So! That's a wrap on Arcane season two—and, well, the show as a whole, seeing as animation studio Fortiche wants to go do some other stuff, and League of Legends has different spinoffs in the oven for its blooming TV universe. Having absolutely adored most of the season's run, I went ahead and took a temperature check of the show's fan reception and was shocked, at first, to find a lot of arguments happening. Okay, not too shocked. Online fandoms tend to represent very loud minorities of a particular audience, who will get impassioned and run with narratives for a lark.
There's very little nuance in these spaces, either. Lukewarm criticisms become rallying cries for critique wars, clever soundbytes echo in on themselves, and before you know it people are hurling pitchforks like harpoons and spray-painting their teeth silver. Nonetheless, I’m of the opinion this finale deserves some full-throated celebration. I'm gonna get into spoiler territory from here on out, so go watch the show if you haven't already.
Arcane season two's ending was never going to please everybody, that much is for certain. When you get (rightfully) lauded as some of the best prestige TV animation that's graced the silver screen, the weight of expectation is going to rest heavily on your shoulders. However, I think Arcane ended in the only way it could've—loud, beautiful, and packed denser than a black hole.
This episode has escaped the most criticism out of the season's third act (Netflix releases them in three-episode batches). It balances Ekko's heartbreaking journey through the 'good' timeline, where hextech was never invented, with Jayce's hilariously no-good terrible bad day in the hell dimension—all with its usual finesse. There's barely anything to critique here. The dialogue's tight, the visuals are breathtaking, and the stakes are reaching their peak.
However, this episode has two great examples of the kind of bastard (affectionate) behaviour Fortiche is known for, and it's why I think Arcane Season 2 is likely to improve in the eyes of its detractors over time, as long as they give it a second watch under a microscope.
First up, Ekko says: "I was playing with inversions on Jayce's acceleration rune" while drawing a big ol' chalk circle around the rune we see Jayce carrying on his wrist. The same rune he was given by the mysterious mage in his past, who turns out to be a regretful Viktor from Jayce's doomed dimension. This lays a whole heap of significance on episode 9's reveal—that being, Viktor gave a ton of different runes to Jayce at random, leading to a lot of doomed realities.
In the reality we're following, though, Jayce gets the acceleration rune, which leads to Ekko discovering time travel—letting him intervene in Episode 9, which buys Jayce enough time to convince his wayward Ultron boyfriend to not go all hivemind.
This is a studio that's meticulous about detail, and there are no accidental frames.
Secondly, Heimerdinger notes that the hexcore flung them all to different time periods—while he does theorise that Jayce might've ended up in a different timeline, there's no real confirmation of that. At the end of the episode, alt-universe Powder puts a blue rose necklace next to a bag of hexcore crystals.
This is where I wade, fearlessly, into headcanon territory: I don't think Jayce got sent to a different timeline at all, he just got sent way into the future. The crystals still exist, meaning Viktor can still eventually discover hextech and begin his glorious evolution. Moreover, blue roses often symbolise the unattainable. The necklace has both Powder and Ekko's faces on it.
In other words, a symbol of unattainable love between two characters is (despite the fact they're still alive and well in this timeline) placed right next to the very thing that eventually dooms all others. This is a studio that's meticulous about detail, and there are no accidental frames. I am shaking my fist ruefully at the sky and cursing Fortiche's name.
While I think episode 7 is definitely the strongest, it's also my opinion that all three of the last act's episodes are packed with little details that'll start taking root on second, third, and fourth watches. Let's start with the most obvious one.
Jinx isn't dead—this might seem like cope, but I am 900% certain that's the case. While she gets her big sacrificial Disney death, we also see Caitlyn holding one of her bombs and smiling ruefully at a blueprint of the exact shaft she supposedly 'died' in, the camera even panning to a vent where she could've conceivably escaped.
We then see an exact shot-for-shot replica of an airship from episode one, season one—where Powder said: "One day, I'm gonna ride in one of those things." If that wasn't enough, we get a 'the end' stinger in Jinx's scratchy style, and you can even slow down the initial explosion frame-by-frame and see a pink line zipping away from it. I mean, c'mon.
I'm engaging in prophecy here, but as fans with more free time than me and a ravenous eye for secrets comb through this season frame by frame, I think we're going to see a lot of the bickering simmer down. Arcane's second season has been called rushed and poorly paced, and while I do think the pace is blistering, I think the issue is that there are so many damn details packed into every picosecond of this show that you might quite literally miss it if you blink.
And you know what? I think that's exactly in keeping with what Arcane is. To me, this show has always kept the tradition of 'show, don't tell' alive to an absurd degree—it's like a stress test for how much you can strain that particular art before audiences get fed up. This is a show with secrets scribbled into the margins, one where, as evidenced with Ekko's rune shenanigans, you literally won't get the full story on the first run through.
Season one might've done a slightly better job of tying its threads together in a digestible fashion, but I think we all forget that it managed to cover a heaping helping of ground in nine episodes. Episodes which have all had time to age like fine wine in the minds of their fans as they scrub through microexpressions, symbolism, and foreshadowing. This is a show that gets stuck in your teeth. You gotta spend some time picking it out, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
