I just came up with the most amazing and ridiculous Voltron crack theory
And like there’s absolutely no way it’s true
but WHAT IF IT WERE TRUE like I’m losing my shit over the possibilities here
TEEEELLLL MMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Okay okay I’m just warning you I sound insane
So
We all agree the Garrison’s sketchy as hell, right? Well, you know who’s part of the Garrison and who’s gotten, strangely, very little attention at all?
Mr. Dreamworks face right here.
Hear me out.
We have no satisfying explanation for what the Galra were doing hanging out near Kerberos. Searching for the Blue Lion? Maybe, but they took a damn long time to make it from Kerberos to Earth if that’s the case (assuming the Paladins intentionally landed the lions and hid them, which the carvings seem to suggest, wouldn’t you, yknow, START with the inhabitable planet?). Checking out Earth? They couldn’t hold off an invasion, why not just colonize them? Unless they were NEGOTIATING with people on Earth.
On the suspicion that the Garrison knows more than they’re telling about the Galra, we ALSO have no satisfying explanation for why they sent three defenseless scientists to the edge of the solar system. To… collect ice? That seems a little needlessly dangerous.
UNLESS the Garrison wasn’t sending people to Kerberos – they were sending them to the Galra.
It can’t be easy to communicate with an alien race without other people in the world noticing, so if the Garrison wanted to talk to the Galra directly, what better way to do it than to send someone to do it in person, in a way and a place where it would be very easy to cover up what actually happened to that person.
And who out of these three would know about this real mission? The oldest and presumably most senior member of the team, Samuel fucking Holt.
Let’s look at some evidence.
I always thought the way this scene was framed was a little… odd.
Why is Shiro the only one who no longer has a helmet? He was still wearing one when they all got sucked up by the tractor beam or whatever it was. Both of them are sitting up, so they’re not unconscious – why did neither of them try to speak up or do anything? Why can’t we see their faces?
Maybe it was to keep the focus on Shiro but MAYBE it was because one of them was about to speak up and reveal he actually has bargaining chips in this situation. Maybe one of them, had we seen their face, would not have seemed as surprised or scared as he should have been.
Then Sam was more or less immediately separated from Matt and Shiro:
Was he being sent to a work camp? Are you SURE? What if, instead, they were just lying to Shiro to keep their contact with Earth quiet?
But Tal, you say, Matt was in the gladiator ring too. Did Samuel really throw his own son to the Galra? Fair point, fair point, but… maybe. In order to protect the Earth (including his wife and daughter).
Matt, after all, was still awake when Shiro got clocked in the head. He would have heard whatever negotiation happened between his father and the Galra. Perhaps he felt betrayed. Perhaps he got so angry the Galra threw him into the gladiator ring as punishment, and his father had to let it happen or else lose all chance to talk to them. Or maybe the Galra are just evil bastards and said, “we only need one of you to be able to talk to us. Send the others to the gladiator ring.”
But Tal, wouldn’t Matt tell Shiro about Samuel, if that were true? Maybe, but I’m not sure a galactic gladiator ring is really the place for that conversation. And then, of course,
There wasn’t really another chance later.
And then there’s the fact that the show’s been pretty determined to get us more invested in finding Matt than Sam.
[Sam, somewhere in the galaxy: “GEE THANKS A LOT”]
Why does it seem like the show sometimes wants us to low key forget that Sam is out there too? Why are we more worried about getting Matt back? Maybe because the show doesn’t want us to learn too much about Sam… yet.
Okay Tal, nice crack theory, but here’s the biggest hole: why would the Garrison not tell Shiro and Matt about the Galra, if that really was the intent of the Kerberos mission? Well, because they’re dicks.
Oh….my…..god…..if season three ends with revealing that Samuel Holt…Mr. Golly-Gee-I-Sure-Do-Love-Peas Holt…..is an actual traitor and gave information to the Galra I will be shocked beyond belief. Now THAT is a plot twist right there.
Evidence against your theory:
– Kerberos is described as “The farthest” humanity has ever reached away from Earth, thus making it reasonable to be performing geological tests on that moon – Not really sure why the Garrison would be throwing away Tadashi ‘youngest pilot prodigy ever to graduate’ Shirogane on a mission that’s due to go south – Same w/ Sam bringing Matt along on the mission in the first place – …Wouldn’t Sam tell his wife at least? Why wouldn’t she tell Katie after the news of the ‘crash’? – Shiro’s “Take care of your father” implies he knows where Sam was sent (the mines for ‘weak workers’) and that Matt is going to be sent to the same place as him. Either Matt told him, or they witnessed it together, or the Galra told him. All options unlikely in your scenario
Evidence FOR your theory:
– I agree w/ u, Sam is hella suspicious – As is the narrative’s treatment of Sam – Pidge has a picture of Matt, but nothing of Sam; but verbally confirms relation to Sam, but not to Matt (”Commander Holt is my father.”) – Commander Holt. Commander Holt. – Exactly why would you send a high ranking commander on a solo trip with two (2) people – Who are you Commanding, Sam – Also why is there such a thing as “fighter class”? Like Cargo pilot, I get, humanity’s probably colonizing mars by that point, but why would pre-first-contact humanity need a ~fighter~ class for ASTRONAUTS? – Alien ship crashes miles away from campus and causes IMMEDIATE red alert/lockdown and “teachers” insta-mobilize on command. Have quarantine tent set up before Lance/Pidge/Hunk, who witnessed the crash, arrive on scene – 0 fucks given by the scientists examining Shiro, who’s been missing for months, who just crashed in an alien spaceship, who is frantically reporting about aliens and alien weapons – (Their first reaction to seeing a cyborg prosthetic: not “what the fuck is that” or even “where the hell did that come from” – no, it’s “Put him under until we know what that thing can do.” ) – “They didn’t ask him about the rest of the crew” yeah maybe because the Garrison was possibly still in contact with your dad, Pidge – Mining is hard, taxing work. Why put older, weaker candidates to work in your infrastructure? Sounds fishy to me. Save the strong ones for mining, weak ones for slaughter in the gladiator rings – Matt?? Was in a High?? Security?? Prison?? For some reason?? – (A high security prison with exactly two (2) cells … ) – Not exactly evidence but wouldn’t this totally kill Pidge? Like what a character arc. I mean like – What writer could resist that?
Final verdict:
This is a crack theory I can get behind
Debunking the against points in order -The garrison keeps secrets and we know this. So this probably is a lie and also a good cover story.
-They had Keith who was well on his way to filling that space.
-Sam put to much trust in the Garrison and if the Garrison was truly aware along with Sam, his morals are already beyond questionable.
– A gag order and questionable morals along with hidden agendas
-Shiro was lied to along with Matt. If the Galra and Sam are working together, why would they risk revealing the truth? The Mines were code for Beta Traz.
All in all, still plausible. AND I HATE IT.
(If you listen closely you’ll hear the sound of me dying on the floor because this was a wild brain dump in the middle of the night but now I think it might actually be true and apparently other people do too because this post is exploding like crazy)
The biggest argument AGAINST this theory is easily Matt and Shiro’s presence on the Kerberos mission. You could maybe argue the Garrison wanted to maintain secrecy and that’s why they neither warned Matt and Shiro about the truth nor sent three people who knew about the Galra already (keeping up appearances it’s a normal mission), but it still raises the question of whether they (especially Commander Holt) were really ready to seriously sacrifice Matt and Shiro. The one idea I’ve had about this was that the Galra may have lied and/or had an internal miscommunication, that Sam was supposed to be able to meet them peacefully, perhaps even somehow in secret away from the rest of his team. Matt and Shiro getting tangled up with the Galra may have been a failure of the Garrison’s plan.
The biggest arguments FOR the theory are:
1. Commander Holt is obviously a high-ranking member of the Garrison and therefore should be privy to most if not all information, which means he should know about aliens. There is no doubt in my mind the Garrison knows about aliens/the Galra. I can provide extensive evidence on that point. The only question is whether the Kerberos mission might actually have been point of first contact.
2. It would actually serve the narrative really, really well. It complicates Pidge’s arc of getting her family back (we could lead into a redemption arc for Sam à la Asami’s father from LoK. Saving Pidge’s family then becomes saving Sam from himself, a nice thematic consistency while raising the stakes). It allows the show to bring back Earth and the Garrison as important entities without necessarily physically returning to Earth. It gives Shiro, Matt, and Sam three distinct but important roles (pending confirmation re: Matt’s role in S3, but I think it’s a fair guess he’ll be a major player). Especially considering the show actually STARTS with the three of them, simply picking Sam up from a work camp at some point would seem… anticlimactic
Feel free to come to my inbox and yell at me more about this. I’ll be screaming into a pillow until you do.
The Archery Range 