Acxa’s arc when you step back and look at it from a distance, is actually quite fascinating. It’s really a series of reality checks for a very arrogant and self absorbed brat, who thinks herself better than the people around her, including her own allies. There’s a reason why I refer to Acxa as Lotor’s
protégé, cause in a lot of ways she is, especially when you compare her relationship with Lotor with that of Keith’s, her rival, with Shiro. There’s a lot of similarities to how each of them approach their mentors, and how their mentors teachings/attitudes reflect off of them. This is gonna be a long post, but bear with me.
Throughout the second arc, we have these little moments that’re very telling of Acxa’s bratty attitude. Back in s3ep1 when Lotor’s plan to dupe Throk and the rest of Zarkon’s court, she smiles when everything goes according to plan.
And in s5ep1, when Acxa is presenting the Sam Holt trade to Zarkon himself, if one were to notice she’s smiling smugly as she does so.
This is someone who relishes in manipulating and wrecking people. Acxa loves it when plans go well and is in a position of power over people, even if they don’t know it. It becomes more harrowing when you realize that the people Acxa laughs at are Zarkon’s court and Emperor Zarkon himself – she’s not just duping anyone, she’s duping the highest in galra command. As a half-galra who was mocked and ridiculed before, this must be a thrill for her.
And that’s the thing with Acxa and Lotor. Acxa relishes the outcomes of these plans cause she thinks as Lotor’s personal second-in-command, she’s got a lot of leverage. She thinks she’s got Lotor’s trust and Lotor’s trust alone. Much in the same way Keith and Shiro are very close, Acxa thinks her and Lotor are close as well. She probably thought that she was Lotor’s biggest confident as she’s the one he told her his big plan. And because she’s in this sort of position of power – cause Lotor is the new hotshot emperor remember – she thinks herself better than anyone else.
We see this in how she smiles as she dupes people as I pointed out, but also in how she treats the others around her. An example of this is with Keith, her rival. From their introduction we see that she’s acts very entitled around him. When he saves her, she gets offended when Keith takes her gun cause he doesn’t trust her.
We can’t see her face here, but her actions tells us that she’s deeply flabbergasted here. And it’s noting that Acxa ignores Keith here, and never thanks him for his actions. Instead, she goes on to take advantage of his kindness, and “teams up” with him for the rest of the episode. She leads him to believe that they’re allies who would have each others’ backs. She reveals this to be not true, however, and betrays him at the end, which is why Keith is so upset, he realized he was being used this whole time.
This entitlement we see more of later on when Acxa pays him back. When she saves him, Keith gives a judgemental distrusting look, which Acxa repays with an arrogant “I paid you back ok? You happy now?” and leaves with a bratty, entitled expression that lingers
She a very spoiled child, most likely a result of Lotor’s influence on her, a half-Altean, to think herself as better than other people, especially people who aren’t as great as them.
All of this makes Acxa’s character arc all the more ironic in season 6. Here is when Lotor’s, and to an extent, Acxa’s plans begin to fall apart. A lot of Lotor’s lies come unraveling in this season, particularly the ones he’s told Acxa before.
So something interesting I’ve noticed in s6ep5 that Allura pointed out when Haggar made the wormhole for Team Sincline and the clone to pass through –
Allura mentions Haggar must’ve gained the ability somehow. Which is interesting to think bout, cause we’ve only seen Haggar wormhole around after she’s gone through Oriande, and learned its secrets. Before then, she just hyperspace jumped like the rest of the empire, as we saw in her escape in s4ep6. From this, it can be determined that it was going through Oriande that granted her the ability, and wormholing is something only limited to sacred Alteans.
But if this ability is granted only to people who know the knowledge of Oriande, how is it that Allura was able to pilot the castle for more than half her life? Well consider how it’s likely that Alfor went to Oriande before Allura was born. In s3ep7, Coran mentions that while Honerva was researching the rift, Alfor himself was doing research himself on the comet.
It’s likely that this time was when he went to Oriande, perhaps as a way to gain more knowledge or power to learn about the science of the comet. Not long after this, Allura was born and Zarkon and Honerva married.
And it’s to note that by this time Voltron was constructed already, as after this conversation, the rift creatures attacked and Alfor took Zarkon and the other OG paladins to his lab to present it to them. Voltron most likely took at least a year to construct, if not years considering that Alfor was working with the ore for a while. It’s likely that he visited Oriande long before Allura was born. And when she was she inherited the blessing that they granted him there.
The final piece of evidence is that when Allura visits Oriande they tell her that she already has the secret –
which again, would make sense if she inherited it from her father. The reason why she was able to make wormholes all the this was cause again, she had the power to, which Alfor had before her.
This tells us a number of things. One, the blessings of Oriande are a physical manifestation, not just pure knowledge and abstract. It makes sense, as I pointed out before, to get into Oriande, you must first pass trails of knowledge. Which means, you actually have to know stuff on your own, and be capable of accepting it at all costs. Going to Oriande doesn’t make you knowledgeable, you have to be that already, it just grants you the power to do more with that knowledge you have. Two, it tells us that it’s not just Alfor that went to Oriande, but as I said before, his whole lineage given the castle of lions was made by Coran’s grandfather and in order to pilot that, you need the secrets.
It’s actually quite fascinating and I hope the later seasons explore that more in depth
a lot of lotor’s compliments to allura related to how useful she was in achieving peace throughout the universe: for example, telling her that he couldn’t have done it without her, that the knowledge she gained from oriande made her special, etc. so i wasn’t very surprised when it turned out that he was only using her for his own purposes. his compliments weren’t about her as a person, but her as a tool. so i wondered, why didn’t allura see through this too? i think it’s because she is so dedicated to doing the right thing and helping to alleviate suffering throughout the universe that the most meaningful compliment anyone could give her would be to say that she’s doing it right: she is useful in achieving those goals. i think that’s really sad, because of course there’s more to allura than her roles as paladin and princess. she is a great fighter and political leader, but she’s also kind, charming, witty, intelligent, compassionate…i could go on. i hope she realizes that about herself. she deserves to understand her true worth.
Contrast it to Lance and the others going on about her as a person, and how they comforted Alluring in the past 26 episodes -the Keith scene in s3 and Coran constantly-. Lotor has shown his view on Allura since bloodlines, where he watched her cry about her insecurity and he just stood there staring at her until the map opened and he goes you did it. All his compliments after that were about her powers and what they achieved together. Lotor loved the concept of her, the powers and abilities she provided, and being the daughter of Alfor. He later admits to Ezor and Zethrid that he needed to gain her trust. What’s messed up is that he constantly used the we are the last Alteans card, and her father’s name. He made her long for Altean culture so that she’d connect to him, while he was doing that to the surviving Alteans. The minute she triggered his berserk button, Alfor’s name was dragged through the mud and the god complex came out. Allura deserves all the love and reassurance in the world, to be told what a great person she is, not just a leader. We got little of that when Lance comforted her, and I suspect we are getting more of that. We saw her friends care about her in the colony and afterwards, and how they truly see her as a person first now.
HONESTLY, I wouldn’t say it’s so much “inconsistent” as ironic if anything
Lotor from the beginning has been about distancing himself from his parents–yet at the same time he begs to follow his mother’s work– kinda sticking him in a funny spot of being “different but not really”.
A paradox, I guess in a way
I think it’s safe to say both Lotor and his parents sought access to the Quintessence field for the betterment of their respective empires (Zargar for the Galra, Lotor for his Altean utopia)
However, where his parents were determined to hunt for Voltron–something they already knew well and was a solid, reliable means to their end– Lotor decided instead to break out of the mold and take the route of “bigger risk, bigger reward” basically.
He did his research on why Voltron works, then determined just what he would need to do to achieve something similar, but different (theoretically) without all the 10,000 years of waiting his parents did. (Though we can see the timing came pretty close lol) in building Sincline
To get by/make their quintessence harvesting more efficient while they dedicated their time to hunting for Voltron, Zarkon and Haggar put their efforts into the Komar project.
And BOY was it successful, straightforward and reliable (can you see the theme I’m going for with these two) But again, like their hunt for Voltron, the Komar was a time consuming project, taking Haggar EONS to perfect and Lotor is all about that “quick buck” sort of mindset.
Why would he take their route of sucking entire planets of “dirty” quintessence needing refinement on 100 different levels before being even close to what he needs, when he can just go to the source of “pure” quintessence? (After all, it’s well-established the stuff he was harvesting from the colony is especially potent, perfect for his needs)
And that’s just how he categorizes things.
What’s necessary vs what is done.
He saw the Komar as “barbaric’ because it did more than necessary, kind of a “why suck entire planets dry when you could just scale down and take a more precise approach”
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.
superheroladies 