thorias:

Lance is a character that a lot of fans have complained hasn’t been focused on enough, hasn’t gotten any respect, hasn’t had flashbacks when everyone else has, etc, etc. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think the reason for that isn’t Lance being ignored so much as the nature of his character arc being different from the others.  

A lot of the other characters have had mini-arcs that begin and conclude within a set period – Pidge’s search for Matt and her father, Keith accepting the role of Black Paladin, Allura’s whole thing with Lotor, and so on. Because of this, the other characters appear to get more attention and have more development (and I’m not saying they don’t in some cases) when they take the spotlight in the episodes that these mini-arcs climax in. For example, The Reunion was entirely Pidge-centric because that episode was the payoff for Pidge’s search for Matt, The Black Paladins was all about Keith and Shiro because that was the conclusion of the stories of Keith accepting the role of leader and the whole Kuron plot. Lance’s arc isn’t like that. 

For whatever reason, the writers have chosen to do something different with Lance where his arc is one continuous through line that spans the whole series while the development of the other characters comes in a mini-arc here and a mini-arc there. 

Lance actually has a lot of different things going on. The reason he doesn’t appear to get focused on as much as some people would like is that these things have yet to pay off. And since s8 is the final season, this is when that all has to happen.  

Lance’s main arc is about overcoming his insecurities and the various things that spin out of that, such as considering himself the team’s weak link, thinking he’d have nothing to offer Allura and feeling inferior to Lotor. This is an arc that started at the very beginning of the show, the payoff for which has yet to occur, and after that much build up, the climax should be huge. 

On top of this, there are several other things we know are going to happen from what the actors have said. The infamous Lance sobbing scene is still coming, so we know something big involving Lance will no doubt happen to cause that (I don’t know about you, but I’m bracing myself for Veronica’s death). We also know there’s a scene where Shiro helps Lance deal with his insecurities, which we haven’t gotten yet either. This part is just me speculating, but I think he’s going to HAVE to have some kind of confrontation with Lotor, though whether there’s an actual fight between them (please!) remains to be seen. Oh, and then there’s the little issue of the Allurance payoff, which is another arc that’s been on a slow burn for the entire series and is still waiting for its conclusion. 

So basically, I expect Lance to have a very big role in s8 because, while most of the other characters are more or less fully formed by now, Lance still has a ton of stuff to wrap up.