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It's fitting that Honerva was the final villain of Voltron: Legendary Defender. Her research on the rift was the catalyst that set the entire plot in motion. Her influence shaped both Lotor and Zarkon, her son and her husband, the main antagonists of the previous arcs, in different ways. So it’s only fitting that she be the final boss of the series. But for someone who’s supposed to be the villain of Arc 3, Honerva was completely absent from Season 7. Yet her influence on the plot remained.
As we look back on the whole series (regardless of our personal feelings about how certain characters were treated in the final season), let’s take a look at how each of the three members of the Galra royal family operates during their respective tenures as the main antagonist of their arc:
Zarkon’s main objective is taking back the Black Lion, and with it, Voltron itself, and using it to access the Quintessence field. But his planning is, in retrospect, one-note and repetitive. His response to his enemies was to throw the might of his empire at them. Whenever Haggar’s Robeasts failed, another one was sent. Medically inaccurate as it may be, the saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result” perfectly sums up Zarkon’s arc as a villain, best illustrated by repeatedly trying to connect with the Black Lion with the aid of the Druids even when his connection grows weaker and the Druids begin to tire. He’s built up as a serious threat because of his immortality and his ability to fight a Voltron Lion on foot, armed with nothing but the Black Bayard, and win. But when it comes down to tactics and strategy, there are none. His preferred solution is to throw bodies at Voltron, be they ships, Robeasts, or his own troops, and expect them to win. Anything more complex than that was orchestrated by others: Sendak, Prorok, Haggar…
Lotor’s ultimate goal is to build Sincline so that he can harvest Quintessence from the rift. He operates on the front lines and prefers to face Voltron directly, with only occasional assistance from the empire at large. To quote one post I read a while back “Lotor doesn’t have an actual plan. He has goals, but he plays fast and loose with the steps he takes to reach them”. Lotor doesn’t have a concrete A to B to C plan to get what he wants. His plans are more along the lines of “If A doesn’t work, at least we get B out of it. If A does work, we can move ahead with C”. We see that in S3E4. Lotor’s agenda for that episode boiled down to “if Voltron is destroyed before it can get the comet, at least it’s out of the way and we can come up with another way to get the comet. If Voltron does retrieve the comet, then we can attack Voltron and steal the comet for ourselves.”
For much of the series, Honerva's goals were trickier to pin down. For much of the first arc, she was fiercely loyal to her husband and content to serve by his side. When Lotor entered the picture and began acting indecently of the empire's central power structure, things got murkier. For most of Seasons 3 and 4, her primary focus was overseeing her husband's recovery, and following that, the destruction of their enemies. Once she remembered that Lotor was her son, she was in the wind. None of us could really figure out what she was planning. Was she serving some kind of dark god? Was she just continuing her research from before? But in the end, what she was doing was irrelevant. Because once she discovered Lotor's fate and realized that her entire family had been destroyed because of her actions, she abandoned all other plans and threw everything she had into finding a way to get back what she had lost.
Some feel that it would have been better if she'd been a major threat in Season 7 instead of Sendak, but looking back, it fits because of both her prior role in the narrative, and her established tactics. Just like Team Voltron, the audience has overlooked her as a threat because without Zarkon's influence, she's faded into the background, only showing up long enough to act cryptic as she uses spies and clones to gather information on her enemies. And while her husband threw his weight around to get what he wanted and her son just winged it, Honerva was playing a quiznaking chess game.
Honerva/Haggar may have been absent from Season 7, but there are so many things and characters associated with her:
the Komar, her personal project that she began testing all the way back in season 1.
The Druids, her devoted followers.
Hepta, the officer formerly in charge of Operation Kuron.
Sendak, her intended puppet for the throne.
All of these combined paint a clear picture of how she operated during her tenure as a main antagonist: by manipulating and misdirecting her enemies like she always has. It's fitting that none of the Paladins think to consider her a threat until the results of her machinations are staring them directly in the face in the form of the Altean pilots
Haggar was the one who summoned Lotor back from exile to rule while Zarkon was recovering. Subsequently, Team Voltron spent all of Season 3 and most of Season 4 focused on figuring out what Lotor was up to and stopping him.
Haggar was the one who presented Sendak as a contender for the Kral Zera. After Lotor took the throne, Sendak went rogue and provided a threat to the security of his empire that kept Voltron occupied when they weren’t working on the comet ship.
Haggar planted Shiro’s clone among the team, taking control right after Allura found out about the Colony and removing Lotor from the castle as the generals attacked to shatter any hope for the Voltron-Lotor alliance to recover from Romelle’s revelations. While the rest of the team was focused on stopping Lotor from accessing the Quintessence Field, Haggar got away without anyone noticing.
When the Blade of Marmora found the Second Colony empty, Haggar sicced the Druids on them, devastating the organization and keeping them so focused on their own survival that they didn’t spare a thought towards tracking her down or finding out what she’d done to the Alteans.
Sendak invaded Earth on her orders to draw out Voltron and destroy them. When Sendak failed, she sent out Luka in the Altean mecha to face Voltron while she finished the preparations she needed to pull her son from the Rift.
Would it have been better to have her as an upfront antagonist in Season 7 instead of Sendak? Maybe. At the very least, there would have been enough time for the cathartic Shiro vs. Haggar rematch I'd been hoping for. But ultimately, it's fitting that they went this route. Because the upfront villain isn't who Honerva is as a character. She's someone who leaves the battles and invasions to others so that she can continue her scheming and machinations in the background without interruption. And saving her big confrontations with Team Voltron for the final season reflects that.