I think I’m a little resistant to the “Lance is actually a genius” headcanon because a. it implies that a character can’t be useful unless they’re super intelligent and b. part of Lance’s charm is that he’s not an expert in anything. He’s all about practical knowledge.

Like, listen, Lance could never fix an engine, but when something goes wrong with their ship in episode one, he knows exactly what the problem is. He can’t fight as well as Keith, but when they need to wreck those Galra ships on the Balmera, he comes up with a plan that’ll take out the most. He probably couldn’t write a code or do all the crazy math stuff Pidge does, but he can calculate the number of vargas they have to wait until they’re able to go into the Marmora base. 

This is all practical. Lance doesn’t need to fix a ship, he just needs to know enough to tell Hunk what to fix. He doesn’t need to know crazy math, he just needs to know enough to know whether Coran and Allura are talking about a minute or an hour so he doesn’t get killed during a mission. And he doesn’t need to be an incredible fighter, he just needs to come up with the best way to stop the ships from taking off without hurting the Balmera– ie, close the door.

Lance isn’t a genius; he’s a creative little shit who’s good at asking practical questions: Do I need to know this or can someone help me with it? Would knowing this help someone else? and Is there an easier way to do this? He’s really good at knowing what he needs to know and putting things together based on what he has. Rover’s here, but Pidge isn’t with it and it’s beeping? Yikes, that’s a bomb. The queen seems to be out of a trance and says she didn’t mind control us? Must be that creepy snake I was asking about earlier. 

He’s perceptive. He looks for simple solutions to difficult problems. He’s also really aware that he’s not the best at everything, so he uses any resource he has to his advantage, whether it be things in his environment (yo his fight against Hunk in the Depths was nice) or people. In the comics when Pidge has to fight a mind controlled team Voltron, she calls Lance a “top priority” because he has good range and is likely to team up with others. Lance actively seeks the help of others where he can and distances himself problems where he can’t so that he can come up with a different solution.

I honestly think that his biggest strength is that he’s not a genius. Because it makes him take full advantage of what he does have.