tcdoherty

Voltron spoilers. Not here to cause drama but because I’m a writer and here’s my hot take on and analysis of why I’m decidedly not angry about a certain event.

Adam dying isn’t part of the bury your gays trope.

Adam’s function wasn’t to be a fully realized character, nor was it to get the audience to like him, and it certainly wasn’t to be Shiro’s love interest. Adam’s only function was as a reveal of who Shiro is.

Not only his sexuality but who he is. Adam said “This mission is going to kill you, I’m not going through this again. Pick me or the mission”.

Shiro picked the mission. That tells us something about him, rather it confirms something that we have already glimpsed. It points to an old, old pattern of Shiro’s. “I’m not doing this again,” Adam said. Shiro puts whatever he considers his duty above not only his own life and happiness, but the lives and happiness of others as well. That’s who he is. That’s why he was able to be a paladin in the first place, probably.

Adam’s inclusion in the story wasn’t really about Shiro’s sexuality, any more than his death was part of the bury your gays trope.

Adam died of a completely unrelated trope, old fashioned military leader refuses to listen to new intel and sends men out on an ill-advised mission the audience, and relevant characters, knows will get them killed.

His death was not used for shock value. How can it be in that set up? We already know he would die, that’s part of the trope. There was no building up of happiness or hope or excitement all to come crashing down. Not to mention he and Shiro broke up three years before his death. It was a completely different trope at play.

Did he have to be one of the pilots who died? Not necessarily. But what other role could they give him? He’d already fulfilled his purpose. It’s not as if he was waiting for Shiro to get back, and it’s not as if Shiro thought he would be waiting. Shiro made his choice. He and Adam broke up. Three years is plenty of time to move on. The only function he could have reasonably played would be somewhat bitchy ex, and did we actually need that?

And isn’t giving him some kind of ‘conclusion’ to his story better than using him in one scene and never showing him again? In this way he meant something to the story, both in the very beginning, and towards the end.

Anyway. I know people are almost certainly mad about it but it doesn’t bother me. The opposite of the bury your gays trope isn’t that no gay character ever dies, it’s that they are never killed for purely shock value after leading us to believe there will be a happy conclusion. It’s that their deaths, should they have them, fulfill an actual purpose in the story. His did.

Adam was a fighter pilot on a planet in the middle of a hostile takeover. He died. He would have died whether he was gay or not.

So, anyway, I’m not upset about it. (plus, tbh in my personal opinion, the emotional arcs of the story right now just aren’t set up for romance to be a part of it. there’s a little Allura and Lance but not even much of that – romance just isn’t part of the build-up of this season).