This Year's Model of Humanity

honestly, the more i think about it, the more annoyed i am that shiro’s personality got streamrolled like that? in which the culmination being that all his former dreams were thrown away so that he could get married to some random person we have never see him interact with before (apparently he works on the atlas bridge, i have learned and was given a name… in the subtitles only… but, you know, i shouldn’t have to play where’s waldo with a main character’s ‘endgame’ love interest).

like… Shiro loved space so much that he ended his previous relationship to go follow his dreams. he spoke in s6 about loving being a paladin and that was AFTER all the trauma he’d been through in space. he got his own fucking ship to captain so that he could be part of the final arc. and then… apparently none of that means anything to him anymore and his ‘happiness’ literally ONLY relates to his sexuality, rather than any of his previously established personality traits or any of his previously established friendships.

i mean, at least keith’s ending flows from his actual previous actions and personality in the series, you know? hanging out with the blades. helping people. sure, okay. and we know keith has a habit of running away from relationships and shutting down if he’s worried he’ll lose them, so i even buy that he would cut off his friends like that and only see them once a year, though it does mean his ending is depressing as fuck, too.

but shiro? shiro’s love of space not even being MENTIONED in his ending? part of the reason that shiro being confirmed queer at the start of s7 was so ground-breaking was because he was already such a fully-rounded out and beloved hero! he had a strong, established personality and emotional connections to the people around him. but apparently none of that matters! just the fact that he likes dudes. that is the ONLY thing relevant to him in the ending. we know nothing about this dude’s personality or their relationship. we don’t know when it started. we don’t know jack shit about it. but it’s gay and that’s supposed to be enough. shiro deserved better. he deserved to still be SHIRO, not just a cardboard cut-out that looked like shiro.

But… man, it was weird to me that Shiro and Keith’s friendship… went underground after the EPIC Black Paladins episode in S6 and then bringing Shiro back in S7 (…literally the same vibe as the Lance-brings-back-Allura scene this season, too). Keith had multiple one-on-one conversations with Lance (mostly about Lance’s relationship with Allura, it seemed)… but absolutely zero time for a one-on-one personal conversation with Shiro. I mean, even if the writers were overwhelmed by the chance to have Shiro have an on-screen kiss… that doesn’t mean his friendship with Keith should, you know, stop existing. So that was weird. It was like Shiro was just friends with VoltronGroup as a whole and his personal connection to Keith didn’t matter at all, even though they were fighting Honerva, who had specifically called out their connection during S6 as a big deal.

And the big goodbye with Allura and the Paladins was… I mean… it kinda felt more like they were sending her off for summer vacation than sending her to her death. That’s part of why I thought maybe she was coming back at the end!

So… idk. Endings are hard. It’s easy to fuck them up. But it just kinda felt like… I’ve been watching a marathon runner going around a track, cheering them on, and then when they’re five feet away from the ending mark, they got distracted by something, wandered off, and never finished the race. I feel… unsatisfied.