Goodbye, Arcane
Final Thoughts on a Masterpiece
Below is my review for Arcane: Season 1, followed by my instant reactions to each act of Arcane: Season 2. I reviewed each three-episode chunk as they were released, one week apart. My review for Act 3 is also essentially a review of the whole second season.
You’ll see my highs and my lows. You’ll see my thoughts on how things unfolded. I try to make sense of everything, as equal parts a fan of the show and a writer. I’m glad I didn’t wait until the release of all nine episodes to review the whole. The ups and downs that I went through are now on full display because of that.
I do get dramatic and sentimental at the end. This show has had an effect on my life the likes of which no piece of visual media ever has. I couldn’t help it.
SPOILER WARNING: I do talk in detail about the events of Arcane (and there are pictures scattered throughout) so I highly recommend you read this after watching the show.
ARCANE: Season 1
If you know me on any personal level, then I’ve probably already recommended this show to you. Arcane became my entire personality after I watched these nine episodes in December of 2021. To this day, Jinx is on the wallpaper for my phone and my computers. To this day, I think about this story and its characters, completely unprovoked.
Consuming media is never better than when you know you’re in the hands of master storytellers, when you know that everything that you see and hear is there for a reason, that it all adds up to be something greater than the sum of the parts on display at any moment. Sure, you can sit back, turn your brain half-off, and passively consume this exhilarating tale about feuding factions and broken families. But this show was meticulously crafted to be watched actively, paying attention to every line of dialogue, every shift in the characters’ expressions, the people and places in the background, the mise-en-scène in every room, the lyrics of the song playing in the soundtrack — everything has its purpose, everything has a part to play. There’s not a wasted scene, not a wasted moment.
Above all else, these nine episodes are a masterclass on writing character development. This show is a landmark achievement in constructing adult fantasy stories through animation.
ARCANE: Season 2, Act 1
I just finished watching the first three episodes of Season 2 and my instant gut reaction is that two somewhat contradictory emotions are at the forefront of my mind at the moment. First and foremost, I’m filled with genuine awe over how things are evolving, and as a massive fan of the lore of League of Legends, I’m veritably giddy over one specific character introduction (see Episode 3 — no explanation is needed). There is so much to be excited about. New relationships are forming, others are morphing. The stakes have never been higher for Piltover and Zaun, and the characters are forced to figure out their place in all of it. There are so many cogs in motion, and it’s been quite the spectacle so far, only a third of the way in.
The second emotion of the two I mentioned is the stronger emotion, because it’s a negative emotion — but I’m able to talk myself down from feeling it as strongly as I normally would because I trust the people in charge of delivering this show to us. The emotion is dread.
So far, this season is feeling like it may be falling into the trap that countless sequels before it have fallen into — I fear it may be spreading itself too thin, getting too big and too loud to allow the characters to breathe and to give the audience enough in those characters to hold on to and empathize with. The scene that cemented that dread in me was the one we’ve been waiting for: The fight between the sisters, in which Vi gave Caitlyn permission to deliver the kill-shot, and Jinx accepted her death at the hands of her sister. What could have been an emotional roller coaster for the viewer ended up feeling emotionally muted, because that scene was being intercut with the cosmic conflict that’s taking place surrounding Hextech. That nebulous story element is impossible to wrap one’s head around (to quote Heimerdinger in that very scene: It’s inconceivable), therefore, it’s impossible for it to stir up any strong emotions. To intercut that with the conflict between the sisters feels like an extraordinary mistake. The glitching that was caused in the weapons was not enough to justify the decision to throw a wet blanket over what was essentially the climax of Act 1, the climax of a story arc that tracks back one full season.
Since I’m writing these reviews as the episodes come out, I might as well spend some time expressing my hopes for the rest of the season, as far as all of the above is concerned. While the introduction of that mysterious character in Episode 3 excited me so, I hope she does not play an enormous role in the events to come. That character and everything she stands for is far too big a story element to be squeezed into this season — it would take too much attention away from everything that was set up with Season 1. I hope that character is more or less just introduced here and will be the main antagonist in the series to follow Arcane — I genuinely could not wish for a better place for the show to go after this story wraps up. I can absolutely see it playing out this way given what we now know about the Medarda family. Their conflict is the perfect bridge between story arcs.
And as far as my dread for how things are unfolding goes: I trust the writers; I trust the showrunner; I trust the people that crafted Season 1 to do right by all of us who became obsessed with Arcane after it released in 2021.
ARCANE: Season 2, Act 2
The first season of this show made me feel a lot of feelings. Yes, it brought tears to my eyes once or twice — but it never broke me down into a cry. Well, I cried twice in the three episodes that made up Act 2 of Season 2. When I say “cried”, I mean there were tears falling from my face, splashing down onto my desk. And the best part? They were not all sad tears slipping from my eyes.
After Act 1, I expressed my fears over the possibility that the show might have been spreading itself too thin, sacrificing the characters while doing so. I also expressed my confidence in the writers to right the ship. Again, these are my snap opinions, mere moments after the credits rolled on Episode 6, but I think there are two episodes in this three-episode act that would go up there with the best episodes this series has delivered to date.
The character moments were aplenty here. After zooming out to show the big picture of what was going on in Piltover and Zaun in Act 1, we zoomed back in and let the characters move amongst each other again, breathe amongst each other. While it does seem as though a character or two are on shaky ground in terms of development at this stage, the primary characters really got their time to shine here. Not only do existing relationships continue to develop and grow, but a brand new relationship sits at the forefront of where a lot of the emotion in these episodes lie. In fact, it’s this new relationship that appears to be the catalyst for a lot of the beautiful character development on display with this season.
To address the rest of my reactions from the first act: I am still concerned over how cosmic and detached from the show’s divine humanity the Hextech elements have become — the figurehead at the center of this subplot is portrayed as a stoic, robotic, borderline emotionless character at this point. Everything is starting to collide and bleed into each other, so I still have some fears over that element taking time and space away from the heart and soul of this series. That said, once again, I trust the writers to stick the landing.
As far as the subplot about that exciting new character goes, I think they’ve basically confirmed that my wishes will be granted. We got very little screen time in this act exploring the character and what she stands for. This all but guarantees two things in my eyes: We will not be wrapping her story up in this season, which means the next story the brilliant minds behind Arcane will be exploring is that of this mysterious character from Noxus and all of the downright riveting elements that come with the world she comes from and the stories she’s connected to.
ARCANE: Season 2, Act 3
It took three days to get my head on straight and my fingers prepared to write this review. I think it’s because I had a very conflicted reaction to viewing these three episodes. Or maybe it’s because writing a review of Act 3 means I have to come to terms with the fact that this show is over. Either way, I needed that time to see the trees for the forest (if you will), to see the parts that made up the whole, and to listen to the soundtrack for Season 2 over and over and over again — somehow, someway, they made this one three times better than its predecessor.
Trying my best to articulate why my response to these final episodes wasn’t the one I hoped I’d have, trying to create sentences made up of words to describe how I felt watching the third act, has proven to be quite the herculean task for me the past few days. I suppose the best place to begin is back at the start: In my review of Act 1, I expressed concerns over how the fight scene between Jinx and Vi was handled. At the time, I thought it was a grave mistake that undercut the emotional weight of that scene. Much to my chagrin, the way that scene was handled was not a mistake; it was foreshadowing for how the writers would prioritize the rest of this story; it was a declaration of intention. The climax of this story will combine the larger, wider, more nebulous features of this tale with the quieter, more emotional features. The writing was on the wall.
Another such declaration of intent came with Episode 7, titled Pretend Like It’s the First Time. We spend half the episode with Jayce as he scratched and clawed to survive the dystopic timeline he’d suddenly found himself in — a world devoid of life as we know it, a future where the current events of the show might be headed. It was a warning, a bleak notice to the audience of the stakes back home. This brief storyline is essential for how things would play out in the end. But if you ask anybody — and I mean ANYBODY — to describe the events of this episode, their eyes will light up, and they’ll describe the story of what life could have been like for Powder if the events of her childhood had played out differently. The team behind Arcane decided to spend an entire episode in an alternate universe, with only three episodes left to tie up the countless threads flailing chaotically over our heads. They decided to intercut that episode with an important story arc that would immediately slip to the back of the viewer’s mind. They made the utterly consequential decision here to prioritize character moments over the grander plot of the story they’re telling. Ekko could have gotten done what he got done in less time (there’s no lack of hurried — I won’t say “rushed” — plot elements in Season 2), but the writers decided to keep us away from the main story for 33% of the time they had left to wrap things up, in favor of enrichening the audience’s relationship with these characters and further developing Ekko, lifting him into the upper echelon.
All of the above shows the inner workings of the writers. We see the problems they faced and how they decided to tackle them. We see how they prioritized, what they chose to lift up and what they chose to let slip. They constructed for themselves an impossible task — I do not envy them. I do, however, tip my cap and acknowledge that they did the best with what they had to work with.
As the conflicts grew in scale, the stakes rose, and the parties involved multiplied, the storytelling lost focus. The whole felt muddled, which left a sour taste in my mouth as Jinx bid us adieu and the credits started to roll. But the parts of that whole are as good as they’ve ever been. The emotions that those parts elicited in me, those character moments sprinkled throughout the chaos, fed my heart and soul just what I needed.
As I take some space and look back at this season, it won’t be the action set-pieces that I think of; it won’t be to wrap my head around what happened with Hextech, or the arcane, or any of the celestial elements; it won’t be to analyze the politics of how things got to where they ended up; it won’t be to figure out how events played out in alternate universes, or the repercussions of time travel. When I look back at this season, what will pop into my mind are the moments between Jinx and Isha, the moments between Vander and his daughters, the electric moments between lovers, the quiet moments between sisters. This season delivered the moments I needed. In those moments, I felt heartbreak, I felt bliss, I felt terror, I felt joy, I felt frustration, I felt peace.
This season delivered to me everything I could have asked for, even if the delivery system itself didn’t satisfy my impossible wishes for how the season would unfold and how those emotions would consequently be delivered. It is only with a bit of space and a concentrated eye that I can now focus my attention on the relationships and the people and see that all of the creative decisions made for these characters were made out of love for these characters. No matter how big and loud everything else got, the characters were at the heart of it all.
I love this show, deeply. We’re lucky to find solace in the fact that the creators of this masterpiece are hard at work on the next story in this universe that’s scratching at their souls. I have no doubt it will be incredible. But for now: Powder, Violet, it’s been a blessing to get to know you, to spend time with you, to cry with you, to love you. Goodbye.
