You must be right. The last couple of seasons have established that S3Ep5 and S3Ep6 Shiro are the same person, though I am still puzzled about his leg wound being cinematically cued in as significant, and then nothing happening. You are right. He seems to be some kind of ‘trace’ shiro who is a clone but honestly thinks he is shiro, and he tends to phase in and out of shiro-awesomeness. Poor guy. I’m starting to care about him because he is such a mess. 🙁 But I still would gladly sacrifice him to get the real Shiro back. Can’t wait till June 15th!

I hope thhe real ship comes back and reclaims his spot on the team

What if the black lion only recognized shiro because it felt a TRACE of shiro but after saving him the lion realized it wasn’t shiro but a clone?? This is just a theory but I thought it kinda made sense

*sensing not sending

If you haven’t noticed, this “Shiro” doesn’t have his weapon thing that you can connect to the lions and it unlocks their special power but yet when Shiro was fighting Zarkon he got it back, so this “Shiro” isn’t Shiro which is why Black Lion won’t respond to him. In answer to the whole sending him thing, Keith was so set on looking for Shiro that they found him in a cave so BL didn’t sense anything. My theory is that Pidge is going to find out that Kuron “Shiro” isn’t real Shiro and she is going to find where her father and brother are and that’s where actual Shiro is going to be. Cus S2 was kinda about Keith, S3 is about Lance and S4 is most likely going to be about Pidge.

in Season 1, when Shiro is fighting witch Haggar, she makes false images of Shiro and has them attack him

in Season 2, when Keith is hallucinating in the Blade of Marmora trials, a fake hallucination of Shiro shows up and is really nasty to him and disowns him.

So already, in two previous episodes, we have moments when Keith has to ignore a “fake” shiro. Even though the two previous times were hallucinations, for story-writing purposes it seems quite significant.

And for story-writing purposes–the fact that in S3e5 they make such a big deal out of his wounded leg, and then (apparently) do nothing with it….seems to imply that it is a clue that Ep5 and Ep 6 Shiros are not the same Shiro.

I think it was real Shiro when he was dying and the Black Lion warped in to save him. But then….in the next episode the Black Lion doesn’t recognize him at all. So….. it seems like something happened between Ep 5 and Ep 6?

come to think of it, it would be easy for the Galra to send the clone after the real dying Shiro in episode 5–after all, he was sending out a distress beacon to everyone as he was dying there. So then they could have picked up the signal, lurked in the shadows, and when the castle of lions warped in to pick up Shiro, the Galra could have sent the clone to board the ship, track down the real Shiro, and swap out. They would have ‘needed’ the real shiro so that the Black Lion would sense him dying and show up. But after that they could discard him.

The thing is, ‘shaggy’ shiro from Ep5 did seem to be Shiro. He was emotional like Shiro (they way he gasped in pain), he related to the crew like Shiro (the way he talked with Keith “how long will you rescue me”), and he did unexpected risky/selfless things you’d expect from Shiro (like throwing back the rebel back his gun and earning his trust). If there is one thing about him, its that he is always getting people’s trust first, not coercive at all. And–I’ll point out that the Black Lion DID recognize the shaggy Shiro and come to rescue him. He also has this prominent leg-wound that the camera keeps panning over to remind us of. And he looks kinda malnourished in his prisoner leggings.

Then….kabam, in Ep6 he’s back on the bridge and he is strong and buff and healthy with no leg-wound. He’s smug and flat. He stops interacting with the team in an emotional way. The only person he still interacts with is Keith, and it is only to undermine him. He seems flat, like a robotic imitator of the real shiro. He says inspiring lines but he says them with no emotion–not like how he said them in season 1 and 2. And he treats the whole crew very distantly–no hugs or anything, even to Pidge/Kate. Also, he seems to be intent on controlling Keith which is really, really odd. Also, there is the whole black lion interaction–the way he awkwardly tugs at the controls and walks out without even trying to talk to the Black Lion…. well…. it looked like someone trying to hide the fact that they never flew the Lion and wasn’t recognized by it.

So…it seems to me that Ep5 shaggy Shiro is the real Shiro of season #1 and #2….but that between him collapsing in the room alone on the Castle….and him appearing in tip-top shape on the bridge in the next episosde….he got swapped.

Between Ep5 and Ep6, did the clone tail him, get aboard, and get rid of him? How could this all happen offscreen? How could the Voltron team not realize if Shiro was being jumped in the other room of the Castle?

That is what confuses me. The new spiffy Shiro certainly seems to be a clone, but the shaggy Shiro really seemed to be Shiro. So…..what the heck happened on the Castle itself between episodes 5 and 6?

Oh btw, I was just thinking, the possible clone have the memories of the Shiro we know with voltron and the others. So it means they transfer his memories, so the galra have Shiro somewhere and used him to finish the experiment. Question is, what are they gonna do with the true Shiro?

Argh!!!