Note: The following story contains spoilers from “Arcane” Season 2, Episode 9.
“Arcane” Season 2 promised a war for Piltover, and the finale delivered in bloody spades.
The series chronicled the rise of a handful of the Champions, seen later in Riot’s “League of Legends” game, and the finale saw a few of them rise to their station – while others died in battle. With Victor convinced unifying humanity under a single hive mind will end all suffering, death included, Piltover and Zaun were forced to put aside their differences and band together against the new Herald of Machines.
Here’s what you need to know about what happened in “Arcane” Season 2, Episode 9, titled “The Dirt Under Your Nails.”
Act 3 began with a glimpse at where the anomaly sent Jayce – who appeared in Act 2 haggard and almost manic at stopping Victor – Ekko and Heimerdinger. The latter two were sent to a more idyllic universe where Hextech was never created, Zaun was established peacefully, and a number of people hadn’t died – though Vi unfortunately was a casualty in this world. Jayce, however, was sent into a post-apocalyptic future where he saw Viktor’s vision to ascend humanity into one hive mind to erase death, doubt and everything else. The few remaining lives weren’t much more than machine-adjacent husks. Living in this reality explains why the already-returned Jayce from Act 2 attempted to destroy Viktor.
Heimerdinger sacrifices himself to send Ekko home, now equipped with a time-skipping machine from the game, and Jayce is returned by a mysterious hooded figure.
The final episodes devolves into all-out war, with Piltover and Zaun banding together to take on Viktor, his increasingly ascended army of machine people, and Ambessa, who believes an army of unkillable machines will give her unmatched power. The battle rages through the city, but essentially boils down to our main characters squaring off in three areas.
First is Cait and Mel vs. Ambessa. Ambessa got a jump on Cait thanks to her short-lived girlfriend Maddie, who is revealed to be working for the Noxians. She tries to put a bullet in the back of Cait’s head, but Mel’s shield magic ricochets it back into her own. Then the three square off, and it’s evenly matched until Cait manages to get in close to Ambessa – sacrificing her eye in the process – to remove runes on the woman so the Black Rose witches can get to her. The coven kills Ambessa, but not before Mel, who seemingly sided with the other mages, appears and also kills the Black Rose leader.
The second major conflict is Jayce vs. Viktor the Machine Herald. While the war rages in the city, Jayce snuck down and attempted to shut down the Hextech gate. He was met by Viktor, who attempted to explain his reasoning to his old friend, even though he knew Jayce couldn’t comprehend the way he saw the world now. The two fight and end up at the top of the tower, where Jayce realizes it is the same scene he saw in the future. While Viktor begins to ascend the remaining people in the city, Ekko is the lone person unaffected, and he uses his time machine to get close to the Machine Herald and throw the device in his face.
This merges past, present and future, and it’s revealed that the hooded figure Jayce saw in the desolate future was an older Viktor who’d realized his mistakes. He brought Jayce there to help put him on the path to stopping an earlier version of himself from ascending humanity. This future Viktor placed Jayce on this path earlier, as it’s revealed the mage who saved Jayce from the snowstorm as a boy in Season 1 was in fact Viktor. Jayce appeals to his friend and the pair join in the astral plane Viktor resides in and are sucked into Jayce’s rune – disappearing and ending the near-ascension.
The final conflict is Vi and Jinx vs. a once-again reborn Vander. The pair fight their werewolfed, reanimated father as the ascension is happening, but once Jayce convinces Viktor to stop, the three fall halfway down the tower. Vi lands with Vander – who isn’t Vander anymore – and is nearly killed before Jinx intervenes and knocks them both the rest of the way down the tower to their seeming death.
The final moments reveal the aftermath of the war. Sevika is allowed to join the Piltover Council as a representative of Zaun, Mel claims her mother’s Noxian army and sets sail away from the city, and Cait and Vi are heading off in an airship to parts unknown but seemingly with a mission to destroy other Hexgates scattered through Runeterra.
A lot of people died in the final act of “Arcane.” First, there was Heimerdinger in Episode 7, who sacrificed himself to help Ekko get back to his own timeline. In the final battle, Loris is killed by arrows while fighting the Noxian army, and Maddie dies by her own bullet ricochet after trying to betray Cait.
It’s almost hard to count Vander as a death, since it’s already happened twice. But in using his Shimmer-infused blood to heal Viktor, it erased the last bits of his personality. His body was also killed in the fall with Jinx. Ambessa gets killed in her fight with Cait and Mel – who also manages to take out the leader of the Black Rose coven.
Jayce and Viktor sacrifice themselves to undo the machine ascension that had been underway in Piltover. Doing so saw them both sucked into Jayce’s rune.
And then there’s Jinx. Although she also fell with Vander while saving Vi in the final moments, there’s a few hints that something else might have happened. She used one of her grenades while falling into the Hexgate core with Vander, and the final moments showed Cait looking at Hexgate blueprints next to a handful of grenade shrapnel – hinting that maybe Jinx hadn’t died but been sent elsewhere.
The Black Rose is a witch coven based in the neighboring empire of Noxus. Mel embraces her mage capabilities during Act 3 and uses the Black Rose to help take down her mother Ambessa – who had been blackmailed by the coven over the lives of Mel and her brother. In the end, Mel decides neither side is right for her, so she uses the Black Rose to help defeat Ambessa and then appears and kills the leader of the coven as well.
“Arcane” was always planned to be a two-season show. But in its finale, it set up a number of possible spinoffs. The two biggest suspects for where a new show could go would be Vi and Cait’s travels via airship. Cait asks Vi, “Are you still in this fight, Violet?” in the closing moments, hinting that the two have a mission still at hand. Based on Cait studying Hexgate blueprints, it’s likely them heading across Runeterra to deal with Hextech across the planet.
The other possible spinoff would be to follow Mel. Noxus played a major part in “Arcane’s” story, but the show never really left the city. With Mel heading home, and seemingly making an enemy of the Black Rose coven, it would be another ripe place for a spinoff to take place.
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