against your will (so far we’ve had the food in the Baku gardens and the brain worm. But there’s more to come.)

Let’s just have a little pause and look back at what I presented so far: the general conclusion I got from all these episodes is that not everything we see at a first glance turns out to be true.

THE COMICS

Alright, now that I discussed the subject of the VLD episodes, I’ll move on to the less evident pieces of the puzzle: the comics. Weeee!!!

Written by show head writers Tim Hedrick and Mitch Iverson, the comics are part of the canon (some bits and pieces from the comics are actually mentioned in certain episodes, like the Yalexian pearl and some other stuff I can’t remember now).

Although the comics seem to be created as entertaining adventure stories with lots of monsters, so that kids can get a little more action kick out of the show, I see more than that. I see leitmotif after leitmotif, singing a long song about foreshadowing.

There are going to be monsters and dragons, princesses, brain-infecting entities (again), witches, food sources, populations that are oppressed by certain monsters, and I think I pretty much enumerated the most important recurrent themes. And red. Lots of red. (I am adding orange to this category, because… you’ll see).

The story plots in the comics do not seem to parallel the main storyline as neatly as they metaphorically did in “Monsters and Mana” or “The Depths”. Nevertheless, the recurring themes are there, scrambled in no apparent order. And the big, final conclusions will be the same: nothing is what it seems, watch out for red herrings.

So let’s start with Volume One of the VLD comics. Spoiler alert: I’ll loosely describe the plot at times, to better understand the succession of events.

The Paladins and Coran head off to some training grounds (I won’t enter into details with alien names and such, unless I’ll find it significant). Coran meets this guy who takes him hostage due to unpaid debt, and in order to free him, the Paladins must bring him the “Yalexian pearl”.

First adventure is on a planet where they find a bug-looking monster - which they assume is the Yalex - and by forming Voltron, they rush to kill it...

… only to find out that the monster was actually protecting the inhabitants of the planet from another monster, called Abomination…

How ironic - what kind of monsters are the Paladins?

This is where it becomes interesting. In order to get protected, the planet dwellers explained that they would feed the Guardian monster a giant bowl of their food and a few of their people. (“sacrificed a few to preserve the future for millions” sounds familiar?). But now that the Guardian monster was gone, they were left without protection in the face of the Abomination.

Wait. Time out. So… who exactly did Lotor call an “abomination” in S6? Oh, that’s right, Honerva!

In the main story, Honerva simply walks into an Altean colony of peaceful, naive people, without any opposition, deceiving them into following her plans. So they were basically left unprotected, because their defender (*cough* Lotor-the-bug-monster) was gone. (Also, remember what Romelle said about him: “Lotor is a monster.” Um… a Guardian monster?)

And let’s take a closer look at the Abomination creature from the comic, then look at the rift monster, and Honerva’s mecha:

What did Lotor whisper in Allura’s ear, in her vision from “Clear Day”?… “If you can become one with the Entity…” So, yes, it’s canonically established that “becoming one” with that rift entity is a thing. Not only that, but they also show us that robots can fuse with each other: Honerva’s mech with the Sincline, Atlas with Votron. Honerva/Haggar and the Rift Monster (aka The Dark Entity) are melded into One entity, the Abomination.

The rift entity craves for more Quintessence. It is its food, its life source (it hails from the Quinessence field, right?). “Quintessence is life” whispers a very sick Honerva, before she became Haggar. Both Zarkon and Haggar become obsessed with obtaining more Quintessence, after they fall prey to (become one with) the rift creatures.

How did Voltron defeat the Abomination monster in the comics? By feeding it with some good food that Hunk prepared. It becomes docile if it’s being fed. Food//Quintessence is life. Little unsettling detail: they added the dead Guardian monster to the pot of food.

Wasn’t Honerva ‘eating away’ the life of other beings by dissolving them in her dark magic spells? Remember how she went to Kral Zera and killed all the Galra generals:

(My theory about why Kolivan didn’t find anything at the second Colony - yet with no hard evidence - is that Haggar melted everything and everyone in that purple magic mandala of spells, to gain their power and knowledge. We know from canon she did that also to the old paladins. She also did it to the Sages of Oriande! (she basically cheated her way through the lessons in Altean alchemy). If the Alteans on the second colony had some sort of knowledge or power, she would surely want to gain it. Plus, they're not NAIVE, like the main colony. They know who she is and what she's capable of, as I will later discuss, so they WOULDN'T HAVE FREELY GIVEN HER THEIR SECRETS. She FORCEFULLY took them. If Kolivan said he found an empty facility… that would make sense. She does not… leave traces.)

*********

Back to the comic book analysis: we’re on to a new adventure. They’re still after that Yalexian pearl, but now they have to ask princess Malocoti where they could find it. But the princess is held captive by a dragon… Here comes the dragon metaphor again, and it’s very very red, and orange.

And the princess appears to be trapped inside the castle:

But wait, what do you know? The Paladins figure out that the real princess is not the purple lady in the castle, because she’s actually a witch, casting spells and controlling the red herring dragon.

Look who also controls a certain prince trapped inside a "dragon":

Finally defeating the witch, the red dragon transforms into a beautiful princess Malocoti, who has the same red-orange (vermilion) hair color, with orange and yellow clothes. And she says this: "But somehow, even though I was just an enraged, screaming monster, you could see who I really was, deep down inside."

Mmmmkayyy… So princess Malocoti, while under the witch’s spell, was an “enraged, screaming monster.” Let’s see how the Sincline faired, while under Honerva’s spell... Talk about an enraged monster! (and… about the screaming part… go back to the rift battle from S6)

And Merla actually figured it out, too, because she realized Lotor’s extreme violence was very uncharacteristic to him. She yells at her fellow acolyte to “get out of there, now!” The real Lotor is there, inside that beastly dragon, underneath the layers of spells cast by the Entity/Honerva, and you can see the dark magic glowing in Sincline’s purple eyes.

But wait, you might say:

- That dragon is very vermilion. The Sincline is blue-violet. Colors that are at the opposite sides of the color wheel - the first one is on the hottest side of the spectrum, the other on the coolest (shh, complementary colors)!

- Also, the dragon turns into a lady. The Sincline hosts a guy. Opposites again.

- Well, look closer at the Sincline, around the neckline and elbow lines. And take any picture of Lotor, in his intricately designed suit. Look at the collar. And around his elbows, where the vambraces end. What color do you see? Orange. The kind of orange that sometimes turns vermilion, sometimes looks more yellow, depending on the scene, the lights… Anyway, it’s the color of Malocoti, isn’t it?…

I’m about to make an outrageous statement, haha, but I propose the theory (don’t hate me, I might be wrong) that Lotor’s body garment, underneath the main suit, is actually orange (or red-orange, vermilion, however you want to call it - the complementary color of his purple-and-blue suit). What if that collar is not decorative or some kind of detachable neck band, but it’s actually a hint at what he’s wearing underneath? I mean, the paladins’ suits feature dark gray turtlenecks, and guess what color their body garments are?

Wait, did I just say that Lotor is a vermilion herring? (Grape boi with orange peel omg what…) Haha, well, he did distract us from the ultimate enemy - Honerva. Add to that the fact that Dakin from “Monsters and Mana” is also red-haired. Oh. Boy.

- Also, because in the comic book, Lance couldn’t save a prince from a castle, they had to use the trope of saving the princess (moreover, it was all written with a lot of humor (and irony) at Lance’s pick-up artistry).

Plus, allegories are not supposed to be too evident. Being too literal would spoil it.

Another way you could look at this is that Malocoti’s vermilion is a complementary color to Lotor’s blue-violet color palette, just as Allura and Lotor complement each other. The colors have been flipped, just like the roles were supposed to be flipped in the VLD story: the princess was to save the prince; exactly the opposite of Lance’s dream of saving the princess - both in the comic story and in the TV show (which were treated, by the way, with quite a lot of irony). Again - flipping the story… Did I say that too many times? Here it is, one more time, from Hunk breaking the fourth wall at the audience (S3E3):

As a matter of fact, in the comic story, Pidge is the one who makes the final blow, defeating the witch, while Lance… is just screaming. (Although my suspicion is that (in the unaltered S8) Lance actually played a big role in helping Allura save Lotor - and I won’t go into details because I’d lose myself into a whole new meta.)

The bad news is… we never got to see Lotor’s ‘metamorphosis’ back into a good guy, as foretold in the comic, due to inter-dimensional meddling. At least I know now, from these precious foreshadowing parts, what we should have gotten:

A prince that wanted to save his dear people by dedicating his life to protect them from the Abomination. A prince that fell under the spell of an Entity, later controlled by a Witch. A prince that was (supposed to be) saved by a princess and her Voltron team, restored to his original physical state, and who ultimately helped the Paladins defeat the common enemy (foreshadowed by Malocoti helping Voltron in its next adventure). Also, let’s remember what he tells Allura in her vision: “You and I desire the same thing. We both seek to destroy Haggar.”

*****

The next adventure in this first comic book is an interesting mixture of leitmotifs: it brings us the story of a Sphinx that transforms out of a ziggurat pyramid, testing the Paladins through mind controlling mushroom spores (I told you there’s going to be more mind-swishing stuff), chess games and riddles. This part of the book is evocative of the Oriande pyramid and the trials of the White Lion (Coran calls the Sphinx a “a Lion thingy” - the Sphinx is part lion, according to mythology.)

Sphinxes are mythical creatures regarded as guardians; also, stemming from the Greek myth of Oedipus, we have the story of the Riddle of the Sphinx.

The Sphinx/Pyramid says: “I am a repository for great research.” That’s what Allura and Lotor did at Oriande - they researched ancient Altean alchemy. This time it’s Pidge who has to go through the trials.

Here are the brain-controlling mushrooms.

The resemblance with the Dark Entity is fascinating:

Other than this vague parallel with the Oriande trials, there isn’t much of a resemblance with anything I can think of, that we haven’t already seen in VLD. And that’s because, in my opinion, this part foreshadows something that was completely cut out. I might be wrong, I’m entering into a speculative area, but I think this might be related to one of the most overlooked parts of the show’s finale, in S8E12, “The Zenith”: the one where the Voltron-Atlas mecha chases Honerva through collapsing realities, while Coran, Slav and Holt (the three scientists) pilot the Oriande pyramid left behind by Honerva, trying to maintain the rift stability. Both are accompanied by footages of Coran’s and Keith’s shocked expressions, as they realize they won’t make it.

From what we see, it’s clear as daylight that both parties find their tragic end, while Honerva continues her journey through realities. She finally finds her son, who rejects her (again). And then, behold, Voltron-Atlas reappears in the skies, coming from, um… out of nowhere. Where exactly did they come from? How did that happen? Why did they waste animation time to have Voltron-Atlas get annihilated, and then miraculously show up again?? They could have saved weeks of animation work by not creating that scene, because it makes zero sense in this context. Well, it would have made sense if we’d seen what happened to them in the zone beyond realities. After all, there are three scientists piloting a pyramid that used to hold the ancient knowledge of Altea. And there used to be a White Lion, that looked like a Sphinx. Pidge is the scientist of the Paladins, and the comics put her through three distinct trials:

First is to test her body fitness by fighting against mind-controlled Paladins.

Next is to test her intelligence against herself in a game of chess with her own mind.

Last test is about finding the answer to a riddle: “What can be totally broken apart and yet reform stronger than ever?” - and the answer is not Voltron, it is HOPE.

Perhaps the three scientists also go through some trials.

And looking at the tests, I believe each test is actually fit to hit exactly the Achilles’ heel of the three men:

Coran: never good at body combat. Actually, feeble would be an appropriate word for him.

Holt: smart, but how smart compared to his own offspring, Pidge?

Slav: obsessed with calculating probabilities, but HOPE beats ALL odds.

Well, hope, my friends, is what makes the team of Paladins get up and try to continue their fight. In the actual VLD episode, before they lose to the collapsing reality, Keith gives a moving speech … “we need to get up”… and the message he gives everyone is to keep trying, keep going. That implies they need to have hope. In the end, the Sphinx is forced to admit that both answers are correct. Voltron was totally broken apart by falling into nothingness, yet the hope of the Paladins will resurrect it (and most likely some extra help from the three science men). I believe the three men in the Pyramid play a really big role in helping the Paladins survive and continue their chase across realities. Besides, that would be the last time we see Coran and Allura in the same life dimension, before she dies/transcends. He never had a chance to say goodbye to her, like the Paladins did. And he is basically her adoptive father, her custodian. Why would he not deserve a proper goodbye? And there is a symbolic meaning to it, as well: three scientists, number “three”, a powerful number, as we'll see towards the end of my meta.

Taking a little break from the foreshadowing analysis, I just want to emphasize how awesome this part is in describing the real Pidge, who: keeps a dossier on each of her friends; knows each of their strengths and weaknesses; figures out even how to defeat herself at a chess game. And she genuinely admits: “It’s my nature.” Through Pidge’s dossier, we also get a very nice insight into each Paladin’s character. In a way, this comic issue is the reader’s private research repository for the Voltron show, opening a window into their personalities.

While I don’t see a flow of events in the comics that would mirror the exact succession of episodes in the show, the pieces of repeating themes and stories are there, in a scrambled order. Some of them clearly foreshadow things to come, while others, in my opinion, foreshadow things that were supposed to come, but they were later deleted (remember, this comic book was released in 2016, while the last episode of VLD aired at the end of 2018).

********

The last issue of this book sends us to the most secret place of all, the final destination in their adventure, where they are to recover the Yalexian Pearl…

Grab yourself a drink; we’re about to get into some very, very interesting territories.

They land on a moon… (oh, a moon, how interesting!)

…and they meet a camel-like alien wearing steampunk Burning Man goggles, a gas mask (for harsh desert conditions on a moon with methane atmosphere) and a red skirt-cape; he speaks in pompous, cryptic phrases, which Lance dismisses as “looney-tooney”.

As a High Priest, he brings them to the “temple of the Yalex”, which is a sort of a grain processing facility, where other camel-looking creatures sit around the room, ruminating.

Since I think this contains too much symbolism, I’ll type out the most relevant portion of the dialogue, below. The bolded words are the ones I consider to bear most metaphorical weight:

Camel Priest: “This is the Temple of the Yalex.”

Shiro: “There don’t seem to be enough of you here to grow all this grain.”

Camel Priest: “Oh, we did not do it alone. The rest of our people left the moon and returned to Krell after the growing season [Krell is the main planet - where princess Malocoti and the Sphinx live]. Only the High Priests remain. We will stay here and devote our remaining days to bring about the Yalex.

Keith: “Why are they chewing up the grain and spitting it in those jars?”

Camel Priest: “Here we dry the grain, then masticate it and preserve it in the cuspidors[a cuspidor is a spittoon - a receptacle for spitting into] . When they are full, we carry them to the Eye of the Evershadow and pour them in.

Hunk: “Ewww. Why?”

Camel Priest: “To feed the Spirit of the Moon. To strengthen him.

Lance: “Okay, this guy is looney-tooney.”

Pidge: “Wait! Is that the Pearl?”

Camel Priest: “Yes…”

Pidge: “I knew it! The whole place is a map. Score one for Pidge!”

Camel Priest: “…the Pearl, the Moon, the Eye, Time, Life, all are the circle. Never ending, never broken.”

Pidge: “Aw. Stupid symbolism.”

Lance: “OK, this guy is definitely looney-tooney. Let’s go look for the Yalex.”

Camel Priest: “You do not need to look for it. Can you not see the calendar? The Yalex comes soon.”

Shiro: “Who told you this?”

Keith: “How do you know when it’s coming?”

Camel Priest: “We follow the ways of the Haruspex” [a haruspex in ancient Rome was a person trained in reading the omens from the entrails of sacrificed animals - see more details here] “She tells us of the end times. Come, let us feed the Moon Spirit.”

Shiro: “So, this Yalex, what is it?”

Camel Priest: “None living have seen the Yalex. Seeing the Yalex means death. The Yalex is the end of days.”

Hunk: “That doesn’t sound good.”

Camel Priest: “Of course it is good. Our lives here are lived in ignorance. When we die, all is revealed, and we continue our journey under the watchful eye of the Conqueror.”

Lance: “But what about the Pearl?”

Camel Priest: “The Yalex is the Pearl.”

Lance: “It is?”

Camel Priest: “The Pearl of Wisdom that comes at the end of time. The Yalex is Creator and Destroyer, Treasure and Terror, Redeemer and Annihilator, Savior and Executioner, One is All, the Fire in the Dark, the eye that is blind is most prized!”

Lance: “Looney. Tooney.”

Hunk: “Are you sure the Moon Spirit likes camel spit?”

Shiro: “Your Holiness, we mean no disrespect to your customs, but we have a friend who is going to die unless we can find a Yalexian Pearl, and…”

Rummmble…

Camel Priest: “At last! The birth that is death has begun!”

[the Yalex beast hatches out of the shell of the moon, destroying it and blowing everyone into space, as confirmed by Hunk: “I’m alive, but “Okay” got blown up with that moon.”]

The following exposition will probably put me in the looney-tooney category as well, yet I insist on displaying my crazy crack theory to the world. So, here we go.

Some of you might have inferred already. It is indeed time we had a discussion about the second Altean colony.

My theory is that here lies the truth about what exactly the Alteans on the second colony (the moon colony) were doing, and with what purpose.

Overall, this story seems to revolve around the leitmotif of preparing food for the Spirit of the Moon. Food that is made of grains, chewed (ruminated) by camels and spat into collecting cuspidors.

—-> What are camels in our real world? They are special animals in the pseudo-ruminant category (cattle are ruminants - with four-chambered stomachs; camels are pseudo, because they have three-chambered stomachs). Without entering into a million anatomical details about camels (which you can find out quickly by doing a wiki search - it’s actually fascinating, truly!), I can say with much astonishment that camels are a wonder of nature, adapted to the very harsh conditions of the desert, travelers capable of resisting without water for a week; their bodies are designed to avoid overheating through some truly amazing (almost magical) internal adaptations.

Top that information with a bit of symbolism about camels, collected from various cultures. This animal is emblematic for endurance, sacrifice, forbearance, toughness. These resilient guys can tolerate a lot of crap and sacrifice themselves for their masters.

Now let’s go back to the book narrative and what the Camel Priest says about the other people in the Temple: “Only the High Priests remain. We will stay here and devote our remaining days to bring about the Yalex.” Only the High Priests… Devote…

—> Who exactly did Lotor allow to go to the second colony? According to Romelle, they were “viable candidates”, who were given a “series of tests”. “Those who were fit for the journey were loaded onto a cargo ship and taken to the second colony. It was considered the highest honor.” From what we infer from her story, the chosen ones were quite freely and happily choosing to go. Again, citing Romelle, they had an “unquestioning devotion”.

“…devote our remaining days” - here, I sense that it’s implied they’ll die after completing their task - correct me if I’m wrong. I initially thought it might also mean “our remaining days on this moon”, but I don’t think so.

“…to bring about the Yalex.” - to cause the Yalex happen, to create the Yalex - I’ll get back to this one in a bit.

In the comic, the story explains that “the rest of the people”, who are not high priests, returned to Krell.

—> In the Altean story, there were these sentries that Lotor used, mainly as support personnel, and who had access to both colonies. Lotor “travels there all the time”, Romelle tells us. Surely, he travels there with his sentries. Could these be the non-magical guys that return to the mother planet when not needed? They might even travel outside of the Quantum Abyss - most likely they are the ones transporting those mysterious cargoes with pure Quintessence. Across the show, they seem to appear to be some sort of scientists, or even medics, as they pop up in various episodes. @violethowler has a thought-provoking meta regarding the timing of events around the Altean Colony and neatly postulates the role of these medics/sentries:

Alright, moving on to the weird part where the Priest explains what they are doing there… They masticate the grains and mix them with their saliva (ewww), and then they collect the yucky product (some sort of cud) into these spittoons that look like camel humps, carrying them to the Eye of the Evershadow, to feed the Spirit of the Moon. Welcome to a very spitty description of what Altean alchemy looks like - metaphorically speaking, of course. The very product of their bodies (their saliva) is mixed in with the harvest of that season (the dried grains), collected in cuspidors, and then it is used as a food source for the Spirit of the Moon.

Where did we see something similar? In S1E10 (Collection and Extraction), where a Druid stands in front of a giant sphere. A coiled tube passes inside the sphere, and raw (yellow) Quintessence flows inside the tube. The Druid then spews out these flashing purple energies out of their body, mixing their energy with the yellow raw material. The result is collected into a small vat underneath, and it looks like bright purple Quintessence, which is the refined result from the raw material.

We also have a verbal explanation from a very nice robot sentry hacked by Pidge:

“The material is quintessence, the substance with the highest known energy per unit volume in the universe. […] Raw quintessence material is transported here from throughout the galaxy and refined into standardized Galra fuel requirements.”

So let’s demystify the puzzle. This is how I see it:

— The dried grains are the raw quintessence (accidentally or not, grains also have a yellow tint).

— The camel spit is the Altean energy - basically a product / a secretion of their body, right?

— The mix of the spit with the grains is the refined Quintessence (light purple glow in the case of the Druidic product, but on the Altean side it would have a light blue glow).

— The refined Quintessence is poured into those cuspidors and then all the vessels are poured into a larger container of some sort, to feed the ‘Spirit of the Moon’ -later hatching out of the moon as Yalex. As far as I can tell, these High Priest Camels don’t seem to be incapacitated, or chained, or tied up and forced to work, or placed in energy-syphoning pods. It looks like a very liberal environment. Nobody watching them, no one pointing weapons at them.

—> Which brings up a statement that Hunk makes in “Monsters and Mana”: “maybe those villagers liked being turned into stone?“ - and again, remember, in animation they usually don’t waste airtime pointlessly.

Traditionally, the pearl is a symbol of wisdom, especially gained through experience. (A pearl is produced by adding layer upon layer of secretions produced by an oyster - umm… or camel spit, anyone?) And guess what the Priest says: “The Yalex is the Pearl. The Pearl of Wisdom that comes at the end of time.”

Ta-daa.

OK, still confused?

—> Let’s take a look at what Lotor tells Allura before their tragic battle in S6: “Many Alteans perished in my quest to unlock the mysteries of Quintessence.” “Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande.” Umm… wisdom… knowledge… unlock mysteries… It pretty much looks to me like the Camel Temple is the equivalent of a Research Facility, a secret military operation, where Alteans were giving, willingly, freely, out of devotion to their master, everything they had, to unlock the mysteries of the… Pearl of Wisdom. Which resembles a vat of pure Quintessence, doesn’t it? Same milky opalescent white.

I know this would contradict a previous theory, that the Alteans were not producing pure Quintessence, and that the mysterious vats of pure Quintessence traveling through unmarked ships were actually coming from Voltron (from when the Komar weapon extracted it). I cannot deny or confirm either theory at this point, I’m simply following what I’m finding, as I try to be as unbiased as I can.

In any case, what I am seeing here is not comparable to what Keith, Krolia and Romelle saw. I don’t see Alteans suspended in pods, life being sucked out of them without consent, but I see active people freely giving their energy away. Like the Alteans on Atlas, gathered around the ship’s crystal, in S8E11, or the Alteans and Balmerans gathered on the Balmera asteroids.

And here comes Lance’s first teasing at the apparently incredible scene from inside the Temple: “Looney-tooney.”

In contrast to Lance’s ignorance (which is actually inserted not just to simply show off the comedic side of Lance, and I’ll circle back to that in a minute), Pidge figures out that the Pearl is hanging from the ceiling of the Temple and she also adds: “The whole place is a map. Score one for Pidge!”

Whoops! A map is a guide. It plots, it outlines the directions to a place, a story… Is this little story THE MAP to Voltron’s secret treasures??

Wait, I’m not done.

There’s waaay more looney-tooney stuff to explore, and it will blow your mind. I went into this analysis with a general idea based on little clues I observed, but as I peeled off more and more layers, I discovered really unexpected things.

Notice again how even Pidge becomes disgruntled as she doesn’t understand all the cryptic language and she remarks: “Stupid symbolism!”, while Lance goes on and on about the Priest being batshit crazy.

Well, VLD is notorious for using this kind of technique that tricks the audience into taking the information with a pinch of humor or even dismissing it as unimportant. If we laugh at it, it must be of lesser value, right? Let’s take a look at an example from the TV series, and watch how Lotor’s words are met with derision by Lance and Hunk:

S5E6: Standing in front of the white hole at Oriande, Lotor recites a poem:

Lotor: “The wise stand back from the fire,/ fools are burned on the pyre./ The mystic becomes one with the flame,/ the embers and he are the same.”

Lance: “Is that, like, a song you’re working on? ‘Cause it sucks.”

Lotor: “It’s a poem by an ancient Altean alchemist. I discovered it carved next to a cave painting of a fiery sphere. I never realized until now that it describes the route to Oriande. We must go into the white hole.”

Hunk [raising his hand, goofy soundtrack in the background]: “Are you guys serious? Are we navigating by cave poetry?”

We found out quite quickly that Lotor was right. And this is not the only place where he was right. Coran was sure Oriande was a fairy tale for kids; Lance agreed with Coran…

I could give countless other examples in the show where characters laugh at, or scorn others, only to be proven wrong later.

From a writers’ perspective, this is called Socratic irony. Quoting The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, a Socratic irony is "Socrates's irritating tendency to praise his hearers while undermining them, or to disparage his own superior abilities while manifesting them." In a very subtle, ironic way, the writers are addressing the audience’s intelligence. They’re using the characters to ridicule a scene, only to later prove otherwise. So… when Lance repeatedly says “looney-tooney” about someone, then rest assured… his intended target is quite the opposite, my friends. And if Pidge says… “stupid symbolism”, awww… how smart that stupid part must be! Not only that, but she actually hands out the word “symbolism” freely, as if to say: ‘Here, take it. This comic book is all symbols. Now get your lazy brain cells moving and decode it.’

Which brings me to the most weird parts of the conversation with the Camel Priest, that really, really sound incomprehensible, at a first glance.

Alright, here comes the heavy stuff. We’re about to get philosophical:

“…the Pearl, the Moon, the Eye, Time, Life, all are the circle. Never ending, never broken.”

“The Yalex is Creator and Destroyer, Treasure and Terror, Redeemer and Annihilator, Savior and Executioner, One is All, the Fire in the Dark, the eye that is blind is most prized!”

Gosh, I feel like decrypting a David Lynch movie. Have you guys watched the latest (2017) Twin Peaks? Omg, what a trip.

Let’s start with the easiest ones:

The circle - a simple geometric shape. A pearl, a moon, an eye, they all have circular (spherical) shapes. Duh.

Expand that to the concept of Life and Time. When time goes in circles, well… it means it’s… cyclical. Does that make sense? Never ending, never broken. History repeats itself. Or… multiple realities, where history repeats within its own iteration. Oh man, heavy stuff. Was this show for 7-year old kids?

What else looks like a circle/rosetta and can pierce through time and realities? Is there an eye shape in the middle?

Does the Yalex ⬆️ have similar ‘rosetta wings’? Is there an ‘eye’ in the middle? - the most prized (confirmed by Shiro, in the comic, who figured out that specific part of the riddle). The Pearl of Wisdom? Btw, the eye is also a symbol of wisdom, in various religions.

This… this… is also round-shaped, and has… four spidery legs - and as you’ll see below, this is the key to understanding the whole VLD vocabulary:

“Creator and Destroyer” —> remember Allura’s words to Honerva at the end of the show? “I can change the Quintessence within your vessel. Your son helped me learn how to transform it from a destructive force to a life-giving force.”

“Treasure and Terror, Redeemer and Annihilator, Savior and Executioner” —> two sides of the same coin: quintessence can be used peacefully, as Alfor (and later Lotor) intended to, providing unlimited clean energy for the Universe; or it can be employed as a violent, horrid form of terror, as demonstrated by Zarkon and Honerva. They annihilated entire planets, executing innocent people. In contrast, Allura redeemed/saved Zarkon and Honerva, also through the power of the Quintessence.

It all depends on who uses it. Hard to believe? Listen carefully to some voices from the show, which send us direct, unfiltered messages:

S6E4:

Shiro: “Zarkon fell prey to his own evil instincts.The Quintessence field didn’t create them, it revealed them.”

[later on, after Allura and Lotor enter the rift] Allura: “In the hands of the wrong person, this power could easily corrupt.”

Lotor: “Together, we’ll see it never does.”

Aside from Shiro and Allura’s statements, notice that Lotor says “together” (and he says it again, some time later: “Allura, we were meant to be together.” Also, from a previous conversation: “I cannot do this without you.”) When they were apart, they both fell prey to their raging instincts, as demonstrated in the dramatic ending of S6. That is one big reason why I believe, in the end (in the #realS8), Allura and Lotor made the final cut of the show, together. As a standing proof that unity provides power against losing yourself to your worse side. They help and lift each other, rising above the flaws of their parents. It is the central moral of the story. Defeating the evil through unity. That’s the ultimate spirit of Voltron. Unity. Sure, it is about family, as Coran says in his final toast, but above that, it’s about Unity. And… “True unity can only be born of love,” says one of the old paladins to Hunk, while inside Honerva’s mind.

Moving on to more looney-tooneys:

“One is All” —> Again, here comes the idea of Unity. This one’s got a slightly different angle, and I’ve discussed it partially before (scroll up to where I talk about the “becoming one with the Entity.”) The way I see it, the rift monster is One, but it is also a sum of its parts, All the small Entities. I believe this whole string of descriptors (one is all, creator and destroyer, bla-bla) is pointing not only to the properties of Quintessence, but to the Entity as well.

Whew, this last one is a really philosophical concept, intersecting with theology, as well. Again, not for 7-year old boys and dads that want toys. Just for the fun of it, look up “unity” in your preferred search engine and dive into an extremely complex and abstract realm of Greek philosophy, leading up to the most modern interpretations.

How I like to think of it is that once the Entity enters one’s body, a symbiotic relationship is formed.

So then, the question rises: is the Yalex…

- the Quintessence energy

- the Rift Entity

- or a Mecha that can pierce through space and time?

I believe it can be all in the same time.

As confirmed by the Camel High Priest, the Yalex itself is the Pearl (Quintessence), but I propose it is actually more than that. It is the carrier of the Pearl - the Vessel, and together, they become One. You might think Allura said “vessel” just in reference to Honerva’s space-ship. That is one meaning, according to the Oxford Dictionary (“a ship or a large boat”). But vessel also means “a hollow container, especially one used to hold liquid, such as a bowl or cask.” In addition, in religious terms, a vessel is one’s own body.

Here’s a detail from one of the official VLD posters. Notice how Honerva’s acolytes carry… vessels with some sort of offerings, food of some sort. Um… Quintessence in a vessel?

For example, Honerva’s body is the Vessel, the receptacle for the Entity, along with the Quintessence she accumulated (she does accumulate a LOT of it, in the final season - from Oriande, the Alteans, the Balmerans, etc). Her own body then goes inside the mecha, and she almost becomes a robeast, One with the machine. The machine is then, the Vessel. And depending on how she decides to manipulate it, it can be destructive or life-giving. (Allura also let herself be possessed by the Entity, yet she did not turn evil. On the contrary, she became a vector of good.)

Want more proof of this concept? The Yalex itself is a receptacle for the Pearl - refer back to the image of the Yalex hatching out of the moon. The Pearl sits inside the Yalex, nested in the middle of that whole wing-eye contraption.

“Fire in the Dark” —> didn’t we just have Lotor give us a some cave poetry lessons earlier? “The wise stand back from the fire,/ fools are burned on the pyre./ The mystic becomes one with the flame,/ the embers and he are the same.” I invite you to apply some of your school skills on literary analysis and scoop out some precious, meaningful embers from this one. Note again the repeating theme of “becoming one” with something. Also, the motif of the sphere: Lotor “discovered it carved next to a cave painting of a fiery sphere”. The fire can be both a destructive force and a useful, powerful tool, in the right hands.

King Alfor says, in S8E10: “Allura, please listen to me. Alteans are life-givers. The entity you possess is a dark, ancient evil. It’s not the key to winning this war.” Meeeeep - Wrong!! King Alfor was a great alchemist, but he got some stuff completely wrong, and it’s proven by Allura, in her reply to him:

“I understand your concern. But the entity granted us access to Honerva’s mind. Without it, your spirit would still be cursed.” Yeee, big applause, Allura, you’ve done it! The Entity, under Allura’s alchemic prowess, becomes a tool for good.

I could search for more proof that the Entity can also be good, for example in Allura’s hallucinations, when she hears Lance saying: “It won’t do you any harm. The entity will help you. It will save all of us.” And so on and so forth. It’s all sprinkled throughout the series, and we can scoop it all out, once we know what to look for. Once we learn the vocabulary.

Is this too much? It is a complex show, first of all. This is not the kind of 80’s show where, in each episode, they fight another robot/monster and save the day. The plot is sinuous and full of unexpected. Things mentioned in S3 resurface in S8 (like the Dark Entity), and so on and so forth. That is one reason why, in my view, this show was not for little kids.

I’m still not done with the analysis. Don’t fall under the game table, please, like when Shiro wanted to be a Paladin again!

Let’s talk about the Calendar and the Haruspex.

A calendar speaks of something that is cyclical… There are seasons that repeat, which means this process of producing Quintessence to feed the Yalex is a seasonal activity. The whole ceiling of the temple looks like an ancient celestial map (concentrical circles), or some sort of astrological chart, and the High Priest says: “Can you not see the calendar? […] We follow the ways of the Haruspex.” and then… this thing:

Initially, I didn’t notice it. But then… I saw the the Haruspex. And it looks exactly like… Haggar, holding the sphere of dark energy in her hands. In ancient Rome, the Haruspex was a diviner who interpreted the future based on the entrails of sacrificial animals. A sort of a magical person. Borderline witchcraft. Definitely capital punishment under medieval Inquisition.

If they had a Haruspex, that means they also had… sacrificial animals (camels/Alteans?). That would confirm that some Alteans indeed were martyred.

Maybe there were autopsies performed? By some sort of medics? I might be completely wrong. I’m entering some dark territories here.

Anyways, they definitely “follow the ways of the Haruspex”, which might mean that, in some way or another, whatever they are doing there is being dictated by some instructions from the Haggarspex. What are they doing? Refining Quintessence. Who else is doing that? The Druids in the Empire. And Haggar has… omg… Haggar has the specs!! Haggarspex! I kid you not, I just discovered this right now, as I am writing and playing with words. Talk about puns in Voltron!!

It would make total sense that they follow exactly the same technical principles that Haggar uses, because Lotor, even before becoming emperor, must have had access to some of her stuff (or stolen them - it’s not like he hadn’t stolen stuff from the empire before, see the teludav episode -S3E6). He’s using all the resources he has (and he’s got lots of Galra tech at his disposal), in search of the Pearl of Wisdom, aka the secrets of King Alfor. Alas, he’s going the wrong way about it, because he lacks the Oriande knowledge.

OK, maybe we’ll scratch the part about autopsies, but sacrifices were made. It is, after all, confirmed by Lotor…: “Were some lives lost in the process? Yes. But they were martyrs to a noble cause. I sacrificed a few to preserve the future for millions.”

Where exactly were the sacrifices made? I don’t know yet. I have some suspicions, but let’s keep going.

“She tells us of the end times. […] None living have seen the Yalex. Seeing the Yalex means death. The Yalex is the end of days.”

Wow, so once you see the Yalex, you’re out of the game. And because you’re toast, there’s no one left to tell how the Yalex looks like. It is the end of days for you.

That means the Yalex is a really dangerous and powerful being. Well, it’s represented as a sort of a giant spider that hatches out of the moon, fed and grown with pure Quintessence from the camels.

Then Hunk says: “That doesn’t sound good.”

And the Camel Priest replies: “Of course it is good. Our lives here are lived in ignorance. When we die, all is revealed, and we continue our journey under the watchful eye of the Conqueror.”

What kind of nutty stuff is this?

First of all, let’s turn upside down what Hunk is saying, for the sake of the reversed irony: That sounds very good - exactly what the priest said. Why is it good? Because they believe that through death, they finally achieve the ultimate wisdom. They are so willing to learn the mysteries of Quintessence, that they consider death the ultimate honor. Isn’t that a martyr’s belief system? Self-sacrifice is the ultimate enlightenment, for the sake of a noble cause. And you can tell that the priest feels confident about his convictions, in the way he formulates it: “of course it is good.”

And then he says something that lit up a lot of light bulbs in my humble brain cells: “Our lives here are lived in ignorance.” Oh boy. Where should I start with this one? Firstly, isn’t this what scientists quietly profess? The more you learn, the less you feel like you know. We are all ignorants in the face of the vastness of the science. Then, what is ignorance if not the opposite of… enlightenment? Merriam-Webster says enlightened means: “freed from ignorance and misinformation”.

“That is the future enlightenment brings us.” - guess who said that - guess some more —> Lotor (when talking about his ultimate plans - to get into the rift and extract unlimited Quintessence for the empire).

There’s one more Easter egg in this paragraph. “the watchful eye of the Conqueror.”

Who is the Conqueror? You might think initially it is Zarkon or the Galra Empire. But this is about a so-called afterlife, another dimension, a higher plane. I theorize it is, again, about the Entity.

“This Entity holds the power you seek. It is an ancient form of energy that predates time itself. It hails from the Quintessence Field. Entities like this gave Haggar the ability to conquer worlds and control the universe for then thousand years.”

This Entity is able to bypass time and space at its own will, and gives someone the ability to conquer worlds. In my opinion, this is the true, transcendental Conqueror and, probably, the Second Colony Alteans and Lotor believed they could reach the ultimate enlightenment by trying to manipulate it… just like Haggar did.

Sounds weird? Lotor himself had the entity - confirmed by the Galra doctors that detected the strange readings in him when newly born. Why wouldn’t he try to use its powers against Haggar? And I strongly believe that this is true, also supported by the EP’s statements about Lotor, in an AfterBuzz interview about S5:

Interviewer: “And then we have weird Quintessence necromancy happening. So how did that affect [baby] Lotor?”

JDS: It’s pretty safe to say that Lotor’s got that Daywalker kind of thing going on.

Interviewer: Little Vampire.

LM: Being in…in her womb, as [Honerva] was being exposed to all of this quintessence - it’s part of his DNA. It almost puts him on a level with Allura, pretty much how her quintessence is a part of her DNA. So it’s interesting to see.

[…]

LM: I think all Galra are kinda space vampires.

JDS: They’re kinda space vampires, yeah. Safe to say. You’re getting instead of blood, you’re getting like…planet juice."

Well, ain’t that something… Lotor is a Daywalker.

What is a Daywalker? It’s a vampire that can go out in the sunlight, part human - part vampire. I find the comparison with vampire Princess Miyu a little unsettling (quoted from Wikipedia):

“This is because she is technically a Daywalker, having one human parent and one vampire. She needs to drink blood to survive and she chooses her 'victims' carefully since she apparently cannot take blood from others unless they actually give it to her willingly. So, Miyu picks people whom she believes to be "lovely" (either in looks or personality) who have usually suffered a tragic loss, and offers them their greatest wish – to be with their lost loved ones, at least in their dreams – in exchange for their blood. These people live in an endless dream state.”

Lotor doesn’t lie about any of the things he tells Allura and the Paladins. So he does walk into the light of truth, indeed. LM and JDS confirm it, too, in the same aforementioned interview:

LM: I think… when we discussed Lotor, we wanted to make sure that everything he said had an element of like, genuine quality to it—”

JDS: “Like genuine nature to it, yeah. I mean, he hasn’t really done anything to make you believe he wanted to continue on the path of Zarkon. Even in the time before. He just has his own way about, you know, about these things. So yeah, I think the bigger sort of Lotor story point, or character point was that, you know - one - he means things genuinely, whether he’s playing somebody or not, he sort of follows up with everything that he does. So there’s no real… lie to it, I guess?

LM: I think when all is said and done we’ll be able to look back and realize that he’s been telling the truth this whole time. It’s just a matter of - where does it go from here?

JDS: Where does the truth go from here?

Well, all is said and done. The show has been over for so many years, and yet we’re still looking back and digging for the truth, because the truth about Lotor was, unfortunately, buried.

So let’s dig deeper, haha.

The Camel Priest ultimately says: “At last! The birth that is death has begun!”

I think this ties pretty neatly with what happened to Zarkon and Honerva, who, under the influence of the Entity, transfigured into something else. And here’s another snippet from the interview, where LM points to that:

Interviewer: I was just wondering if maybe that’s why Zarkon was so intent on saving Honerva, not only because he loved her but because she was pregnant.”

LM: Yeah, I think…

JDS: Combination, maybe?

LM: Yeah, I think there’s also a little bit of him that’s… was maybe… had other motives as well. The dude’s kind of dead inside…”

We saw them resurrect after dying in the rift, didn’t we? With purple evil glowing eyes. Yet they were, apparently, dead inside.

So what that means is that when the Camel Priest announces that the birth-death thingy is going to happen, and the Yalex emerges from the moon, they are all going to be possessed by the Yalex, the All is One, Fire in the Dark, the Eye. They ‘die’ inside by letting the Entity take a part of their soul and instead give them the Enlightenment. They continue their journey under the watchful eye of the Conqueror. Oh man…! Heavy stuff.

So the Alteans… willingly let themselves be possessed by the Entity, following Lotor’s demi-vampire plans to save the universe and defeat Haggar (or at least, DEFEND from Haggar - especially defend the Main Colony). You don’t think so?? We have a precedent! (Though I wouldn’t say it happened before, time-wise speaking. It actually happened after - when Honerva went to the Altean colony and created her mechs and her acolytes.) Were they not infected with the Entity?? Did Allura not scoop one out from Tavo?? Were their eyes not glowy-glowy? And they were all on board with Honerva’s plans from the get-go, so I would logically assume they also agreed with being infected with the Entity.

I’d say at this point Lotor is a good vampire, with good and transparently laid out intentions but still with vampire methods, because that’s the only way he knows how to operate - victory or death - although he is desperate to find out the true path, the Oriande path. He’s given all he had to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge.

“Lotor may have been misguided, but ultimately, he wanted to preserve life.” As much as I don’t like this sentence from Allura’s final speech to Honerva, I think it has heavy relevance to what I just unfolded here. I honestly was not expecting to reveal this. My initial impressions were going towards a slightly different direction. That’s why I never rely only on initial impressions.

The final image in this comic book is Voltron carrying the Yalexian pearl, through a solar system that looks very similar to the Quantum Abyss solar system. The top image is a screen-cap from the episode “Clear Day”, where Allura has a vision of the red planet from the Quantum Abyss, surrounded by the moons. The bottom image is from the comics, with the red planet being planet Krell.

And guess where Voltron is bringing the Pearl? To rescue Coran from a guy who keeps him hostage. But we soon find out that Coran was lying this whole time!! He was not really hostage, he was just friends with the big guy, and he made Voltron retrieve the Pearl just like Lotor had them retrieve the trans-reality comet. Well-well… Maybe Lotor 'retreived' some ‘Pearls’ (Quintessence) from Voltron as well? (maybe from the Komar weapon?)

And there’s still more to discuss.

**rolling up sleeves**

One specific property that the Entity possesses is the ability to make sudden jumps and appear/disappear.

Very… jittery. Remember how it bounces inside that tube?

Who else could appear and disappear at will? Haggar and the Druids. Also… Kosmo (that wolf is, btw, such a mystery. I posit that he’s a result of some colony experiments on animals, using the Entity.)

—-> But, more importantly, there’s a fairly obscure group of characters that only show up in one episode… and they can also teleport (it all happens so fast that it’s so easy to miss, but watch S6E2 “Razor’s Edge” when Keith and Krolia enter the Abyss and get attacked). They weren’t given any name, but they seem to be quite powerful and they are part of the big mystery of the Quantum Abyss.

I present you the four-legged white creatures that attack Keith and Krolia’s ship.

Does it not have a ‘pearl’ that looks just like an ‘eye’ in the middle? Also, look closely at the shape of the creature, and compare it with the Entity… Why do they look so similar? Those four legs… copy and paste, change color to white…

And go back and look again at the Yalex hatching out of the moon - four-legged, spider legs, as well.

Do they all have an Eye in the middle?

And, because I like to watch things in slow-motion sometimes, I just discovered an amazing detail about the white-legged creature: after it teleported inside the cockpit, there is a light blue glow coming out of it, turning into motes of light-blue energy. Altean Quintesseeence!!!

In the pictures above, the Yalex seems to have grown an additional two legs. Well, I’ll be damned if the Dark Entity doesn’t sometimes have six legs (see above). This seems to be the aggressive pose.

What if… the white-legged creatures in the Quantum Abyss are the Yalexes? They are the Pearls, the white Entities, the ‘positive’ side of the Entity (the saviors), fed by righteous Altean energy. They are the defenders of the Abyss. There are many of them, and the many create One. And they all protect the Quantum from Haggar or any other intruders, including Keith and Krolia, Ranveig, etc…

We are led to believe that these creatures are also responsible for tearing apart the unmarked ships transporting the pure quintessence through the Abyss, but if my predictions are correct, that would actually not be true, because it wouldn’t make sense narratively for Lotor’s own defenders to attack ships containing his own Quintessence transports. I believe the creature that attacked and ravaged those unmarked ships was Ranveig’s superweapon, which actually has a name we know, and I have multiple reasons to prove my theory. I will come back to this subject - keep a pin in it.

These Yalexes (I’ll start calling them Yalexes, alright?) protect Lotor’s research facility and the main Colony. He hopes to unlock the mysteries of the Entity and of the Quintessence. We know, canonically, that Haggar stalked Lotor around the universe and he was always cautious about getting rid of trackers and spies. It’s logical he would want to protect the Quantum Abyss, and we know for sure that there is a history of attempted intrusions - like Ranveig, who’s probes had been destroyed and never recovered, as recounted by Krolia. Maybe these white guys are Lotor’s own ‘druids’. They definitely showed up right at the beginning of Keith and Krolia’s journey in the Abyss, so they were standing at the gates, ready to filter out intruders.

And if we want to talk about defending, let’s go to Allura’s mystifying vision in S8E8 - “Clear Day”, where she sees her mother telling her she’s arrived just in time to save them (to save Altea, implied by the Altean castle in the background). She then goes on to say “Only you can protect us.”

“In time” - ah, maybe I’m interpreting too much - but time is a word that is used as a symbol in the Camel Priest’s dialogue. Also, Krolia tells Keith that the Quantum Abyss is a place where “unusual effects” happen to “space-time itself”. So maybe her mother is actually telling her “you’ve arrived just at the right place, in the Quantum Abyss.”

Also, in Allura’s dream, she is to save them, protect them… Only she can protect them, because of the powers she gained through the Entity = the Savior.

Allura then pilots a Komar mecha, extracting the Quintessence from Altean soil and channeling it towards Galra ships, destroying them. But, in the process, she also destroys the planet, leaving it barren, dry, lifeless, and her mother turns from a living being into a dissipating stone statue, who’s last words are: “I’m so proud of you”. As if she would say: I sacrifice myself, proudly, gladly, so that you can defend Altea.

Why a stone statue? Similar to the villagers that ‘liked’ being turned into stone, in Monsters and Mana?

The way I see this, it’s an insight into how the Quantum Abyss defense system worked. Everyone (represented in the dream by the Altean soil itself, the juniberries, the statue) put their energy together to feed these Yalexes, to defend themselves from intruders. In the end, they were all drained of their vitality, because they did not have the Oriande alchemy knowledge of how to properly infuse an ore (and the ore was not from a comet). So they would wither and die, or almost die…

Remember how exhausted the Alteans on Atlas were, after channeling their energy into the Atlas crystal? Honerva tells them to give her all their energy, because “their lives will be sacrificed for their savior.” Merla knows the consequences and interrupts the process, in order to rescue them.

And this ⬆️ is where I turn my eyes to the emaciated, scarred Alteans floating in the so-called Quintessence draining pods from the Second Colony, as described by Romelle and Keith in S6E4.

In my opinion, they were not being sucked of their energy in those pods. They were actually exhausted after working their butts off to feed Yalexes with refined Quintessence through a process learned from Haggar’s specs (the unrefined Q was, as described in the comic, a crop, a grain harvest, so raw energy either directly from them or extracted from another source, even from the native natural environment or maybe even brought from the empire. Allura sees juniberries and grass being pulverized in her vision, so it is possible that they used every energy source available - and that would explain also why there’s a wolf that has alchemic powers in the Abyss, just like I mentioned earlier - due to the experiments they applied on everything available in their environment).

And then, in the stasis chambers facility, they were actually being refueled with whatever they had available, and that was the inexpensive, easily available, purple Galra Quintessence. Here are the reasons why I believe that:

1) Because Altean energy is not purple, it is blue. Whatever would come out of their bodies would be blue. I know, I know, the Alteans in the Komar mechas exuded purple energy, but that’s because Haggar infused them with her evil magic and the corrupted Dark Entity, which she manipulated as she wished. I doubt Lotor’s Alteans were giving off purple energy.

2) As seen in S1E10 “Collection and Extraction”, the purple Quintessence is a refined form of fuel, obtained from yellow Quintessence. One would not directly extract purple quintessence from a living being.

3) We’ve been presented so many times with regeneration pods in the show… First Allura and Coran were in stasis pods, then Lance, Keith… It’s like a repeating song - regeneration pods, regeneration pods… Foreshadowing?

4) There are no tubes coming in and out of the pod itself, just a vat on top of the pod, filled with purple Quintessence, similar to how Zarkon wore his canisters on the back of his suit.

5) The foreshadowings from the comic do not speak about incapacitated donors, but about free-willing, dedicated, sentient beings.

6) Lotor says he doesn’t want to resort to the barbarism of the Komar, which was basically extracting Quintessence out of every living being without their accord. Well, if those people were indeed forcefully drained of energy in those pods, it would have been barbaric.

7) And in the spirit of what the Executive Producers said about Lotor, that he actually tells THE TRUTH every damn time, let’s revisit what he replies to Pidge, in S6E4, when she accuses him of being a murderer: “You know nothing about what you speak!” Sorry, I had to highlight this one. It is the ultimate truth, because he Does. Not. Lie. And to tell Pidge something like this… Pidge, who is THE SMARTEST, the most rational, the most inquisitive, the one who solves all the puzzles and mysteries, defeats her own self at chess, hacks into any Galra tech… Wow, that is the ultimate insult. Do not think for a minute that they chose Pidge randomly for this one. They could have picked Keith, Shiro, Lance, anyone else. No, the writers chose HER. Pidge, you’re an ignorant (sorry, Pidge stans), and with her, we ALL are, because she ultimately is the voice of all of us who might have believed what the story appeared to tell us. We RUSHED to conclusions. And Allura rushed to yeet him, believing Romelle. Keith jumped the gun on making judgements right away, although Shiro had taught him better, to never rush, because patience yields focus. That quote, my friends, has a very clear role in this show.

Look again at the Alteans in the pods. Look at their bodies, their faces. Those wider lines on the skin might actually be battle scars. Because Keith and Krolia, after working with the Blades, and fighting in many battles, seem to have similar markings on their faces. Another possibility is that those are burn scars, similar to when an electrical discharge burns through an object, because from that we have seen, the Druid and the Altean energies look like an electric arc. One thing that makes me think so is the fact that the scars are symmetrical.

Some of them might have been energy donors for feeding the Yalexes, others - pilots.

Pilots of what? - you might ask.

Of Yalexes.

But you might say… those white-legged creatures are too small to accommodate an Altean inside. At least from how they look in the show, they’re pretty small. Maybe, but remember the Alteans are chameleonic people that can change size and color. If Allura was able to grow in size, why not shrink as well?

The reason why I think those Yalexes were piloted, is because the working principle for all these mechas (including Voltron, Sincline, the Komar mechas, the robeasts) is to have a pilot inside. You can’t have the Entity simply inhabit a machine - it needs a living being to operate. (That’s one good reason to believe that Lotor was not completely dead inside Sincline in S8, because that robot was moving, damn it! He was the Malocoti dragon, under the spell of the evil witch, but he was moving. Through what turn of events did he end up dead - like afterlife-dead - at the end of the show? Can someone explain it to me?).

These Yalexes look like machines to me, honestly. Not some sort of organic or energy-based creature. Infused with Altean energy. And I bet they suck out a crap-ton of Altean energy in order to efficiently defend the Quantum Abyss. I don’t think they are unmanned. Because, again, the Camel Priest also says that they ‘die’ / ‘are being reborn’ through the Yalex, so there must be some sort of symbiosis going on there.

Being a Quantum Abyss defender is no easy task, in a place where all the shearing forces are tearing apart the fabric of space-time. Some of them fall into the neutron star gravity, like the ones Keith and Krolia shook off. How many of them must have been lost in the fights with the Galra?

Returning to the pin about Ranveig’s super-weapon. Remember that creature? Oh, it’s a good-looking beast, one that Keith and Krolia were after (that’s how Keith met his mom, while on a mission to destroy the super-weapon). Here are some quotes from the show, to refresh your memory:

S5E5: “Warlord Ranveig intercepted an undocumented shipment of quintessence traveling through his territory. He took it for his own and began experimenting with it. It’s more powerful than any quintessence we’ve received from the empire, and it has some very unexpected effects.”

S6E2: Krolia: “I was with Ranveig when an unmarked cargo ship passed into his region. When we checked it out, there was no crew aboard. The ship had been nearly torn to pieces, but inside, a single vat of quintessence remained. It was unlike any other quintessence we’d seen.”

Keith: “Were there navigation records aboard?”

Krolia: “No, but I analyzed the ship personally. The radiation signature indicated it had passed through the quantum abyss.”

S8E3: Keith: “Ranveig found the creature in the Quantum Abyss and experimented on it with Lotor’s quintessence. He trained it to take out his Galra enemies, but he couldn’t control it. The beast couldn’t differentiate between adversaries and allies.”

And this is the lovely beast:

They never gave a name to that super-weapon creature (I wonder why), but I’m gonna call it… Narti. The reason why I call it Narti can be found here.

I have some reasons, as well, to believe that:

- Narti uses mind-control by touching someone’s back of their head with her palm. The creature speaks to Keith by holding the head of a robot sentry in its hand.

- body similarities (as described in the linked article as well)

- The creature is highly intelligent, understands language, is capable of operating computers and… and… wait for it… capable of ERASING MEMORIES.

And here lies my biggest proof, and it’s connected to the entire story about the clandestine vats of Quintessence, as I will expand below:

My theory is that the injured Narti ended up somewhere just beyond the entrance of the Quantum Abyss (where Ranveig later found her), because Lotor most likely ordered his trusted Galra sentries to rescue her and take her to a “black site” (to mirror the title of the episode, because I believe it wasn’t only about the interrogation of Throk).

Think of it: they were all hunted down by Zarkon. Lotor was the main target, but the other sentries were not spared of animosity. Where would be the best place to run and hide, that they knew well? Hm? Wasn’t the Quantum Abyss part of their routine routes, as they worked under Lotor? And they would be protected by the all-powerful Yalexes and by the intrinsically dangerous environment of the place. Who knew well the paths that were relatively unaffected by the space-time distortions? Yes, that’s right, Lotor’s dear Galra fellows, secret workers, the ones that show up everywhere around him when he’s at the colonies. The guys that operate the moon facilities, the unmarked cargo ships, the cruisers, the ones that also built his Sincline ships!

The way Haggar operated on Narti and spied on Lotor was through the dark entity inside Kova (that cat, in my opinion, definitely had the entity inside; it’s been implied since when Alfor asked Honerva how old the cat was).

You don’t believe Kova was the actual tracker? Here’s what Acxa told the Atlas crew, in S8E5 “The Grudge”:

“I never had a creature companion, but one of my partners, Narti, was bonded to an immortal cat named Kova. That cat gave her the ability to experience the world. […] Until Lotor killed Narti and we had to abandon the animal on our destroyed ship so we could escape without being tracked.” (You think that whole discussion about pets, among Atlas crew members, was a useless scene? I honestly completely forgot about that part, it was complete fluff. )

But Lotor, instead of slaying Kova, went for Narti. There are several possible reasons why. Maybe because he would have released the dark entity from the cat and possibly risked infecting someone else? Or maybe he would have released a ginormous amount of energy and it would have ended up being a suicide move? Or maybe sentimental attachment to the cat? Or maybe the cat was too fast/ too small? Anyway, he got Narti. I’m sure it was a very hard decision to make, but he had to save everyone else. It was either that or continue to be tracked by Haggar. But I believe he didn’t want to let her die.

So, while Lotor was on the run along with his remaining, frightened generals, he secretly ordered his scuttling Galra squadrons to take Narti to a “black site”, to somehow try to heal her and, maybe, interrogate her to find out how this could have happened. Maybe the wound was bad enough that it needed a desperate measure, and they resorted to the pure Quintessence they had at hand. Maybe Narti was already dead and the Entity resurrected her, just like it did with Zarkon and Honerva. We don’t know all the details, but the canon definitely tells us that the beast got indiscriminately violent after exposure to pure quintessence.

As we know, pure quintessence causes all sorts of terrible problems, it’s basically like an overdose of meds, and, as Krolia stated, it had some unexpected results. Narti’s deepest resentment against the Galra became her ultimate obsession of killing Galra-only. We don’t know her backstory, but from what Acxa told Veronica in S8, they were all treated as pariah in the empire: “I was an outcast, born and bred in war. The only way I survived was to become worse than my enemies.” I’m sure Narti had a lot of vexation against the Galra, since she was a ‘half-breed’ as well, so turning into a beast that wanted to kill Galra-only makes total sense. It also explains why the beast totally ignored Lance and Hunk and went after Keith and Lahn.

The one thing that solidified my belief that Narti was the one who ravaged the unmarked cargo ship (the one that had passed through the Quantum Abyss, where Krolia said she found that single vat of quintessence, and there was no crew aboard) was the fact that there were no navigation records left on it. And, again, I’m reminding everyone that in animation they don’t waste airtime. Why would they make Keith ask Krolia if there were any navigation records left? Just to waste some airtime budget?

What is one of Narti’s famous talents? Erasing memories!! Manipulating minds. Isn’t that why Haggar was frustrated about being incapable of probing Throk’s mind? Oh, how satisfied Lotor was! Remember his smirk? Again, that was not a pointless scene. They even made Haggar say “no one can completely wipe a memory away” while they torture Throk, just to prove that she was baffled by the situation. Yup, someone CAN, actually, wipe a memory away. And that is Narti. Here’s Lotor enjoying himself while Haggar tortures Throk. Narti also mind-controls the king of planet Puig, remember that?

To put a bigger stamp on my proof, here’s Pidge, in S8E3, “The Prisonner’s Dilemma”, when trying to access the ship’s file directory, while the creature was roaming freely through the corridors. Pidge says, regarding the file: “It appears to be corrupted.” Minutes later, we see the creature operating the computer terminal with her palm fully touching the panel, (see one of previous screen-caps) interrupting Pidge’s transmission to Keith, in which she tries to warn him that there is something out there. During the fight with the creature, Pidge attempts to open some doors, only to scream seconds later: “That thing overrode my protocol!”

The creature also had a plan of how to attract more Galra into her trap: she set up a distress beacon (yordam bering exus). She’s not dumb at all!!

That is Narti, my friends.

She is basically the living PROOF of what pure Quintessence can do to someone. It literally turns you into a monster. And that was supposed to be a LEARNING POINT for the teens watching the show, that TOO MUCH of anything can make you lose your mind, your soul, your body. Parallel that to how BOTH Allura and Lotor lost their minds fighting each other, after accessing the rift, and now you get the bigger picture. There is also a bigger role that she carries in closing the arcs of Lotor’s generals, discussed in the TPL article that I linked.

An interesting feature this creature has is the ability to move extremely fast, almost close to teleportation skills (you can still see a trail of its movement, and that is exactly what Pidge tried to figure out, when she decrypted the video footage of the monster in the aforementioned episode). And… we’re back to the Entity and its marvelous property of being extremely fast, jittery, teleportation-capable. Which convinces me now (I wasn’t sure before) that Narti actually not only got an overdose of pure Quintessence, but also a gulp of Entity.

Which would make sense, because the Entity is capable of resurrecting people (see Zarkon and Honerva), and if she were dead or close to death, the medics must have employed some last resort methods. It also explains why the resulting beast is so enraged.

I believe Narti is the one who accidentally interrupted some important transports that were going into/out of the Quantum Abyss. When Keith, Romelle and Krolia arrived at the moon facility, it looked abandoned and full of dust. Which means those Galra sentries/scientists/medics that were supposed to get there, taking care of the operations, they did not make it. Those ravaged ships that Krolia found, with nobody on board… those were Narti’s doing.

Who was hunting Galra and only Galra? Narti, the enraged girl!

So Lotor, under the pressure of being spied by Haggar and hunted down by Zarkon, shot himself in the foot, big time. By injuring Narti, he set in motion a chain of events that cascaded down to the biggest misunderstanding of his 10k years of life.

IF there had been sentries at the moon colony, to properly operate the facility, Keith, Krolia and Romelle would have found out the truth directly from them. Not by forming an impression based on their biases.

And I just can’t hold it back, now that I have an idea about Kosmo as well. What if he was supposed to be used as a story moral that the Entity can be a tool for good, under the right handler? Kosmo can teleport, thus he must possess the Entity. Remember, he was a puppy when he fell out of the sky and became Keith’s pet. So Keith raised him, into a GOOD boy.

There are some plot holes that I’d like to discuss at this point.

1 - Bandor saying “Lotor… The other colony… It’s all a lie.”

A lie in reference to what?

What we are tempted immediately to gather from Bandor’s discombobulated phrases is that Lotor lied about the other colony. Yet he does not say exactly that. He utters the beginning of three unfinished sentences. Pay attention to the punctuation. I copied it exactly as displayed in the subtitles. Near their death, people usually are incoherent and cannot finish their words.

Let me give you an example of how I could finish these sentences and get a completely different meaning:

- Lotor never told us, but…

- The other colony holds the truth.

- It’s all a lie (here).

[and then Bandor gives his last breath]

Hm? Would this be so far away from the truth? After all, the main colony did look like a big, fake Paradise, blatantly resembling the Hobbits’ Shire on Middle-earth. Even the serene soundtrack that goes with it in every episode (S6E2, S6E2, S8E2) is meant to suggest an ethereal environment. Look at the pastel color palette of the landscapes. A cloudy frame envelops the pictures. And we know from canon it was actually a simulation inside a spaceship. A simulation is, according to the dictionary, a deception.

And we know Lotor wanted to keep them inside this big deception, because as soon as he discovers Bandor’s crashed shuttle, he tells his men: “Clean up the wreckage. Leave no evidence this ever happened.” The reason why he keeps them in a bubble is absolutely in good will, and out of compassion for them, because the’ve been hunted by the Galra for so long. He doesn’t want them to experience the horrors and terror of their ancestors. They are too precious to him to be exposed to that again. They are his pearls, carefully hidden inside the Abyss.

Notwithstanding, everything there was a big lie, because they were kept away from the scary world outside, and Bandor, who was born in that climate of eternal harmony, bucolic hills and never-ending joy, was shocked to learn that the world outside was cruel and extremely dangerous. And because he was too immature to understand Lotor’s profound reasons for doing this, he decided, with his last strands of energy, to fly back and warn the others, potentially spreading panic and destabilizing the community. To tell everyone that their world is in danger, that dark forces are lurking out there while they sit and do nothing. That some day, an evil witch might come and take their souls away.

And I invite the DotU experts here to see any similarities with the original character, for which I cannot comment since I’m not proficient in DotU.

I’m circling back to what the EP’s have said about Lotor, that he doesn’t lie. Sure, he omits to say certain things, purposefully (Lie by omission. But is it an evil lie or out of pure intentions?). Whatever he does say is true. If I were to compare who knew more about the truth - the main colony or the second colony - I’d be more confident to say that the second colony knew much more about the truth.

So… it’s all a lie, huh?

2 - Where were the unmarked shipments of pure Quintessence headed? Into the Quantum Abyss or out of it?

There are two schools of thought regarding this one.

- the pure Quintessence was coming out of the Abyss, from the second Altean colony, after being extracted from the Alteans in those purple pods. This is basically what the official canon lets us believe.That Lotor harnessed their life source for his own personal gain. And this theory was left, quietly, as the official stance, dubiously at odds with the rushed, one-phrase redemption Allura gives him at the end.

- the other theory (sorry I can’t find the reference link!) is that the pure Quintessence was actually headed towards the second colony, coming from the empire, more specifically from what was collected after Haggar used the Komar weapon on Voltron, in S1E13. Haggar even exclaims “It’s pure quintessence!”

If all these looney-tooney symbols I decoded are actually a thing, with the Yalex and Haruspex and all that batshit-crazy camel spit allegory, then I’d say neither of the above two theories is completely true. If the Alteans are actually capable of purifying Quintessence, following the specs from the Druid refinery, and obtaining close to 100% purity (gosh, let’s talk Breaking Bad), then they wouldn’t need any external shipments from the empire and Lotor could easily fuel his comet ore ships with Q coming from the Abyss. Albeit, not from Alteans in stasis pods, but from a refinery. (I feel the sudden urge to give Q an atomic number and find its spot in the periodic table).

On the other hand, it made sense narratively to have Q coming from the Komar weapon, since Lotor is a master at stealing stuff from under his parents’ nose; otherwise, what was the point of that entire story? Just to prove how badass Haggar was? One speculative solution would be to have both sources: one in the Abyss to fuel the Yalexes and one source in the empire to fuel the comet ships, although this theory is a bit too stretched.

—->>> Another option, more in line with a Breaking Bad scenario, would be that Lotor got his hands on some pure Q from the Komar - and - he stole the specs from Haggar’s refinery. Brought them to the scientists alchemists at the colony and said: “make me this pure Q, following these instructions”.

And that would explain why, in the comic, there’s already a Yalex pearl in the ceiling, because it’s the manufacturer’s ISO Quality Standard.

It would also justify having to use the word Haruspex - not just for the pun - but because Haruspex basically means someone who inspects something and analyzes it. You could say that the pure Q of Komar is an extract from Voltron, ‘the entrails’ of Voltron.

So, listen: they got the pure Q from the Komar, analyzed it, took the specs from Haggar’s refinery, followed the guidelines, and produced their own refined Q. For feeding Yalexes, for fueling Lotor’s comet ships, for medical purposes gone wild - like turning Narti into a monster… Eh? How does this sound? More like it? Did I write good fiction?

At this point, the Altean alchemists can be safely called the little Walter Whites of the show, while Lotor is both Heisenberg - the mastermind and Jesse Pinkman - the smuggler. Oh, boy, what mess did I get into?

Quintessence can be easily compared with meth. It does make someone go crazy, doesn’t it? And it gives them sooo much energy… Just google its side effects (if you don’t already know them). Ahem… first one is - a higher libido (for further enrichment about this particular Q aspect, refer to a certain rift tag in ao3); - intense feelings of pleasure; - excessive talking; - rapid heart rate; - confusion, paranoia, agitation; - aggressive behavior / sexually aggressive behavior (I wonder how Zarkon & Haggar spent their private time); - long term depression, anxiety, paranoia; - long term difficulty of feeling any pleasure. I skipped some of them here, but you get the picture.

Does any of this make any sense, Jesse??…

~~I dunno, b!tch, I’m just here for the Q~~

On a serious note though - wasn’t I talking earlier about one of the morals of the story - how too much of something can be bad for you? Addiction, anyone? And it’s already been discussed in the fandom, it’s not like I’m the first one to open this subject. Honerva and Zarkon basically fell prey to substance abuse and it’s not really hard to spot the signs from their backstories. And Lotor told Allura straight to her face: “The Galra Empire is completely reliant on quintessence.”

(I’m still thinking about making Q an element in the periodic table. Place it somewhere after the last element, so it’d have to have an atomic number above 118. Radioactive, most likely. And, unfortunately, highly unstable. Lol. Btw, there’s no known element name that starts with Q, so there you go, we’re creating it now.)

One more look back at the Camel Priest: it wears a red cape-skirt. Red, again. Red herring. And it talks in poetic, cryptic, elaborate figures of speech. And has a sort of an unconventional, victorian-punk outfit. Lance and Hunk poke fun at him.

Well who’s our closest character that sums up all of these ‘qualities’?

L.O.T.O.R.

******

The next two comic books, in my opinion, are not so heavily loaded with symbolism, with a few exceptions, which I’ll briefly discuss.

There are some really fun moments, like Lance’s guide to romance + his best pick-up lines and Hunk’s fear of getting married.

Hunk’s sensitivity and nurturing nature is being emphasized in a story about a monster that - we eventually learn - is very angry because she is missing her baby - hints at Honerva’s desperate attempts to find her son in a perfect reality.

Another parallel worthy to mention comes in the form of a “wolfie” that, honestly, looks just like the White Lion (which, imo, also looks like a wolf, but that’s another story, haha). Except this guy is blue, but he does talk about being a warden of some sacred grounds, and he fights with the only paladin that is a half-galra, Keith. According to this creature, “only the chosen may enter the sacred hunting grounds.” This foreshadows Lotor’s battle with the White Lion at Oriande, and his struggle to become “chosen”, according to Altean standards.

Eventually, the wolfie is defeated by Coran, who is sick with the Nomo virus (parallel with the Entity). By coughing into the beast’s mouth, he releases “millions, billions, trillions” of “aggressive little creatures”. Coran flying a kotka dragon is just so in character, by the way.

The third and last comics volume brings some interesting references to the leitmotif of the showman, and the idea that TV can manipulate people’s minds, clearly stated by Coran and Allura, after being guests in a green alien’s TV show:

Yup, these are from the official VLD comic, I kid you not. Recognize the leitmotif of the green guy - the showman? Look for him in S7E4 “The Feud” as well. Why green, you’d say? It’s the unofficial color of money, at least this ~$$$~ kind of currency )

Lotor also states the same thing, first episode we meet him on screen, in S3E1: “The masses are easily manipulated.” After pulling so much meta out of these innocent, lovable comics, I believe this was meant intentionally, as a direct message to us, to not trust everything that we’ll see. Example: If Bandor says “Lotor… It’s all a lie”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Lotor lies. "That guy with the stupid show? He doesn't speak for everyone." The green guy (symbol of the TV and media deceivers) doesn’t speak for everyone. Which means there are people who will get the real message of the show, despite all the censorship.

So here’s a quick recap of the most important symbols. These were all deduced after noticing various leitmotifs spread throughout the series.

Lotor is:

-Dakin; the Coranic dragon.

-Queen Luxia.

-The green Guardian monster.

-The red dragon; Princess Malocoti.

-The red-caped Camel Priest.

The Alteans with alchemic powers (the martyrs) are:

-The villagers turned into stone.

-Florona and other sacrificial mermaids.

-A select number of ant-looking aliens who were offered as sacrifice to the green monster

-The camels who willingly give themselves to the rebirth through the Yalex

The Entity is:

-(skipped in Monsters and Mana, only mentioned by Coran as “wait to see who Dakin was working for)

-The underwater dragon / the mind-swishing aquatic food

-The brain-worm

-The Abomination

-The mushrooms

-The Yalex monster

Anyone who becomes One with the entity: Honerva, Lotor, Zarkon, the possessed Alteans, even Allura. Remember, the Entity can be good, or bad, depending on who uses it.

As you noticed, everything I’ve analyzed has been collected and put together from all throughout VLD, including the comics. I actually stated this in the beginning, too: “the recurring themes are there, scrambled in no apparent order.” And look at what the EP’s have said in a Syfy interview:

LM: We’ve chosen to kind of selectively release little bits about our villains, like - along the way. We didn’t really have one episode where you expose everything there is to know. A lot of it is kind of underlying, for people to kind of - if they’re willing to look for it - they’ll find it. […]

JDS: I think that - in our minds, and in the writers’ room - you know, there’s a full, fleshed-out backstory that goes back to… who-knows-when. Um, yeah, it’s all there, it’s all a matter of…, the viewers are gonna, like, find it, and… [motioning his fingers to suggest keyboard typing]

Interviewer: …sift through it.

JDS: Yeah.

Are you still there? Just a little bit left. One more sip of coffee.

At this final point, I’d like to recap Lotor’s arc, from his inception to what was supposed to be his redemption.

So he’s born from two parents who were ‘dead inside’, high on Quintessence and infected with the Entity. He himself has the Entity and (most likely) learns how to deal with it from a young age, or his body naturally creates a symbiotic relationship with it (as opposed to the parasitic relation it has with Honerva and Zarkon’s bodies). He grows up basically raised by another mother, Dayak. He tries to get close to his father, but he constantly gets pushed away, marginalized, because he has “impurities”.

His inquisitive spirit starts digging up the truth about Altea. He starts to track down the survivors and establishes a secret colony for them in the Quantum Abyss.

After Zarkon destroys the planet where he worked along the denizens, he finds refuge in researching his Altean heritage, its ancient history and traditions.The colony he’d secretly established in the Quantum Abyss is thriving.

Somewhere along the many millennia of his life, due to constant harassment from Haggar, who lurks around him at every corner, he decides to step up the Colony protection. He realizes that nothing can keep the witch at bay, except something equally powerful: the Entity itself. Haggar has been, for millennia, quite frustrated that she couldn’t control his mind the same way she influenced Zarkon, through the Entity. (Remember, Lotor tells Zarkon this “You’ve become nothing more than one of the witch’s monsters. Does she control you as well?”) It never worked with Lotor - as we find out, when she remembers Lotor is her son, in S5E2. In her vision, she sees him first as a child, then adolescent, then adult, with glowing eyes, just like her. The adolescent Lotor turns and runs away from her, and she can’t keep up with him - a clear hint at the fact that he managed to escape her spells.

The second colony is established. He tells them the truth about the dangers they face, how Haggar and Zarkon conquer world after world using the Entity, and if they don’t do something, their society would also be on the line. The Alteans are fully on board with his plans, they establish a military base and a research facility to study the Entity and the Quintessence. They most likely run into numerous failed attempts to figure out how to create a defense system against Haggar. Probably many Alteans perish during experiments. Martyrs. Quite a different word than “killed”, as stated by Romelle, or “murdered”, as in Pidge.

Lotor continues his archeology research around the Universe, discovering scattered information about Voltron, King Alfor, alchemy, Oriande. He tries to put it all together, to figure out the secrets of Voltron. That’s why he says he gave all he had to plumb the depths of King Alfor’s knowledge. He most likely needs that, desperately, to defend the Colony.

Knowing historical facts about the existence of a rift, he develops his own political convictions and agenda, about bringing unlimited Quintessence to the Universe, in order to stop the Galra madness. He believes that by feeding that monster that is lurking in the dark corners of the Universe, and by making Q a cheap fuel for the Empire, the greed for it will vanish and peace will be restored again - “a complete paradigm shift, a new dawn for the old empire.” Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he is rooting for an Altean ruling, somewhere in the future, through the power of rift Quintessence fueling his unbeatable weapons (The blown out of proportions version of this dream is seen when he loses his mind at the rift battle: “Once I wipe out Voltron, I’m going to start a new Altea. An Altea that will never know of Princess Allura or King Alfor.”)

When Voltron gets drained of energy from the Komar, Lotor makes his first contact with the real deal: pure Quintessence. He’d never seen anything like that before. Only Haggar and Zarkon knew about it, because they’d been in the rift.

He manages to get his hands on some pure Quintessence and steals (or he’d already stolen) Haggar’s specs for Quintessence purification, and begins creating his own pure Q in the second colony. It is used to feed Entity-possessed Alteans piloting Yalexes. The white mechs are not made out of a comet ore, so they suck a lot of energy from the alchemists. It is also, possibly, used to carry out his experiments at the Rift, as discussed below.

Though not established well in time, somewhere recently probably, he also starts the construction of the Rift Gate (most likely with undercover Altean workforce, due to its blue glow and juniberry-shaped entrance). He might need a lot of pure Quintessence for the construction. He hides it in that underwater, very old Galra station, where Kolivan and Keith first discover its existence. Lotor wants to go into the rift to get pure Quintessence. Much easier than having to exhaust Altean alchemists to purify it from raw materials.

Haggar continues to harass him and stalk him. Galra generals that rule over the territories surrounding the Quantum Abyss try sending probes in there. The Yalexes effectively defend against intruders.

And then he figures out that Voltron was made out of a comet ore. He discovers one comet stuck between realities, he attempts to retrieve it, but fails miserably (as stated by Ezor, who recalls how unhappy his pilots were). Eventually, he uses Voltron to get it, which adds up to the already established mistrust.

He’s now almost 100% positive that by infusing his comet ships with pure Quintessence, he’ll be able to pierce the reality barrier. “According to his calculations”, they should be successful.

Zarkon and Honerva figure out he’s got his hands on a trans-reality comet and start hunting him. Left without his main cruiser, having to kill one of his generals, he attempts his masterful plan, of entering the rift. He fails lamentably, realizing he’s missing a piece of information. The generals betray him, but he escapes; he gets chased by Zarkon through solar flares, he escapes him too; then jumps right in the middle of the action to save the Paladins and the Coalition at Naxzela.

After being a prisoner for a while in Allura’s castle, feeding them intel to gain their trust, he finally makes a breakthrough, by killing Zarkon and lighting the flame at Kral Zera. He becomes the Emperor and things are good for him for a while. Together with Allura, he makes revolutionary discoveries; they visit Oriande and Allura helps him by infusing his ships with Quintessence, the right way, as she learned from Oriande. During this time spent together with her, something unexpected happens to him. He falls in love. And then the painful part of the Voltron story unfolds. Romelle shows up and things go sideways completely. Even though the mind-controlled Shiro clone delivers him to Haggar, she still has no power over him. While she basically tries to excuse herself for not being a good mother, he completely rejects her - a big blow in her newly-awakened motherly instincts.

Returning to the rift to try to talk to Allura, he finds her in a deep state of rage against him (most likely fueled by the big dose of Q received in the rift). There is basically no way to reason with her, although he tries. He really does. He even orders his generals to hold their fire. Acxa is worried about him. Most likely because she figured out that he’s in love with her, and she sees that as his weak spot. The spark that lights up the evil flame of the Entity inside him is Allura’s spiteful, unreasoned comparison with Zarkon. The one thing he hated most, his weakest spot - being compared to his father - coming from the lips of the woman he loves. That completely ruins him inside. He ends up exactly as the Malocoti dragon. He loses his reason as well, uttering threats about a new Altea that will never know about Princess Allura and King Alfor. And then he loses the battle in the rift, and remains trapped there until Honerva pulls him out.

And this is where S8 left us with lots of question marks. What we got is basically nothing. We only see a suggestion of a melted corpse (but with motes of Quintessence coming out of his body). And then, a quick redemption sentence from Allura and a bitter “he deserved better” from his mother.

But the comics tell us something else. The first comic book was released in 2016, just at the beginning of the show. And that was the map, the Rosetta Stone of Voltron.

The comics tell us that Lotor was saved from the spell of the witch.

This is what I think really happened: Honerva pulls him from the rift. At this point, his body is pretty much done for, but I assume his consciousness is trapped inside the Sincline (in a similar fashion to how Shiro’s mind was trapped inside the Black Lion). Honerva knows a trick or two of how to ‘resurrect' people, and she infuses him with high doses of her evil Entity powers and with Quintessence (that’s why we see motes of purple Quintessence coming out of his body). He’s become a full vampire robeast. Being basically “dead inside”, the high-on-Q, full-vampire Lotor behaves extremely violent, killing indiscriminately everyone around him (foreshadowed by the Narti monster, who cannot distinguish enemies from allies). The only thing that seemed to make the Sincline pause and not shoot was… Allura -oops. Otherwise, he is Honerva’s puppet, just like the Malocoti dragon.

Allura has a vision where she sees Lotor explaining what the Entity is, and that she should become One with it in order to defeat Honerva. We don’t know exactly who encouraged that Entity to come visit her. It might be the Entity itself, or it might be Lotor’s own telepathic work, channeled through the mycelial network of Entities - the final station being the Entity trapped inside that vacuum tube. We don’t know for sure. All we know is that it seems to be a force for good.

Eventually giving in and taking the Entity inside herself, Allura travels through Honerva’s mind along with her friends and they free the Old Paladins. After exiting Honerva’s mind, the Paladins wake up, except Allura, who is fallen into some sort of deep sleep or coma. This trip is something she needs to see through on her own.

There are missing parts here, as I analyzed in this meta. I believe one full episode just for this adventure.

Allura travels out of Honerva’s mind, guided by the Entity, and she arrives inside the Sincline’s memory space, where she meets Lotor’s consciousness. The Old Paladins might be with her as well (because Lotor needs to reconcile with his father, too). There are two possibilities here: either Lotor is already a peaceful ghost (like Shiro), who will reveal to her, in a nice conversation, the whole truth about the Alteans, Honerva, bla-bla. Or… Lotor’s ghost is as dark and violent as the Old Paladins were, because Honerva’s spell reaches even inside Sincline’s memory space. This would make the encounter more dramatic, probably a fight with him ensues, the Old Paladins help Allura restrain him, and eventually she releases him from the spell. The whole nine yards. And then he tells his side of the story, makes peace with his father, the Old Paladins say their farewell, and Allura is left to decide with him the next steps.

After waking up, she has a discussion with Lance, who finally understands Allura’s heart belongs somewhere else. A mature Lance vows to help her retrieve Lotor from Honerva.

There are some episodes that are completely missing, but I believe they would mirror the story of Princess Malocoti being freed from the ‘dragon’ (Sincline). Allura would retrieve his soul from the mecha and put it back inside his body, just like she did with Shiro. She would resurrect his body the Altean way, not Honerva’s pitiful way. Like the old oak tree that blooms again, bursting with Quintessence under Lance’s eyes, we would see Lotor’s shriveled body regain its beauty and vitality. And Lance might be there to witness it.

Following the leads from the now famous article Seek Truth in Darkness by @leakinghate, it’s clear that the last few episodes edited Lotor out. He is there, helping the Paladins defeat Honerva. There are now seven Paladins, just as Kolivan predicted in his weird ‘interview’ in S8E7 (which totally looks like wasted airtime if you don’t understand the symbolism). The bringing back to life of all realities comes in the form of a juniberry flower - three petals - three almighty powers: Honerva, Allura and Lotor. He did say that “all life began with a single juniberry flower”, in case anyone wondered why he spoke again in looney-tooney ‘cave poetry’. It wasn’t just Allura and Honerva. Lotor was there as well, because, as Leakinghate mentioned, this is his path to understanding his Altean side, which is Sacrifice (martyrdom, if we want to be more specific), the path to passing the Oriande trials.

If the martyred villagers were turned into stone, the saviors that sacrificed themselves also get their own stone statues. We get to see Allura’s, but Lotor had a statue as well, in the colony, and it might find its final spot either on Altea, or on Daibazaal, we don’t know. We might see one for Honerva, as well. The Great Restoration of all realities is accomplished by a flipped-gender Trinity, challenging stereotypes: The Mother, The Daughter and The Son (just like the princess saving the prince is a flipped script). They most likely become higher beings in an upper plane, guiding, watching over, and probably, also making contact with the mortals, from time to time. This kind of story with the ascension of the main character into the skies, into a higher dimension is not uncommon, actually, in the classic Japanese animated series from the 80’s, and it would be the Grande Finale’s nod to that tradition.

You see, my friends, there are so many threads that were left loose in this show. They were meant to close into beautiful arcs, monumental teaching points for children, teens and adults as well. The writers and EP’s intended to finish these arcs. But… “this is show business”, no matter what the “right thing to do” is.

This analysis is based on comparisons, symbolic interpretation, semantics and speculations. As I stated in the beginning, I might have gotten some things wrong, but overall, I believe this is what we should have seen.

If some of these might prove incorrect at a later date, I always welcome improvements.

Thank you to all the good people of the Lotura Discord, who constantly inspire me through thought-provoking discussions and awesome sources of knowledge!

To conclude my very, very long peroration, I believe Lotor is the type of character that stands right on the edge of black and white, good and evil. He lives on the Razor’s Edge, just like the episode title suggests (a Sanskrit concept that passing over a sharp edge is difficult, thus the path to salvation is hard). He wants nothing but to be the good leader his parents never were, yet his environment and upbringing constantly try to push him off the edge. Like an acrobat that walks on a tightrope, he needs to make it to the other side.

Did he ever make it?

#lotor #voltron #lotor deserved better #vld meta #vld comics meta #lotura

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