Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
justpastdusk) wrote2018-10-03 05:03 pm
justpastdusk) wrote2018-10-03 05:03 pm
Entry tags:
Canon update write-up
Player: AF
Character: Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane
Current Canon Point: Between seasons 2 and 3
Updated Canon Point: Right at the end of season 6
Updated Background: Settle the fuck in, guys, I've got like 26 fucking episodes to summarize here. You'd think I could skip this shit on account of Shiro being dead for all of it but no! He's aware of what's going on around the Black Lion (and it's implied the other Lions, too) to at least some degree and he gets all of his clone's memories at the end of it, so I get to cover e v e r y t h i n g. I'll try to keep it down to the real important shit.
So Shiro'sdead mysteriously vanished, which means Team Voltron is down a Black Paladin, which means they can't actually form Voltron. Thankfully, with Zarkon out of commission, they don't strictly need the entire Voltron, so they put off dealing with that problem for an unspecified amount of time, probably something like months. But eventually they decide they can't stop putting it off and they need to find a replacement Paladin for the Black Lion. The whole team tries to get it to respond to them but it only activates for Keith. Lance takes over the vacated Red Lion, and Princess Allura steps up to take over the Blue Lion.
Most of this lion juggling takes place while the team is under sudden attack from Prince Lotor, Zarkon's son and emperor pro tem, and boy does that go poorly for Team Voltron! Keith's having trouble with the Black Lion because it's way slower than the Red Lion, Lance is having trouble with the Red Lion because it's way faster than the Blue Lion, Allura's having trouble with the Blue Lion because she's used to piloting a giant fucking castle, and presumably while this is happening Shiro is miserably burying his face in his hands inside the Black Lion. Needless to say, the team can't successfully form Voltron like this, but after a bunch of fucking up they do finally manage to get their shit together and form Voltron and Lotor leaves to continue his schemey schemes.
The team gets an Altean distress signal, and following it leads them to an old Altean ship stuck in a rift between realities. Voltron can go through the rift, and on the other side of it they find a universe where Altea won the war with the Galra and proceeded to conquer the rest of the universe in the name of peace and it's not great, so the team grabs the magical comet that was causing the inter-reality rift and ollies on out back to their own reality, where Lotor promptly ambushes them and steals the comet. Awesome.
MEANWHILE, Shiro (the clone version, this is going to get confusing, I'm sorry, I'm trying my best) suddenly wakes up on a Galra ship with no idea how he got there or, in fact, any recollection of anything that's happened to him since the big fight with Zarkon, save for a few flashes of Galra doctors mentioning something called "Operation Kuron". He understandably flips out and proceeds to escape, stealing an escape pod and crash-landing on a nearby snowy planet. He wanders around for a couple of days, until he gets attacked by a crab-like animal and rescued by a couple of rebels and immediately passes out. When he next wakes up, they've got him strung up like some kind of piece of meat, because they don't believe for a second that he's not some kind of Galra spy (/HOLLOW LAUGHTER). He escapes this, subdues the rebel pair, and then convinces them that he's on their side and they should help him find the rest of Team Voltron. They listen in on some Galra radio chatter and discover that Voltron is fighting Prince Lotor right now and a nearby Galra ship is about to make a hyperspace jump to the battlefield to assist. So Shiro takes the rebels' ship so he can break into the Galra ship and after it makes its jump, he steals one of their fighter ships and chases after Voltron, but it's already withdrawing from the battlefield and he can't keep up with it or make contact, and soon it disappears from sight.
Out of options, Shiro keeps his ship headed on that course for a week as his oxygen supply slowly dwindles into nothingness, and just about when he's at his end, the Black Lion suddenly picks up on his presence and the team goes and rescues him. After an unspecified amount of time recuperating, he gets a new haircut, a new outfit, and a new inexplicable complete lack of response from the Black Lion when he tries to pilot it. Inexplicable to him and the rest of the team, at least; now that we know he was a clone, presumably this was caused by the real Shiro inside the Black Lion being like, "Hey, what the fuck, fuck off???"
So Keith continues to pilot the Black Lion, but Shiro (the clone) backseat pilots relentlessly, severely undercutting Keith's already shaky confidence in his own leadership skills. Making matters worse, Keith has started taking on more missions with the Blade of Marmora, which ends up keeping him away from the team at some crucial moments. This comes to a head when Keith is away during a battle where the team really needs Voltron, and Shiro finally takes another stab at getting the Black Lion to respond to him. He pleads with it that people's lives are at stake, and it trusted him once, trust him again, and this time, the Black Lion works for him. After the battle, Keith tells the team that he's going on a long-term mission with the Blades and leaves.
Pidge finds her brother finally, Shiro is happy about that (the clone, though presumably that's also true for the real Shiro), the team learns that Zarkon's recovered from having his shit kicked in and has turned on Lotor, the Voltron Show happens, and then it's time for the coalition the team's been building to strike a major blow against the Empire. The planet Naxzela forms a major chokepoint of sorts, and by freeing it from Galra control, the rebellion can essentially cut a solid third of the Empire off from the rest of it. The attack goes well at first, but then it turns out that Naxzela is essentially a giant bomb and Haggar's charging it up from a nice safe distance. The rebels try to stop her, but can't break through the magical shield surrounding her ship, and all hope seems lost until Lotor comes in out of fucking nowhere in a ship he made out of that magic comet he stole earlier, which has the firepower necessary to get through Haggar's shield. After Haggar's chased off, Lotor opens communication with the rebels all like "SO LET'S TALK :]"
Team Voltron is, understandably, very doubtful of Lotor's motives, and they keep him on lockdown in the castle until they can figure out whether or not to trust him and the info he gives them as a sign of goodwill. The missions they perform using his intel all go well enough, but the team's not convinced still, and Lotor finally shares a bit of info that he was holding off on because he felt it was too dangerous: he knows where Sam Holt is being held. Despite Lotor's concerns, the raid on the facility didn't really go any more disastrously than is typical for Team Voltron, except for one tiiiiiiiiny little detail: Sam Holt wasn't actually there.
Cue Zarkon contacting the Castle with Sam in tow, all like "give me my son and I'll give you your dad back."
So a big argument breaks out over whether or not to agree to this, with Shiro (the clone) coming down on the "this is totally a trap" side, but the team decides to carry out the exchange. Conveniently, it's right about now that Haggar suddenly remembers that Lotor is also her kid, and she activates the next stage of Operation Kuron. This gives her greater influence over clone Shiro's decisions and lets her look through his eyes to spy on what's going on with Team Voltron. In this specific instance, her influence nudges Shiro into slipping Lotor his bayard before the exchange is carried out. Without telling anyone on the team that he's doing it. But it's good that he does, because the exchange was indeed a trap, and the Sam Holt that Zarkon traded over was a hologram. A fight breaks out after they realize that, in which the actual Sam Holt is recovered and Lotor kills Zarkon.
SO NOW ZARKON'S DEAD and that leaves a big old power vacuum in the Galra chain of command. Lotor explains that succession will be determined at a ceremony (by which we mean a big old fight, because this is how the Galra do) called the Kral Zera, and it would be super great if Team Voltron backed him up there so he can take the throne and make the Galra Empire less conquer-y. The team can't come to an agreement on whether or not this would, in fact, be super great, but Shiro is very firmly on the super great side, to the point where he even snaps at Lance to stay out of it when he dissents.
While this is going on, one of the aspirants to the Galra throne decides to throw his weight around by attacking Olkarion. He traps Voltron in a weird plant cocoon, and in order to escape, the team tries tapping into their link with the Lions/Voltron. They access something akin to the Black Lion's astral plane, except Shiro doesn't show up with the rest. They all call out to him, until finally Shiro shows up. The real Shiro, the one trapped inside the Black Lion's consciousness. He tries to use this opportunity to warn the team that the other Shiro isn't him, but it doesn't get through. Voltron escapes the cocoon, wins the day, and Shiro (the clone) apologizes to Lance for snapping at him and notes that he can't remember what happened when they all accessed the Voltron bond, he just kind of blacked out for a while. WEIRD, HUH?
And then it's time for the Kral Zera, and the team's consensus has settled on not going. ...So Shiro (the clone) takes Lotor and sneaks off with the Black Lion to the Kral Zera anyway. Lotor wins it, at least??? And Lotor wants to bring peace to the universe and stay buddies with Voltron, so that thing where Shiro just acted on his own against the team's wishes just gets kind of gently swept under the rug. Lotor has a very specific plan for how to bring peace to the universe, and step one is to find the mythical planet of Oriande and unlock the secrets of Altean alchemy. When they get there, Oriande's defenses shut down the Castle's power and will only let Allura and Lotor through, so the rest of the team gets to settle in and wait until either they get back or the Castle runs out of oxygen, whichever comes first. While this is going on, Shiro confides in Lance that he hasn't quite been feeling like himself lately. Fortunately, Lotor and Allura get back before everyone can suffocate to death (even if they cut it a little close), though only Allura got to actually get the secrets of Altean alchemy.
Of course, Haggar can still see through clone Shiro's eyes, and thus the team has unwittingly shown her the way to Oriande. I would sarcastically remark that surely this will not come back to bite them in the ass later, but actually it is already biting them in the ass in the present as Shiro gets psychic feedback from Haggar facing Oriande's trials that cause him to fuck up on a mission and almost get everybody killed. IT'S FINE, HE'S FINE, EVERYTHING IS F I N E.
Eventually Lotor and Allura finish making a quintessence-infused ship and take it out to test that it can in fact enter the quintessence field that exists between realities. And it can! Cool! Except while they're gone, Keith finally comes back, and he's inexplicably two years older and he has his Galra mom in tow and also an Altean??? They explain that the Altean is named Romelle, and she comes from a colony of Alteans hidden in a particularly compressed area of space (which is why Keith is older, compressing space compresses time, too) founded by Lotor, who went around and tracked down all the Alteans who hadn't been on Altea when it was destroyed and brought them there to live without fear of the Galra discovering them. Pretty cool of him, right? BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. A while ago, Lotor went to the colony and announced he'd made a second colony, and he was taking Alteans who met unspecified parameters to populate it, but unfortunately there couldn't be any communication between the two colonies out of fear of the Galra. Romelle's parents were taken to the second colony, and then later her little brother was. He escaped and warned her that the second colony was a lie before dying, but she didn't get any details about it until Keith and his mother, Krolia, arrived. They found the "second colony" and discovered that Lotor was using the Alteans as living fuel sources by harvesting their quintessence.
When Allura finds out about this, she is, perhaps needless to say, fucking pissed, especially considering that she literally had just started macking on Lotor. He tries to justify himself, but she is having none of it and knocks his weedy ass the fuck out. But, uh, remember that thing where Haggar can watch the team through clone Shiro's eyes and also Lotor is her son? That's about to come to a violent, messy head.
Haggar sends Lotor's former generals to attack the Castle while simultaneously asserting total control over the clone. Shiro wipes the floor with everyone who isn't trying to take care of the generals, takes Lotor, and leaves, returning to Haggar along with the generals, who have grabbed that cool dimension-crossing ship. Keith manages to follow them in the Black Lion, and once Lotor has been safely delivered to her, Haggar sends Shiro to get rid of Keith. He leads Keith to the facility where all the other hundreds of clones are stored, and they fight. The fight's a rough one, both physically and emotionally, and during the course of it, Shiro's arm goes just fucking buckwild, expanding all the way up to Shiro's shoulder and turning into a laser cannon and it's just totally bananas.
Keith wins by cutting off Shiro's arm and thus severing Haggar's control, but by that point the entire facility is coming apart in space, between the damage Shiro caused in the fight and the self-destruct protocol Shiro had started earlier. Keith grabs Shiro, the Black Lion picks them up, Keith somehow accesses the Black Lion's consciousness and finally the original Shiro gets to have a proper conversation with someone for the first time in four fucking seasons. He explains that the other Shiro isn't him and that he died at the end of season two, and then fades away mid-sentence, leaving Keith alone in the Black Lion's cockpit with an unconscious clone and a severe need to get the fuck back to the rest of the team. With the real Shiro's encouragement, Keith unlocks the Black Lion's wings and teleports to the rest of the team, who are currently fighting Lotor.
Lotor's dimension-crossing ship can turn into a giant robot because of course it can, and when he withdraws into the quintessence field, Voltron follows. The quintessence field makes Voltron unbelievably powerful, but the longer they stay in there, the more unhinged they all get, so the team decides to leave, leaving an extremely unhinged Lotor behind, in a decision that will surely not bite them in the ass in the future. But since Lotor was popping in and out of the quintessence field all left and right during their fight, there's a bunch of literal holes in space all over the battlefield, and if something isn't done about them and quick, they will destroy Literally Everything. So the solution the team comes up with is to sacrifice the Castle of Lions to essentially create a black hole to compress it all into nothingness.
Once that's taken care of, the Lions land on a nearby planet, and Keith explains to everyone else that the barely-hanging-onto-life Shiro they've got here is a clone, and the spirit of the original is stuck in the Black Lion. So Allura goes over to the Black Lion, basically downloads Shiro's soul into herself, and then uploads him into the clone's body, which also has the side effect of turning his hair completely white. Shiro's awake for about five seconds before he passes out again and FINALLY I can stop writing because there's my new canon point!
Updated Personality: More of the same here, really. I mean, he's not really present on screen for almost all of the shit I covered, but going by season 7, the trajectory is that his mental health continues to improve and stabilize, much as it has in his time in Emp.
Updated Abilities: OK so basically everything I've ever put into this kind of section is gone now. The Galra right arm is gone, so no more murder hand, and taking him out of the Black Lion took all of him out of the Black Lion, severing his bond with it, so that won't be coming back with him, either. He still has his Paladin armor (also down an arm), but that's basically it, and without a right arm, he probably shouldn't be doing anything that would really call for it anyway. (Will that actually stop him, though? Time will tell.)
Other: Shiro'll be out from the 8th to the 12th. o7
Character: Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane
Current Canon Point: Between seasons 2 and 3
Updated Canon Point: Right at the end of season 6
Updated Background: Settle the fuck in, guys, I've got like 26 fucking episodes to summarize here. You'd think I could skip this shit on account of Shiro being dead for all of it but no! He's aware of what's going on around the Black Lion (and it's implied the other Lions, too) to at least some degree and he gets all of his clone's memories at the end of it, so I get to cover e v e r y t h i n g. I'll try to keep it down to the real important shit.
So Shiro's
Most of this lion juggling takes place while the team is under sudden attack from Prince Lotor, Zarkon's son and emperor pro tem, and boy does that go poorly for Team Voltron! Keith's having trouble with the Black Lion because it's way slower than the Red Lion, Lance is having trouble with the Red Lion because it's way faster than the Blue Lion, Allura's having trouble with the Blue Lion because she's used to piloting a giant fucking castle, and presumably while this is happening Shiro is miserably burying his face in his hands inside the Black Lion. Needless to say, the team can't successfully form Voltron like this, but after a bunch of fucking up they do finally manage to get their shit together and form Voltron and Lotor leaves to continue his schemey schemes.
The team gets an Altean distress signal, and following it leads them to an old Altean ship stuck in a rift between realities. Voltron can go through the rift, and on the other side of it they find a universe where Altea won the war with the Galra and proceeded to conquer the rest of the universe in the name of peace and it's not great, so the team grabs the magical comet that was causing the inter-reality rift and ollies on out back to their own reality, where Lotor promptly ambushes them and steals the comet. Awesome.
MEANWHILE, Shiro (the clone version, this is going to get confusing, I'm sorry, I'm trying my best) suddenly wakes up on a Galra ship with no idea how he got there or, in fact, any recollection of anything that's happened to him since the big fight with Zarkon, save for a few flashes of Galra doctors mentioning something called "Operation Kuron". He understandably flips out and proceeds to escape, stealing an escape pod and crash-landing on a nearby snowy planet. He wanders around for a couple of days, until he gets attacked by a crab-like animal and rescued by a couple of rebels and immediately passes out. When he next wakes up, they've got him strung up like some kind of piece of meat, because they don't believe for a second that he's not some kind of Galra spy (/HOLLOW LAUGHTER). He escapes this, subdues the rebel pair, and then convinces them that he's on their side and they should help him find the rest of Team Voltron. They listen in on some Galra radio chatter and discover that Voltron is fighting Prince Lotor right now and a nearby Galra ship is about to make a hyperspace jump to the battlefield to assist. So Shiro takes the rebels' ship so he can break into the Galra ship and after it makes its jump, he steals one of their fighter ships and chases after Voltron, but it's already withdrawing from the battlefield and he can't keep up with it or make contact, and soon it disappears from sight.
Out of options, Shiro keeps his ship headed on that course for a week as his oxygen supply slowly dwindles into nothingness, and just about when he's at his end, the Black Lion suddenly picks up on his presence and the team goes and rescues him. After an unspecified amount of time recuperating, he gets a new haircut, a new outfit, and a new inexplicable complete lack of response from the Black Lion when he tries to pilot it. Inexplicable to him and the rest of the team, at least; now that we know he was a clone, presumably this was caused by the real Shiro inside the Black Lion being like, "Hey, what the fuck, fuck off???"
So Keith continues to pilot the Black Lion, but Shiro (the clone) backseat pilots relentlessly, severely undercutting Keith's already shaky confidence in his own leadership skills. Making matters worse, Keith has started taking on more missions with the Blade of Marmora, which ends up keeping him away from the team at some crucial moments. This comes to a head when Keith is away during a battle where the team really needs Voltron, and Shiro finally takes another stab at getting the Black Lion to respond to him. He pleads with it that people's lives are at stake, and it trusted him once, trust him again, and this time, the Black Lion works for him. After the battle, Keith tells the team that he's going on a long-term mission with the Blades and leaves.
Pidge finds her brother finally, Shiro is happy about that (the clone, though presumably that's also true for the real Shiro), the team learns that Zarkon's recovered from having his shit kicked in and has turned on Lotor, the Voltron Show happens, and then it's time for the coalition the team's been building to strike a major blow against the Empire. The planet Naxzela forms a major chokepoint of sorts, and by freeing it from Galra control, the rebellion can essentially cut a solid third of the Empire off from the rest of it. The attack goes well at first, but then it turns out that Naxzela is essentially a giant bomb and Haggar's charging it up from a nice safe distance. The rebels try to stop her, but can't break through the magical shield surrounding her ship, and all hope seems lost until Lotor comes in out of fucking nowhere in a ship he made out of that magic comet he stole earlier, which has the firepower necessary to get through Haggar's shield. After Haggar's chased off, Lotor opens communication with the rebels all like "SO LET'S TALK :]"
Team Voltron is, understandably, very doubtful of Lotor's motives, and they keep him on lockdown in the castle until they can figure out whether or not to trust him and the info he gives them as a sign of goodwill. The missions they perform using his intel all go well enough, but the team's not convinced still, and Lotor finally shares a bit of info that he was holding off on because he felt it was too dangerous: he knows where Sam Holt is being held. Despite Lotor's concerns, the raid on the facility didn't really go any more disastrously than is typical for Team Voltron, except for one tiiiiiiiiny little detail: Sam Holt wasn't actually there.
Cue Zarkon contacting the Castle with Sam in tow, all like "give me my son and I'll give you your dad back."
So a big argument breaks out over whether or not to agree to this, with Shiro (the clone) coming down on the "this is totally a trap" side, but the team decides to carry out the exchange. Conveniently, it's right about now that Haggar suddenly remembers that Lotor is also her kid, and she activates the next stage of Operation Kuron. This gives her greater influence over clone Shiro's decisions and lets her look through his eyes to spy on what's going on with Team Voltron. In this specific instance, her influence nudges Shiro into slipping Lotor his bayard before the exchange is carried out. Without telling anyone on the team that he's doing it. But it's good that he does, because the exchange was indeed a trap, and the Sam Holt that Zarkon traded over was a hologram. A fight breaks out after they realize that, in which the actual Sam Holt is recovered and Lotor kills Zarkon.
SO NOW ZARKON'S DEAD and that leaves a big old power vacuum in the Galra chain of command. Lotor explains that succession will be determined at a ceremony (by which we mean a big old fight, because this is how the Galra do) called the Kral Zera, and it would be super great if Team Voltron backed him up there so he can take the throne and make the Galra Empire less conquer-y. The team can't come to an agreement on whether or not this would, in fact, be super great, but Shiro is very firmly on the super great side, to the point where he even snaps at Lance to stay out of it when he dissents.
While this is going on, one of the aspirants to the Galra throne decides to throw his weight around by attacking Olkarion. He traps Voltron in a weird plant cocoon, and in order to escape, the team tries tapping into their link with the Lions/Voltron. They access something akin to the Black Lion's astral plane, except Shiro doesn't show up with the rest. They all call out to him, until finally Shiro shows up. The real Shiro, the one trapped inside the Black Lion's consciousness. He tries to use this opportunity to warn the team that the other Shiro isn't him, but it doesn't get through. Voltron escapes the cocoon, wins the day, and Shiro (the clone) apologizes to Lance for snapping at him and notes that he can't remember what happened when they all accessed the Voltron bond, he just kind of blacked out for a while. WEIRD, HUH?
And then it's time for the Kral Zera, and the team's consensus has settled on not going. ...So Shiro (the clone) takes Lotor and sneaks off with the Black Lion to the Kral Zera anyway. Lotor wins it, at least??? And Lotor wants to bring peace to the universe and stay buddies with Voltron, so that thing where Shiro just acted on his own against the team's wishes just gets kind of gently swept under the rug. Lotor has a very specific plan for how to bring peace to the universe, and step one is to find the mythical planet of Oriande and unlock the secrets of Altean alchemy. When they get there, Oriande's defenses shut down the Castle's power and will only let Allura and Lotor through, so the rest of the team gets to settle in and wait until either they get back or the Castle runs out of oxygen, whichever comes first. While this is going on, Shiro confides in Lance that he hasn't quite been feeling like himself lately. Fortunately, Lotor and Allura get back before everyone can suffocate to death (even if they cut it a little close), though only Allura got to actually get the secrets of Altean alchemy.
Of course, Haggar can still see through clone Shiro's eyes, and thus the team has unwittingly shown her the way to Oriande. I would sarcastically remark that surely this will not come back to bite them in the ass later, but actually it is already biting them in the ass in the present as Shiro gets psychic feedback from Haggar facing Oriande's trials that cause him to fuck up on a mission and almost get everybody killed. IT'S FINE, HE'S FINE, EVERYTHING IS F I N E.
Eventually Lotor and Allura finish making a quintessence-infused ship and take it out to test that it can in fact enter the quintessence field that exists between realities. And it can! Cool! Except while they're gone, Keith finally comes back, and he's inexplicably two years older and he has his Galra mom in tow and also an Altean??? They explain that the Altean is named Romelle, and she comes from a colony of Alteans hidden in a particularly compressed area of space (which is why Keith is older, compressing space compresses time, too) founded by Lotor, who went around and tracked down all the Alteans who hadn't been on Altea when it was destroyed and brought them there to live without fear of the Galra discovering them. Pretty cool of him, right? BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. A while ago, Lotor went to the colony and announced he'd made a second colony, and he was taking Alteans who met unspecified parameters to populate it, but unfortunately there couldn't be any communication between the two colonies out of fear of the Galra. Romelle's parents were taken to the second colony, and then later her little brother was. He escaped and warned her that the second colony was a lie before dying, but she didn't get any details about it until Keith and his mother, Krolia, arrived. They found the "second colony" and discovered that Lotor was using the Alteans as living fuel sources by harvesting their quintessence.
When Allura finds out about this, she is, perhaps needless to say, fucking pissed, especially considering that she literally had just started macking on Lotor. He tries to justify himself, but she is having none of it and knocks his weedy ass the fuck out. But, uh, remember that thing where Haggar can watch the team through clone Shiro's eyes and also Lotor is her son? That's about to come to a violent, messy head.
Haggar sends Lotor's former generals to attack the Castle while simultaneously asserting total control over the clone. Shiro wipes the floor with everyone who isn't trying to take care of the generals, takes Lotor, and leaves, returning to Haggar along with the generals, who have grabbed that cool dimension-crossing ship. Keith manages to follow them in the Black Lion, and once Lotor has been safely delivered to her, Haggar sends Shiro to get rid of Keith. He leads Keith to the facility where all the other hundreds of clones are stored, and they fight. The fight's a rough one, both physically and emotionally, and during the course of it, Shiro's arm goes just fucking buckwild, expanding all the way up to Shiro's shoulder and turning into a laser cannon and it's just totally bananas.
Keith wins by cutting off Shiro's arm and thus severing Haggar's control, but by that point the entire facility is coming apart in space, between the damage Shiro caused in the fight and the self-destruct protocol Shiro had started earlier. Keith grabs Shiro, the Black Lion picks them up, Keith somehow accesses the Black Lion's consciousness and finally the original Shiro gets to have a proper conversation with someone for the first time in four fucking seasons. He explains that the other Shiro isn't him and that he died at the end of season two, and then fades away mid-sentence, leaving Keith alone in the Black Lion's cockpit with an unconscious clone and a severe need to get the fuck back to the rest of the team. With the real Shiro's encouragement, Keith unlocks the Black Lion's wings and teleports to the rest of the team, who are currently fighting Lotor.
Lotor's dimension-crossing ship can turn into a giant robot because of course it can, and when he withdraws into the quintessence field, Voltron follows. The quintessence field makes Voltron unbelievably powerful, but the longer they stay in there, the more unhinged they all get, so the team decides to leave, leaving an extremely unhinged Lotor behind, in a decision that will surely not bite them in the ass in the future. But since Lotor was popping in and out of the quintessence field all left and right during their fight, there's a bunch of literal holes in space all over the battlefield, and if something isn't done about them and quick, they will destroy Literally Everything. So the solution the team comes up with is to sacrifice the Castle of Lions to essentially create a black hole to compress it all into nothingness.
Once that's taken care of, the Lions land on a nearby planet, and Keith explains to everyone else that the barely-hanging-onto-life Shiro they've got here is a clone, and the spirit of the original is stuck in the Black Lion. So Allura goes over to the Black Lion, basically downloads Shiro's soul into herself, and then uploads him into the clone's body, which also has the side effect of turning his hair completely white. Shiro's awake for about five seconds before he passes out again and FINALLY I can stop writing because there's my new canon point!
Updated Personality: More of the same here, really. I mean, he's not really present on screen for almost all of the shit I covered, but going by season 7, the trajectory is that his mental health continues to improve and stabilize, much as it has in his time in Emp.
Updated Abilities: OK so basically everything I've ever put into this kind of section is gone now. The Galra right arm is gone, so no more murder hand, and taking him out of the Black Lion took all of him out of the Black Lion, severing his bond with it, so that won't be coming back with him, either. He still has his Paladin armor (also down an arm), but that's basically it, and without a right arm, he probably shouldn't be doing anything that would really call for it anyway. (Will that actually stop him, though? Time will tell.)
Other: Shiro'll be out from the 8th to the 12th. o7