A few years ago Netflix seemed to run a campaign to bring back older shows. They rebooted several classics from the 80s or before including She-ra. Today I’ll be talking about one of those shows.
Voltron: Legendary Defender was rebooted in 2016, many years after the original show ended in 1985. The show quickly gained a fanbase too, evident by its eight seasons compared to the original show’s 2 seasons. People, myself included, fell in love with it’s developed characters and storyline. The show follows a main group of 7 people: Lance, Keith, Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, Coran, and Allura. It shows their adventures in space fighting the Galra, a seemingly evil race of aliens trying to take over the known universe.
I will warn you that the lore of this show is immense and slightly confusing and the plot line even more so. That said, I’m not going to explain every bit of information right now and hope that if you’re reading this theory you’ve also watched the show. The show continued pulling twists throughout all 8 of it’s seasons. One of the biggest shocks of the show was when the lion switch happened. It was explained multiple times that a bond a paladin has with its lion is sacred and unbreakable. Then they flipped all of that on it’s head and Lance, Keith, Allura, and Shiro ended up with different lions or no lion at all. It was a shock that shouldn’t have been possible based on the information they gave us. The explanation they use is that all of them have changed and better fit the lions they switch into. They’re “quintessence” has changed. Quintessence is explained as the essence of a person ro what makes them themself. It can also be a power source, in fact it's one of the highest forms of energy in the known universe. That coupled with the fact that it’s self generating makes it one of the most powerful substances in the universe.
The show also states that quintessence is unique to each person, though they can have the same inclinations. For example, paladins of the yellow lion are inclined to be kind and protective, while the quintense of red paladins leads them to be more intuitive and stubborn.
In most cases raw, or pure, quintessence is shown as whitish or blueish light, but it's clear that it can also be almost corrupted. The galra on multiple occasions, draws the white quintessence from planets and turns it in a dark purple. At first glance it can be written off as a design choice. The Galra have purple skin and they’re ships and buildings are a dark or purple color. But when you take a closer look you can see that their ships are being powered by the same purple quintessence. The same colored quintessence also lights up the black lion’s control panel, leaving many people to speculate that the black lion will only take a paladin associated with the Galra.
The black lion was explained to need a true leader as a paladin. Someone charismatic and heroic. That meant it was quite a surprise when the first paladin (around 10,000 year prior) was Zarkon, the evil dictator of the Galra we’ve watched our heroes fight from episode one. Since then there’s been no shortage of pilots for the lion. It seems like that would debunk our theory. After all, once Zarkon left the lions we’re used to fight against the Galra. Why would they have another Galra paladin? The answer is simpler than you might think. Shiro, the subsequent paladin of the lion, may not have been biologically Glaran but the Glaran prosthetic arm he’s had since he joined the team might do the trick. The small amount of Glaran quintessence that must have been powering the arm (for proof of this: the arm glows purple and quintense is the main source of energy for all of these civilizations making it a fair assumption) seems to be enough for the blck lion to let him pilot him until the final paladin arrives. Keith takes on the mantle last and he fits the quota. In season 5 he was revealed to be half-galran, giving us another paladin with galran quintessence. The nail in the coffin comes when you realize that despite being the leader or second in command of the team for some time, Allura was rejected by the balck lion and not allowed to pilot it. The question is if it’s because of her lack of connection to the Galra or just because the lion deemed her unfit to be the leader. Unfortunately, with the show having already reached it’s bittersweet conclusion we’ll never know for sure.
Thank you all for reading and please don’t forget to comment your thoughts and suggest any other theories you want me to look into!
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