You know, I really feel for Ezor this season. These fears are not hollow or overreaction, they’re some legit adult fear in the face of a horrible possibility. It’s noting how traumatized Ezor is from the whole Lotor experience. Cause it’s not like Ezor’s living in squalor like Acxa had, Ezor’s got her own fleet with loyal pirates and her big pirate gf. And yet, she stills worries. We know Narti’s death meant a great deal to her back then in s4ep3, and we see evidence of that creeping back in here in s7.
Lotor is not just some crazed lunatic, he’s genuinely a bad person, one who’s willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Ezor saw what he did to Narti, and heard what he did to those Alteans. He himself proclaimed what he planned to do to the galra once he had his empire. Ezor is no idealistic fool like Acxa, she knows evil and understands the depth of power Lotor has with the Sincline robot.
It makes her actions in s7ep3 all the more sympathetic. Yeah she was torturing Pidge and getting a kick out of deriding Acxa and wrecking Keith, but those are just distractions from the concerns she legit has. Even in her intimidation at Team Voltron’s interrogation, we can see elements of that fear she showed at the beginning with Zethrid.
We know she’s lying here, earlier we saw her telling Zethrid how she’s worried that Lotor might still be around. It’s pretty obvious from these two scenes that a source of comfort for Ezor has always been that if nothing came from that explosion all those years ago that made Voltron disappear, then Lotor will never come back. It tells us too, that this fear is a reoccurring one, one that nagged away at Ezor even years after Lotor disappeared.
And Ezor tries to cover that up with her derision. When she mocks Acxa later on, it’s not just cause Acxa put her morals over their team again (though I wouldn’t doubt that played a part in it).
It’s also Ezor trying to distract herself from all her worst fears coming to fruition at once. Acxa herself broke away from Lotor yeah, but there’s no better way to agitate Ezor’s fears then for Lotor’s former loyal lap brat to make an appearance just as Voltron returned. Ezor’s words here tells us it’s been a while since they’ve seen Acxa, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t seen her since she left all those years ago. Ezor doesn’t know what Acxa’s been up to, what’re Acxa’s plans, or what did Acxa’s “I’ve got to find my own path” meant. For all she knew, Acxa was a liar and schemer that was in with Lotor and when shit hit the fan fucked off to the Universe knows where on some morality stunt. It’s like a horrible reminder for Ezor of all the bad things she experienced long past.
That’s why Ezor attacks Acxa so harshly in their conversation. Belittles her dedication to her morals and her cause to just a crush she’s got on one dude. To Ezor, it makes things seem a little less intimidating, and much more manageable. Which gets me to my main point.
It’s pretty clear that Ezor’s love of torture and mockery are defense mechanisms Ezor developed to ward away any fear she has. As @blacklionshiropointed out before me, Ezor is a survivor, and seen a lot of shit in her life and has had to escape some difficult situations before. She deals with this shit with it by trivializing it, by making herself out to be the stronger person. We saw this back in s3ep2, where she called the Lions of Voltron, the Universe’s most powerful weapon at the time, mere kitties. Despite her bravado and evil grins, she’s a very anxious and traumatized person*.
*she’s still evil but very complex in so. they wrote her very well and I appreciate that.
I’m so glad that kids are back to school the fandom is already calming down. I wonder if the level of hell would have happened had the season dropped in November while the kids were busy. Finally less nonsense on the Internet the kids are too busy crying themselves to sleep over stressful schedules so no time to be annoying online 😂😂😂
Lotor’s such a great politician honestly. While he’s not technically lying to Shiro and Allura in the first set of images, he’s definitely not telling the who truth. Cause yeah, sending Team Voltron in there was a calculated risk – if they didn’t make it out then Team SIncline wouldn’t have their comet – but he wasn’t, you know, acting like it would be a total loss if it were. Like my dude wasn’t lying about his confidence of his plans, but he was definitely not answering Shiro’s question here. Cause Shiro’s accusation was right.
Which tells us a lot about Lotor’s character. Mainly that in his reaccounts of things, he has a tendency to tell only the partial truth – the parts that benefit him in at the moment, or the ones that wouldn’t get him in trouble. And he does again in the same conversation with Allura and Shiro. When questioned about the generals’ absence he says it was a ‘minor misunderstanding’ which was partially true in that yeah, there was a misunderstanding, but he leaves out how he, you know, killed one of his friends and that was enough to them to doubt him, reasoning be damned.
It opens up a lot to discuss cause, if Lotor has a tendency to tell half-truths, then how much of what he’s said to both Team Voltron and the generals is true?
Like this story here –
how much of the truth is he leaving out when he recounts it to Allura? Cause the one time we see him conquering a planet –
he didn’t exactly work along side them. And note that that is what he considers proper treatment of a new ally.
like it makes one wonder…
Then when Romelle comes along and lets the cat out of the bag regarding his Quintissence harvesting experiments on surviving Alteans in a death camp he calls a colony, Lotor stans ironically start assuming “Well she might be either lying in order to frame Lotor and break up the alliance, or she’s not telling the whole truth about this!”, as though Lotor hasn’t told nothing but lies and partial truths and he makes a more trustworthy and respectable ally than Romelle would. Even if it somehow ends up that Romelle’s version of events really was just a partial truth (which she’d be unaware of), it’d be a taste of his own medicine for Lotor, who very deliberately used that as a tactic for getting what he wanted time and time again.
I think Lotor’s story to Allura was completely true. I think the “ally” you pictured was a special case because he was refusing to go along with selling out Voltron of his own free will. The issue I would point out is how Lotor phrases it: “rather than employ the usual Galran methods of subjugation” – it’s subtle and easy to miss, but right there Lotor makes an important acknowledgment: the methods he uses are not the usual ones that Galrans use in subjugation of planets, but it is still ultimately subjugation. Lotor initially frightens planets with his military force, then doesn’t actually use that force in favor of working with the planet’s leadership, adapts to their customs and treats them respectfully, and slowly gains their trust and favor until ultimately they allow themselves to fall under his rule. They willingly hand over their freedom to him. It’s even more dangerous and diabolical a way of taking over the universe than Zarkon’s way, and it’s what makes Lotor the most effective villain in the show.
Other fun fact on s7e8: Sendak’s new lieutenant, Hepta? We’ve seen him before, though he had a different voice then.
He shows up in s3e5 as the guy giving the order to progress to phase three of Operation Kuron.
Ohoho! This is a cool detail that connects Sendak back to Haggar still and reinforces the idea he was her puppet, a chess piece she placed in the field to pre-occupy the paladins while she worked behind the scenes.
Another interesting tidbit is that we see this commander, Ladnok, working with/for Haggar in s4, then in s5 we see her again going after Ranveig’s base and a quintessence infused monster.
There’s definitely the feeling Haggar / Honerva has a lot of pieces on the board yet to be considered or revealed.
Yay more RG Veda fans! You won’t find much on here except older fans these days I’m afraid. But yes, I’m a huge fan of RG Veda, it was one of the first manga I read and it was hugely influential to me. I also think it’s the best of CLAMP’s work because it has well, and ending for the most part. It certainly kicked off many of the tropes of their later work, such as the themes of love and how it’s depicted, which is one of my favorite aspects of their works. It can get uncomfortable at times but they do challenge the perspective a lot.
One thing that I adore now more that I’m grown up and more into examining media outside of imposed western lenses that made me feel like I had to shed my own, the eastern concept of “Fate cannot be changed” is something haunting to me. Many works, western and eastern, have the theme of screw destiny, which is awesome. But the themes of CLAMP of characters fighting their destinies and losing will forever haunt me, especially in RG Veda where it had horrific consequences. It’s a concept deeply rooted in many eastern ideologies.
It made me desire to see something that is never explored, which I hope one day more Muslim writers would. To me, I would like to see a theme of fate cannot be changed, because fate isn’t what you think it is, as no mortal is capable of knowing fate’s true extent. I don’t think I have seen that explored, ever. One day maybe I’ll be the one to do it, but good luck getting me to write anything these days. Back to RG Veda tho. The art. Good lord the art, it evolves massively to their iconic 80s-90s look which I personally prefer, and you know their costume porn and hair porn and of course the eyegore in giving up your eye for your beloved. I also really loved the characters. Souma still breaks my heart.
superheroladies 