Prince / Emperor Lotor
Voiced by: A.J. LoCascio (English), Héctor Emmanuel Gómez (Latin America)
Zarkon's son and the crown prince of the Galra Empire. He's conspicuously absent from and uninvolved with his father's campaign for galactic conquest and is only brought back into the fold after Zarkon is defeated by the Paladins during the Season 2 finale.
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- Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Demonstrates this in "Begin the Blitz" when he escapes his handcuffs. Whether or not this is due to genetics or a skill he picked up is unknown.
- Abusive Parents: Neither of his parents ever really treated him as family. Zarkon wanted another general to help him conquer the universe rather than a son, and Haggar didn't even remember being Honerva during Lotor's childhood, and thus did not know that she was his mother.
- Ace Pilot: He can fly through a gaseous planet that would leave others blind and lost with great ease. He even uses his skills to outsmart the paladins.
- Adaptational Heroism: While he initially seems just as evil as he was in the original show, in Season 5 he claims to have been secretly working to bring peace to the galaxy the entire time. Regardless of whether that's actually true or not, he does display a kinder side that his original incarnation never had.
- Ultimately playing with in Season 6; his atrocity level is much higher than any other iteration of the character (with the exception of Sincline), but he's also the most well-intentioned he's ever been.
- Adaptation Personality Change: Unlike both his counterparts in the original show, he is not obsessed with Princess Allura. Possibly because as of the end of the fourth season they've only seen each other as faceless opponents piloting enemy ships, and have not met face to face. They get flirty in Season 5, but it's mutual and Lotor acts a lot more valiant and honorable. In Season 6, he and Allura do develop feelings for each other and they even kiss...but then Allura finds out that he's been harvesting Alteans to drain them of their quintessence, which naturally leads her to no longer want any kind of relationship with him. Lotor tries to convince her that his feelings for her are real and that they're destined to be together, but when Allura refuses him and hits his Berserk Button of comparing him to Zarkon, all bets are off and Lotor sets his sights on killing her and the other Paladins.
- Aliens of London: Speaks with an "Altean accent" like Allura, which sounds like faux Received Pronunciation.
- Ambiguously Evil: Given his self-serving actions and manipulative tendencies, it's hard to believe Lotor's claim that he was Good All Along. However, he's been nothing but helpful to the Paladins throughout Season 5, handed them many victories, seemed to form a genuine rapport with Allura, and even by the season finale he still hasn't betrayed them after gaining control of a sizable piece of the Galra Empire. That said, he is deemed unworthy by the White Lion. Season 6 reveals that he indeed committed several atrocities, albeit for twisted altruistic reasons.
- It's unclear whether he initially founded the Altean colony for genuinely altruistic reasons and only turned it into a People Farm later, or if that was his plan from the beginning. While one possibility is admittedly worse, they're both still pretty awful.
- Ambiguous Situation: His fate is left unclear after the end of Season 6, following Sincline being blasted by Voltron's full power and left drifting in the Quintessence field. Allura looks back at the unmoving Sincline, but the others say they have to leave since the fight looked as good as won. The paladins assume that because of this, Lotor will no longer be a threat, especially after they seal the hole by blowing up the castle ship. It's not until midway through Season 8 that it's revealed he's definitively dead, though the Paladins don't know this and Honerva acts like he's still alive while puppeteering Sincline.
- It's left unclear if the Lotor seen in "Clear Day" is simply an elaborate illusionary byproduct of Allura's mind, or his actual spirit making contact with her.
- Antagonistic Offspring: Though having to deal with parents like his for millennia would make anyone hateful of them. He is unaware that Haggar is Honerva though, and is especially hateful to her, or possibly in denial. Taken a step further when he kills Zarkon in Season 5.
- Anti-Hero: He claims he is trying to show the Galran Empire how to be peaceful and cooperate with the rest of the galaxy. By Season 6, it's clear this is an act, albeit he could reasonably be called an Anti-Villain due to the nature of his motivations. At first, anyways.
- Awful as he is, in Season 5, he seems fully prepared to let Zarkon kill him as long as his father's focus was kept off the Lions, proving he's not entirely self-serving.
- Anti-Villain: Lotor was originally a compassionate and kindhearted person, but this resulted in Zarkon razing an entire planet simply because Lotor had treated the dominant species as equals; and in him being exiled. Lotor's hatred of his father and Haggar led him to formulate a convoluted plan to overthrow them and restructure the Galra Empire into a peaceful force by tapping into the Quintessence field discovered by his beloved mother, Honerva. He nearly achieves this with Voltron's help, but it is revealed that he had collected the Altean refugees into a secret colony and had been sacrificing those with especially potent quintessence as a temporary measure until he could access the Quintessence field. This revelation and his attempts to justify it as a necessary evil causes Team Voltron to turn on him and destroy the portal to the Quintessence field. When Allura calls him just as evil as Zarkon, Lotor snaps — exacerbated by his prolonged exposure to the Quintessence field — and decides to just destroy both Voltron and the Galra Empire and establish a new Altean empire that worships him as a god. However, at the end of Season 8, Allura admits that while Lotor had been misguided and his methods had been wrong, he at the very least been sincere about his ultimate goal prior to his madness and death.
- Arc Villain: The second one after Zarkon.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Galra Empire is sort of an elective monarchy in that, when the emperor dies, all the potential replacements must compete for the throne. Lotor not only kills Zarkon himself but later manages to best all of his rivals to become Emperor in his own right.
- Bait the Dog:
- His speech provides a perfect example. He promotes cooperation within the Galra, and to rule with loyalty instead of fear, while still standing against his enemies. Then promptly exiles the enemy who joins him, while ranting about how people are so easily manipulated. He also seems to be genuine friends with his generals, only to murder one of them without a second thought when he realizes Haggar is using her as a spy.
- Season 6 shows just how evil he truly is. He rescued and found countless Alteans....and then harvested them for quintessence.
- Berserk Button: Comparing him to Zarkon is a good way to enrage him beyond belief. Allura comparing him to Zarkon during their confrontation caused Lotor to shift from trying to convince Allura to join him to trying to kill her.
- Big Bad: Ultimately is this for Seasons 3 through 6.
- Big Bad Wannabe: He fancied himself as the new Emperor but was quickly ousted by his parents, Zarkon and Haggar after they discovered he had a Transdimensional Meteor. Subverted in Season 6, where after having killed his father and bested his mother while on the side of the Paladins, he reveals that he's been Evil All Along and that everything that had transpired was Exactly According To Plan.
- Big Damn Kiss: With Allura, but the relationship doesn't last. After she refuses to forgive him for harvesting quintessence from Alteans, and says that he's even more like his father, Lotor quietly kills his feelings for her and decides to erase Allura and her father from Altean history and build a new Altea with himself as the ruler.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- He likes to play up the compassionate leader who is interested in peace between all people but as soon as he's alone he shows his real colors as a schemer who does not take insubordination or failure well. Nor is he all that concerned about actual peace. Though Season 5 opens up the possibility that his talk of peace might have been genuine. It is not.
- Played horrifically straight in Season 6. Lotor was worshiped as a savior in the colony he set up for Altean refugees, but it is effectively a People Farm for him to harvest pure Altean quintessence.
- Body Horror: He's confirmed to be deceased in Season 8, and what little is shown of his corpse is not pretty — his armor and even his flesh are partially melted and sloughing away.
- Boomerang Bigot: He seems to admire and respect his Altean heritage but doesn't care much about his Galra heritage. After being rejected by Allura, he makes it clear that he would form an Altean Empire and eliminate the Paladins and the Galra themselves.
- The Chessmaster: Playing With. He’s more than willing to face enemies directly, but his risks are usually calculated ones, taken with some strategic aim in mind. His Establishing Character Moment is a carefully staged piece of political theater, and he later gets the comet by tricking his enemies into doing the dirty work.
- Child of Two Worlds: Deconstruction. Galra father, Altean mother. The fact that his father's people destroyed his mother's messes him up royally. He was raised Galra and despises them, idolizing the Altean part of him that he doesn’t truly understand. He never learned, and was never encouraged, to embrace both parts of his heritage.
- Composite Character: He is this to Lotor and Sincline (Lotor's Japanese counterpart) with his half Altean blood coming from his mother like the latter and his name coming from the former but considering his mother is Haggar/Honerva, Lotor is also a composite to Emperor Daibazaal (who is the Japanese counterpart to the original Zarkon).
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He's described as a "hot shot prince" who is "definitely not his dad" by Dos Santos and Montgomery.
Zarkon is a 10,000 year old emperor of the Galra, Lotor is his young exiled son that Allura and Coran never knew about. Zarkon is powerful enough to take on one of the Voltron lions on his own, Lotor prefers fighting with his ship by toying with all five lions. Zarkon is a capable fighter who prefers to send his officers to capture Voltron, Lotor is more active in dealing with the Paladins and he manages to remain one step ahead of them. - Cute Little Fangs: They’re evident when he smiles, and serve to make him quite adorable. They’re less cute when he’s snarling or sporting his Slasher Smile.
- The Darkside Will Make You Forget: Record time even, as a combination of a trip to quintessence land and comparing him to Zarkon shifts him from "extremely ruthless but well intentioned" to Omnicidal Maniac.
- Death Equals Redemption: Appears in the end of the series with his father and the original Paladins as they accompany his mother and Allura into the afterlife in order to save the multiverse.
- The Determinator: Dislocates his shoulders and then flies into a sun in order to avoid getting handed over to Zarkon.
- Dragon Ascendant: Is brought out of exile by Haggar after Zarkon is grievously injured fighting Shiro at the end of Season 2 and it's implied he will only rule until his father is able to take back control. However...
- Dragon with an Agenda: Lotor has his own plans for the Galra Empire and he quickly goes off-script, much to Haggar's growing concern. It's revealed that he has a goal to learn how to harvest quintessence peacefully, without having to sacrifice planets... though Season 6 shows that his idea of "peaceful" harvesting is to make a People Farm of Alteans and extract quintessence from them.
- Dramatic Irony: His love for his mother Honerva is combined with a deep hatred for Haggar, as he is either unaware or in denial of the fact that they are the same person. When he does find out, he's shocked, horrified and disgusted.
- He once told Throk that aggression would be his downfall, come the last two episodes of Season 6 where his aggression is his driving force to taking out Voltron.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: He doesn't understand why Allura, who believes herself and Coran to be the last surviving Alteans, would attack him on learning he experimented on various surviving Alteans deemed strong enough to withstand losing their quintessence.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: His battle against the Paladins has him exposed to unlimited amounts of Quintessence, which has the side effect of making him more unhinged, violent, and emotional than his previous appearances.
- Enemy Mine:
- Once he's become a fugitive from the empire with his own father hunting him, he goes to where the Voltron coalition is, saves them from Haggar's trap, and then offers to join forces with them. This continues even after he's killed his father and Voltron has helped install him on the throne.
- In Season 8, he actually manages to pull another alliance with Allura against Honerva, from beyond the grave, no less. While Allura doubts his intentions, he says he hates "the witch" as much as she does.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: One of the tenants of his big speech, though given how he's not at all like an ordinary Galra, it would have ill behooved him to say anything different. What also sets him apart is that unlike other Galra troops, his top four generals are all half-breeds and all female.
- Establishing Character Moment: His introduction involves him calling out a dissenting general who questions his right to rule and then wiping the floor with him in a Galra arena amongst hundreds of onlookers. After Lotor wins he extends a hand of diplomacy and rallies the rest of the empire with a rousing speech, but then after the spectacle he has the general he just "befriended" Reassigned to Antarctica for questioning him to begin with. A Warrior Prince, The Chess Master and Manipulative Bastard all in one.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He speaks in glowing terms of his mother Honerva, while being completely unaware or in complete denial that the mother he idolizes has become one of his biggest enemies, Haggar. When Allura tries to bring up the possibility of them being one and the same, Lotor denies that his mother could ever be that thing.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- He will try to make a display of force to get enemies to surrender without fighting. This is actually how he makes his entrance to Team Voltron.
- Downplayed. It's revealed that he had no qualms about experimenting on the stronger Altean survivors to figure out how to harvest quintessence, but his reason for doing it was because Zarkon and Haggar's means of destroying entire planets for quintessence was unnecessarily destructive.
- Evil All Along: Season 8 reveals him to have been a compassionate person during his youth, refusing to resort to the openly brutal methods even when ordered to by Zarkon. In Season 5, he claims to be good, saying that everything he did in the previous two seasons was part of a genuine attempt to end the war... and in Season 6, they are, but he's clearly not concerned about concepts like "ethics" or "not committing mass murder for what he perceives as the greater good". Basically, while Lotor has good goals, the means he uses to attain them, his parading of good deeds just to prove he's not Zarkon, and his burning hatred for anyone he sees as his enemy mean he's not a good person.
- Evil Counterpart:
- To Keith as his bitter rival which is in line with Voltron tradition. Both are Pretty Boy Galra hybrids with absent parents – one raised by the Galra and despising them, the other raised human and learning to accept both halves of his heritage. They both have Ship Tease with Allura, are the new leaders of their respective teams after their previous one retires, have been described as hotshots, and both wield swords. Every time Lotor has clashed with Team Voltron has been when Keith was their leader. They both have trust and abandonment issues; Keith coming to terms with them leads to him finding peace and self-acceptance, while Lotor’s unresolved issues ultimately lead to his own destruction. They find their mothers in the same season, and bear a strong physical resemblance to them. Fittingly, they save each other’s lives, and Keith agrees with Allura on retrieving Lotor from the rift before it closes, implied to feel some sympathy for him. The showrunners have constantly brought up parallels between the two and even outright stated that Lotor is what Keith could have been if he went down the dark path. An interview on the What Could Have Been has also stated that Lotor and Keith would have had their stories more tied to each other in their original plan.
- Lotor is also this to Allura, mirroring how their fathers were enemies during an interplanetary war. They are both “lonely at the top” royals — Zarkon’s son and Alfor’s daughter — who have a hard time opening up to others about their feelings, and are extremely goal-oriented people. They both have a burning hatred for the Galra and a deep desire to carry on Altean legacy; in fact, their similar motivations and goals is what draws them to each other in the first place. They are also two of the chosen few able to enter the birthplace of Altean alchemy. Ultimately, the only difference between them is their vastly different upbringings (especially highlighted in how they face the White Lion), which leads to them pursuing different methods to get to the same goal. The showrunners have even said that if Lotor had been raised more like Allura, he would have been “a magnificent person,” and they’re “sure there’s a universe out there somewhere where it worked out between them.”
- Evil Virtues: Ambition, determination, diligence, resourcefulness and valor.
- The Exile: Throk mentions during one of Lotor's gladiator matches that he was an "exiled brat". At the end of Season 5, he explains that it was because — as shown in Season 8 — when placed in charge of mining quintessence from a planet, he chose to do so by cooperating with the inhabitants to only extract as much as could be replenished, rather than taking it all by force and leaving the planet to die like other Galra would have. When Zarkon found out, Lotor defied his father's orders to destroy the planet. Lotor was exiled, and Zarkon destroyed the planet anyway.
- Facial Markings: As the paladins fly towards Oriande, Coran notices Lotor's Altean markings, and they were glowing. The reason they couldn't have been seen before is possibly due to his Altean ability to shapeshift.
- Fallen Hero: He doesn’t act particularly heroic, being mostly pragmatic and that’s not counting how he forcefully extracted Quintessence from Alteans he rescued, but Season 8 reveals that Lotor used to be more heroic in the past. The last season confirms that Lotor did indeed befriend the inhabitants of a planet he was supposed to conquer and worked together with them to produce far more Quintessence without having to destroy the planet or enslave them. However, Zarkon is enraged that Lotor treated the inhabitants as equals and destroyed the planet before exiling him. This event led to Lotor hating his father and developing plans to overthrow him behind his back.
- Fanboy: Of Altean culture. He gets unusually excited when speaking to Allura about Altean culture and has spent centuries researching it.
- Fantastic Racism: Turns out he has nothing but distaste the Galra race as a whole.
- Fatal Flaw: His obsessions with obtaining quintessence "peacefully," without having to sacrifice planets or entire civilizations, and his desire to continue his mother's work. It turns out that Lotor doesn't know when to stop when experimenting on living beings to obtain quintessence, and he doesn't take criticism of his actions well. He could have had a genuine alliance and possible relationship with Allura if he hadn't taken their people and experimented on the strongest survivors.
- Faux Affably Evil: Lotor presents himself as a peacemaker and a noble ruler who wishes to protect his subjects, but his charming, diplomatic facade quickly starts to show cracks when things don't go his way, as we see soon after his introduction when he treats Acxa, initially his most loyal supporter, very coldly and harshly over a setback that wasn't really her fault. And his Villainous Breakdown is Season 6 shows the he can turn downright Ax-Crazy when denied something he really wants, much like his father.
- Foil: To Allura, during the white lion's trials; while he killed the lion yelling "Victory or death!" Allura fell onto her knees telling it, "I give up my life". While Lotor failed the trial, Allura succeeded.
- Frontline General: Throk comments derisively on Lotor's penchant for fighting at the front with his soldiers as it's unfitting of his rank. Lotor's turn as the Big Bad is decidedly different from Zarkon's as Lotor is most certainly not an Orcus on His Throne and is often leading missions against the Paladins directly, to the point of confronting them himself very early on in Season 3. Even after killing his father and becoming Emperor in Season 5, he prefers accompanying Voltron on their missions personally.
- Generation Xerox: While he would deny such, he's more like his father than he'd ever care to admit right down to how his growing relationship with Allura has several thematic and visual parallels to how the one between his parents developed◊.
- A God Am I: Built himself up as such in the eyes of the surviving Alteans whom they thought of as a messiah, and in the finale of Season 6 he's screaming about how everyone will remember his name and praise him. Well-intentioned he may be, but it doesn’t change the fact that he thought himself entitled to take thousands of lives simply because he was their “savior” and thought he was doing everyone a favor. He also seems pretty firmly convinced that whatever he does is ultimately for the universe’s good and that anyone that doesn’t have his morality must be wrong. After his death, Honerva follows in his footsteps by framing him as a god for the Alteans to worship.
- Godzilla Threshold: Haggar's tone of voice when she gives the order implies that she's not exactly pleased that she has to call on Lotor's help. Then there's the fact that Zarkon was willing to delegate the responsibility of capturing Voltron to everyone on his military pecking order from his most trusted lieutenants (Sendak) to spineless toadies (Marvok) with the notable exception of his own flesh and blood.
- The Good King: What he intended to be, after taking the throne — bringing peace to the Galra Empire by supplying it with limitless quintessence. However, the atrocities he committed as a temporary measure to tide the empire over — the sacrifice of countless Altean refugees to harvest their quintessence — result in Voltron rejecting him outright; even though at the end of Season 8 Allura admits that he'd been sincere, if extremely misguided.
- Heel Realization: It looks like he had one as the result of failing the White Lion's test, claiming that Allura was more worthy than he. Subverted in Season 6.
- Hegemonic Empire: He wanted to form the Galran Empire into this rather than The Empire, though out of Pragmatic Villainy.
- Hidden Agenda Villain:
- Lotor clearly has plans for the Galra Empire beyond what Haggar intends for him, which is merely to hold the Empire together until Zarkon comes out of his coma and retakes control. Part of the problem facing the Paladins is that Lotor's actions, especially in the final episodes of Season 3 seemingly make no sense given that he leads his Generals in an attack on a Galra facility to recover a teludav lens and that he barely seems to spend any time actually running the Galra Empire. This causes problems in their attempts to defeat him since it makes Lotor's actions hard to predict. He appears to be trying to build his own Voltron and may be attempting to become a transdimensional conqueror.
- In Season 5, he claims that everything he did was to bring peace to the Galra Empire and the Universe, prompting the Paladins to team up with him once they decide to trust him.
- History Repeats: Like his parents, he slowly goes mad while staying in the quintessence rift, and does whatever he can to achieve his goals no matter the cost.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: He wants absolutely nothing to do with his father, his father's people, or their culture. His hatred gets to the point that — when in a rage — he says that he's willing to the eradicate the entirety of the Galra empire to make way his new Altea.
- I Am Not My Father: One of the points he makes in his speech after his coliseum fight, and says that the Galra Empire should be ruled through loyalty, not fear. Which is, really, just a lie and he doesn't care either way. Much like his father.
- Internal Reformist: What Lotor claims he was trying to do for the Galra, by providing them an alternative means of harvesting the Quintessence it needs to survive via the Quintessence Field without resorting to barbaric methods like the Komar, to transition it from a war-like imperialist super-power to a more peaceful one. Subverted in that he still commits some pretty horrible atrocities that place him firmly in the "evil" camp, and that when pushed too far, decides he'll destroy the Galra anyway and replace it with a new Altean Empire.
- He also says this verbatim, and means it more literally, after confronting Haggar when she tries to get in the way of his plans.
- It's All About Me: While he truly believes that his plans for the universe are what's best for it, it ultimately comes down to it being his way or the high way, and him getting what he wants. The Voltron Coalition Handbook lampshades this in a letter written by Lotor where he is prone to capitalizing "ME" and "MY".
- I've Come Too Far: He refuses to submit to the White Lion with this reason (Victory or Death). Unfortunately for him, his determination to succeed at all costs makes him fail the White Lion's test and he does not receive Altean alchemical knowledge. This is a Fatal Flaw of his; in Season 6, he refuses to stop charging Voltron during Allura's attack, despite clearly fighting a losing battle. She eventually overloads Sincline's systems, and, revealed as of Season 8, kills him. Albeit he wasn't entirely in his right mind at the time, but it wasn't the first time he'd exhibited almost Keith-like suicidal determination.
- Join or Die: His Rousing Speech has him remind those under his command that "each ally gained only makes us stronger" before assuring them "all those who continue to stand against us will be crushed."
- Jumped Off The Slippery Slope: Playing With; he started experimenting and isolating the surviving Alteans long before he was introduced in the show. Up to that point, he seemed at worst pragmatic and at best reasonable. However, as is noted even in the show itself, he started off with good intentions, but the journey to the quintessence dimension makes it very clear that his brain was fried.
- Knight Templar: He did sincerely want to preserve Altean culture, but to do so he did everything from lying to People Farms, and in the end testing his patience threw it all down the drain.
- Lack of Empathy: Genuinely does not understand why Allura would be infuriated by him experimenting on her people. His defense amounts to reminding her that he'd preserved Altean culture, as if that cancels out the inhumanity of what he did.
- Laughing Mad: Towards the end of Season 6, when all of his plans begin to fail, he starts laughing and declaring that he is going to take down all of his enemies, as well as erase Allura and her father from Altean history.
- Lean and Mean: Tall like a Galra (though still shorter than most) and gracefully slender like an Altean.
- Leitmotif: A very prominent one reminiscent of Azula's. It's mostly used during Season 3, but still pops up occasionally in later seasons, usually during his more villainous moments.
- Lesser of Two Evils: He's one of the few Galra politicians who is willing to work with Voltron to broker peace, even if for his own agenda. Then subverted horribly when it turns out he wants to wipe out the Galra and create a new nation of Alteans.
- Locked into Strangeness: According to an interview and as shown in Season 8, he was in his mother's womb when she was exposed to massive amounts of quintessence and transformed into Haggar, which has had rather odd effects on his physiology.
- Longhaired Pretty Boy: He has very long white hair.
- Loving a Shadow: Throughout Season 6, Lotor has expressed admiration for Allura’s abilities and sincerely believes that they are destined to be together. However, it’s evident that he’s attracted to Allura because of her abilities and the benefits it could bring to the universe rather than her personality.
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- Machiavelli Was Wrong: Does a Rousing Speech about not ruling through inspiring fear but through inspiring loyalty instead. Later subverted, as he only invokes this as a way to move the masses. And possibly double subverted, as he later seems to genuinely believe it.
- Mama's Boy: He has nothing but praise to speak for his mother, Honerva. However, he hates Haggar, and vehemently rejects her even when she unveils herself as his mother, stating that so far as he's concerned Honerva is dead.
- Manipulative Bastard: His foresight is, much like his skills with a blade and as a pilot, top-notch, and he definitely uses it for all it's worth. In hindsight, his alliance with the Voltron Force can be seen as a way to consolidate his control over the Galra Empire by getting Team Voltron to take out rebel Galra factions for him.
- Master Swordsman: He's capable of easily holding his own against a skilled Galra general like Throk in the arena, and even manages to break his sword. Before then, Lotor almost effortlessly defeated another opponent in the arena, too.
- Mayfly–December Romance: With Allura. Lotor is over 10,000 years old but retains a youthful appearance due to the effects of Quintessence while Allura remained a teenager because she was placed in cryosleep for those 10,000 years. Of course this massive difference in age and experience allows Lotor to easily manipulate Allura and the relationship doesn't last.
- Mirror Character:
- Despite his denial, Season 6 showed clearly how similar Lotor is to Zarkon. Both of them were obsessed with harvesting Quintessence from the rifts at all cost. Lotor justified harvesting Altean refugees for quintessence with a For the Greater Good argument, just like Zarkon justifying the research into the rift. Lotor also displayed Black-and-White Insanity in his desire to destroy all his enemies. Just to drive the point home, he then fought the Paladin in his own Evil Voltron, just like Zarkon did.
- Perhaps even more so than his father, he's rather glaringly similar to his mother Honerva/Haggar. They resemble each other physically, (long white hair, same manic expression, elegant features), are Laughing Mad with mystical abilities and a flair for the dramatic. Obsessed with quintessence and experiments on living beings? Too clever by half? Come Season 8, they’d both worked towards sympathetic/well-intentioned goals through completely omnicidal methods.
- Named After Somebody Famous: In-Universe; he is named for both Lotarius, an Altean engineer, and Kaltor, a Galran conqueror.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: He is half-Galra and half-Altean. He appears to think of himself as more Altean than Galran, though his Galran upbringing tends to show.
- Obliviously Evil: He doesn't understand why Allura and team Voltron would turn on him for experimenting on surviving Alteans. You know, Allura's people that had already wiped out in ongoing genocide and whom were barely keeping it together as it was.
- Obviously Evil: The unique emblem on his spacesuit? An upside-down five-pointed star.
- Older Than They Look: The other Galra call him a "brat" indicating he is physically juvenile, and he appears to be the Galra equivalent of his late teens to early twenties, but he tells Allura that he's spent centuries researching Alteans and learning from planets he "befriended." His youthful appearance is due to the fact that Haggar was pregnant when she and Zarkon entered the rift, and all of that quintessence is what keeps Lotor essentially immortal. It's unclear whether he just grows exceptionally slowly, or if he matured at a normal rate until he hit his current appearance, then stopped aging altogether - though flashbacks in season 8 seem to imply the latter.
- The One Guy: Of his own villain team no less, acting as (almost) a complete gender inversion of Allura's team.
- Out-Gambitted: He was Out-Gambitted by Haggar during Season 4 when he returned to Zarkon's summon. He thoroughly scanned for tracking device, smugly decided that he has Out-Gambitted not knowing that Haggar has turned Narti into her eyes.
- Pet the Dog: Instead of attempting to kill Acxa, Ezor, and Zethrid for turning on him, he ejects them from their ships and otherwise leaves them alone. The second time might not have been so merciful, given that it left them floating in the middle of a mecha fight with no allies or other ships, but during the first time he even acknowledges that he holds no grudge against them for their actions.
- He apparently left the planet Puig alone after invading it to get Voltron's attention, as their representatives show up again as part of the Coalition.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He is much smaller than other Galra but still one of the most powerful. Lampshaded in his debut episode, as a soldier calls him a "little fellow."
- Pointy Ears: Shown clearly after he removes his helmet, and a clue to his Altean heritage.
- Pragmatic Villainy:
- The one facet that makes him better than Zarkon is that while Lotor does terrible things, he's also concerned with not dying and making countless sacrifices to achieve his goals. Lotor doesn't kill unless it's absolutely necessary, and when he first encounters Voltron he demands their surrender. In Season 5, after surrendering to Voltron and saving Keith's life, he gives intel that helps the rebellion gain decisive victories while aiming for the throne.
- One thing that could be said about his experimenting on surviving Alteans is that he only took a handful that would be deemed strong enough to withstand the tests, and left the rest alone. It's still monstrous though since the Alteans put all their trust in him.
- Pretty Boy: Compared to other Galra, who look more alien, Lotor's fine facial features stand out. Given that he's half-Altean on his mother's side, this makes sense.
- Race Lift: The reboot changes him back to half-Galran half-Altean.
- Sanity Slippage: Lotor's plans to restructure the Galra Empire and rule peacefully almost come to fruition but are thwarted when his experiments on the surviving Alteans and their descendants are revealed and his attempts to justify them as a necessary evil are rejected by Allura — who he had fallen in love with. Voltron destroying the portal to the Quintessence field and repeated exposure to raw Quintessence causes Lotor to snap and go from attempting to convince Allura to join him to deciding to destroy everyone who stands in his way, including Voltron and the Galra Empire itself.
- Self-Made Orphan: He kills Zarkon in Season 5, and believes his mother has been dead for a while.
- Spare to the Throne: Despite being the sole heir to the Galra Empire, the soldiers don't seem to know who Lotor is.
- Start of Darkness: Lotor used to be a compassionate and friendly child who wanted to make Zarkon proud, but his father treated him with indifference and Lotor slowly started to hate him. Once he became an adult, he befriends the population of a planet he was meant to conquer and managed to peacefully produce more Quintessence via peaceful cooperation than pillaging and conquering. His father is less than impressed by his pacifistic methods and talks down to him and his alien companion, causing Lotor to snap back at him and angering Zarkon by revealing that he knew about Honerva. Zarkon punishes him by destroying the planet, much to his horror, and exiling him, which cements Lotor’s hatred for his father and leads him to a darker path.
- Slasher Smile: Sports a pretty nasty one for all of his battle with Voltron in the final episode of Season 6, representing his Villainous Breakdown.
- Space Elf: Complete with long white hair, what is essentially immortality, an elegant mode of speaking, mystical powers, and Pointy Ears.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- He and Haggar have spent much of their time at each other's throats, with Haggar spying on him and showing no compassion. When she rescues him in Season 6 and reveals that she is Honerva, his mother, he refuses to accept her attempts to make amends after her actions led to the entire Galra Empire gunning for him.
- Season 8 shows that being trapped in the Quintessence field for months rather than the quick trip his parents underwent to cure Honerva’s disease, and surrounded by radioactive energy with no food or water means causes one’s body to deteriorate to the point that resurrection is impossible and instead die from starvation/radiation poisoning. Case in point, while Honerva looks inside Lotor’s mecha, we only see Lotor’s balding head from behind, hinting that his body is decomposing by that point.
- Time Abyss: He's only slightly younger than his father.
- Together in Death: Shown in the afterlife with Allura, his parents, and the original Paladins.
- Tragic Villain: As revealed in Season 8, Lotor's future was promising before his birth, until his parents lost their memories of their love, their relationship, and their compassion. His entire childhood, he was treated as just another soldier (albeit Zarkon's successor to the throne), forcing him into a "Well Done, Son" Guy mindset. When he attempted to prove the potential of working alongside species rather than subjugating them to harvest even more Quintessence, his father responds by burning the entire planet in retaliation for Lotor daring to treat non-Galra as equals. This pretty much solidified his hatred for his father, Haggar, and the entire Empire.
- Uncertain Doom: Lotor's fate is left uncertain following his fight with Voltron in the Quintessence field, as Sincline is left badly damaged and stranded there after the rift is closed. The doom is made certain in Season 8.
- Underestimating Badassery: Severely underestimated Haggar. As detailed in Out-Gambitted, he specifically brought Narti along presumably to counter Haggar's magic. Haggar turned the poor girl into her puppet.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Flashbacks from Season 8 show that Lotor was originally a cute and adorable (if slightly entitled) child who merely wanted his father's approval.
- Villain Has a Point: When talking to Shiro and Allura while locked up he makes several legitimate points while claiming he wants to be a benevolent emperor:
- The Galra Empire needs quintessence, regardless of anything else. While Haggar would destroy entire planets, at least Lotor may be able to mine quintessence peacefully, without ruining thousands of lives. The fact that he used Voltron to get the trans-reality comet, which could have killed the Paladins, was a "calculated risk".
- Allura is letting her prejudice of the Galra get in the way of judging them by their actions. While Allura has gotten better about that, she's not completely beyond the trauma of losing her home and her family.
- His intel has been securing them necessary victories. To cap it all off, he tells them where Pidge and Matt's father is.
- A very dark one: he insults King Alfor by saying that while experimenting on the evacuated Alteans was cruel, he actually made the effort to save as many as he could and give them a new home, and they would likely all be extinct if it wasn’t for him. Alfor, in contrast, only saved his daughter and Coran before going to make a doomed last stand against Zarkon. The way that turned out, Allura and Coran thought they were the Last of Their Kind and had little to no means to rebuild their home and culture.
- Lotor maintains that the Galra Empire needs a constant supply of potent quintessence to develop into a peaceful civilization, and works towards accessing the quintessence field in order to supply that. However, his stopgap solution of gathering quintessence involved sacrificing countless Altean refugees, and his attempt to justify this as a necessary evil and a temporary measure until the quintessence field was unlocked horrify and outrage the Paladins.
- Shortly after his debut, he brings up the point that Voltron can liberate as many planets as they like, but they can only be in so many places at once. Most freed planets are immediately open to invasion again without a means to defend themselves once Voltron leaves. He proves this by immediately swooping in and retaking a world that Voltron freed as soon as they left; and just to add insult to injury, he did it easily and without even killing anyone.
- His ghost in Season 8 tells Allura that Haggar may be calling herself Honerva, but she is the same witch who is their common enemy. Also, it turns out that he was right that the ghost entity from the quintessence realm is the key to unlocking Honerva's plan.
- Villains Never Lie: Discussed. The heroes don't really trust Lotor after he spent all of Season 3 manipulating them and gaining victory after victory, but they can't deny that his intel is gaining them more victories with far less loss from the rebellions. Allura for one says she doesn't trust him after he claims that he actually wants to reign in an era of peace.
- Also Played With, even after The Reveal of Season 6. Lotor was always upfront about wanting to find more sustainable methods to harvest quintessence; he just leaves out the methods that he was already using.
- Villainous Breakdown:
- A really minor, subtle one, dropping his Affably Evil camaraderie with his subordinates after he loses the Teludav component, voicing his discontent calmly, but clearly furious that his plans have been delayed.
- Has another subtle one after killing Narti, becoming unusually withdrawn and snappish to the other generals. He doesn't even retaliate when Acxa approaches him with a loaded weapon.
- A more straightforward example in the Season 6 finale. When the Voltron team confronts him over harvesting Altean Quintessence, Lotor tries to justify it as a necessary evil — the sacrifice of a few to benefit millions, and a temporary measure until he can gain access to the Quintessence field. Allura repeatedly rejecting him and stating he's as bad as his father, combined with Voltron destroying the portal to the Quintessence field, causes Lotor to snap — exacerbated by prolonged exposure to the Quintessence field — and try to kill them, including Allura.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Subverted. Lotor tries to invoke this by displaying a more even-handed style of rulership when he first takes over the Galra. When he reconquers a planet he tries to set himself up to the locals as a more benevolent alternative to Zarkon in order to gain their trust. The Galra's warrior culture doesn't take too kindly to his more low-key Pragmatic Villainy and he never gains any allies especially when his Generals betray him after he kills one. He also never manages to significantly influence any of the empire's conquered races before Zarkon deposes him. He comes closest to this trope when he pretends to be the Paladins' ally. He's also very popular with the Altean refugees that he'd provided sanctuary for and are unaware of how he's exploited them.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: A character trait of his. He spends a good portion of his screentime establishing that he's not like his genocidal, violent father, and does a number of good deeds to prove it, like saving Keith's life, providing necessary intel to the rebellion, and helping Allura reconnect with Altean alchemy. It turns out that extolling how much good you've done isn't enough to erase the bad you've done in the past, especially when you try to justify it.
- Warrior Prince: Whether it's on the ground or in a spaceship, Lotor kicks plenty of ass.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lotor was being genuine about his desire to non-violently supply the Galra Empire with a limitless amount of quintessence by tapping into the quintessence field, and went out of his way to gather Altean refugees in order to keep his mother's culture and people alive. However, his stopgap solution for the Galra Empire's quintessence needs was exceedingly cruel and amoral: he began selecting Alteans with potent quintessence, tricking them into thinking they were being sent to a different colony in case the first one was discovered, and then draining them of their vitality in an off-site lab. His actions to keep Altea alive were genuine but horrific, which Allura herself acknowledges at the end of Season 8. After being pissed off and undergoing Sanity Slippage, he decides to just destroy the Galra Empire altogether and create a new Altean Empire that worships him as a god.
- White Hair, Black Heart: When he removes his helmet it reveals that he has long white hair, which hints at him being half-Altean, and his mother being Haggar. He also harvests countless Alteans for their quintessence.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: After the paladins destroy his portal and Allura refuses to work with him again, he starts using the Sincline ship against them. His rage and repeatedly teleporting through the Quintessence field drives him insane, and he begins laughing madly throughout the fight and sporting a Psychotic Smirk. This only gets worse once he fights the group inside the rift.
- The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: Subverted in that the Galra Empire is sort of an elective monarchy, where the candidates must compete with each other for the throne. Lotor can and eventually does compete for the throne and win, but it's clear that neither Zarkon, Haggar or any of the other Galra generals think that he has what it takes.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Lotor is a master at not only making plans, but quickly adjusting them in order to deal with changes in the situation that are beyond his control.
