Why the fuck did they turn Arcane into cosmic horror?

Season 1

The story of 2 sisters and the dynamics between Piltover/Zaun. A pretty grounded story that gives S1's ending the shock factor it requires

Season 2

VIKTOR IS A DARK GOD AND WANTS TO DESTROY ALL LIFE ON ALL UNIVERSES EVER!1!!

Who thought this was a good idea? Completely destroys both the pacing and feel of the show. Should have just made the Vi+Cait vs Jinx plot in Act 1 the entire season.

Who's gonna stop them? You?

The usual suspects being promoted to the usual positions

Who thought this was a good idea?

Whoever let AI write the script

that gives S1's ending the shock factor it requires

S1 repeatedly hit you over the head with the fact that hextech was going to lead to a cataclysmic conflict being carried out by forces beyond mortal comprehension.
The series is at its core an allegory for how sudden and aggressive technological progress leads to global instability. The ending of S1 was just the assassination of Franz Ferdinand ultimately accumulating to a genocide and a nuclear arms race.
This was explained repeatedly and without subtlety.

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the fact that hextech was going to lead to a cataclysmic conflict being carried out by forces beyond mortal comprehension.

The tone of S1 implied it would be an arms race, not MCU shit

I'd feel more from the criticism if it didn't all boil down to

UGH.

the thing I really didn't enjoy was all the dropped plotlines between Act 1 and 2, but luckily we have permission to just blame Amanda for that, the daffy cunt, and move on.

Wasn't as 10/10 perfect as season 1, but overall it's still better than all of House of Dragons, all of NuTrek, all of NuStar Wars, and basically everything Marvel has made since Infinity War. People just want to cry because they're mentally castrated bitch-babies who've been conditioned into thinking lesbians aren't hot.

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I'm sorry but going from a series that made fucking LoL characters, plots, and locations engaging and compelling to the fanfiction ship-fest in S2 is a huge downgrade completely deserving of condemnation

Sorry you're not able to enjoy things unless they suck your dick.

Did you not notice that most of the main characters were slowly being transformed into superhuman abominations?

Describing a massive drop in writing quality as "sucking my dick" comes across as massively disingenuous

chemtech superminions using superspeed to kill cops wasn't "MCU"

Okay, retard.

Yes, not meta multiverse gods

Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that describing it only as a "massive drop in writing quality" without quantifying your complaints with actual observations came off as so incredibly genuine and objective that I had to lash out in animalistic rage at how fucking good at debate you are.

Runeterra is being invaded by world destroying cosmic beings and while already having multiple dormant world destroying cosmic beings.

And Arcane seemed to steer clear of such bullshit initially

NTA, but Arcane was always going to be a camel's nose regarding those elements. Lure normalfags in with steampunk Piltover, and then drop MUH MAGIC later on. It's in the name. "Arcane".

Heimer warned multiple times in the first three episodes that messing with magic leads to the end of civilization and some crazy mage blowing everything up.

without quantifying your complaints with actual observations

see

some crazy mage blowing everything up

That sounds a lot more grounded and appealing than "multiversal jesus threatens to undo reality"

I don't disagree with that.

Yes, not meta multiverse gods

Did you miss that the name of the series is "Arcane" and that Viktor was playing with an object that literally ate hits lab assistant as a sacrificial offering?

The first season was incredibly tight and well paced. The second season is all over the place. The issue is that Ambessa became too centralizing, the character should have stayed in the background. The focus of the show should have stayed in the Piltover and Zaun conflict, not this vague bullshit about the arcane.

Viktor went from war victim to enlightened cult messiah to godlike supervillain almost entirely offscreen and for incredibly vague and unexplored reasons.

Jinx got absolutely whitewashed and the whole zaunite movement rallying behind her completely disappeared from the plot.

Everytime cait and vi agree that enough is enough with jinx some bullshit happens that makes everything go back to square one and impedes all the progression from season 1. The writers are just scared to death of making Jinx the bad guy.

Isha becomes forgotten in act 3, does anybody even mention her name? What the fuck was that character?

Hextech becomes a giant enigma. Is it or is it not evil? They seem to hint that the arcane doesnt like it when non mage humans tamper with the runes. Was it viktor's blood? Was it doomed from the start? What the fuck?

Viktor turns out to be a timetraveling super being who kickstarted the whole thing. Essentially making the plot a giant time loop paradox. Why? Why was this needed?

Episode 7 was very nice but its essentially there as a replacement for actual character development. Ekko has not seen Jinx since the bridge incident and instead of confronting the actual jinx, who he knows has done terrible things, he gets a sitcom episode where he bonds with a not evil jinx from another dimension and that replaces the relationship he had with the actual jinx. That episode was just fanservice.

We spend so much time on jayce falling down the crevice. Why? This was just to pad the time. What did he gain? All it did was explain the beard and haggard look he had in episode 6. Does the show really have the time to waste on this?

Were you asleep during every scene with Viktor with the hexcore and also every single scene where Heimerdinger talked about magic, or have you just never heard of foreshadowing?

Viktor turns out to be a timetraveling super being who kickstarted the whole thing. Essentially making the plot a giant time loop paradox. Why? Why was this needed?

Most of these complaints but especially this one can be explained with "for shipping purposes", plot and logic be damned, their main goal in S2 was creating shipping fuel for fans, constant Cait and Vi drama, Ekko and Jinx suddenly revolving around each other as characters, Viktor's plotline culmination being cosmic sex with Jayce, it's literally all fanfic tier shit uprooting everything S1 laid down

The Ekko and Jinx stuff was incredibly jarring because these two characters had minimal contact through the show.
In season 1, all Ekko and Jinx do together is fight that one time and then almost kill each other on the bridge. Ekko is literally the first to tell Vi that Powder is gone. The whole bridge thing seemed to be a bittersweet last moment in their relationship.
And then, rather than advance these characters. We get a sitcom episode where Ekko bonds with Powder. And then decides he cant just give up on Jinx for some reason even though these are two different persons.
Gentle reminer that Jinx was a thug for Silco who killed for fun and who nobody liked even in the lanes. But ekko just hugs it out because jinx somehow turned into a functional person and not an insane bitch in between seasons 1 and 2.

Except it ruins the fun of magic and hextech in universe. It's a shitty climate change allegory. The fucking ending doesn't even say one way or the other if hextech is not possible anymore because it will lead to another cataclysm. Fucking niggers on the writing team.

Literally every bit of character development that happened in S1 was undone in S2, it was genuinely comical, I have no idea how no one is pointing any of this out

not MCU shit

To be fair, the League of Legends has inherently always been MCU. Their earlier seasons involved intentionally creating champions that were knockoffs of existing IPs to fill a void in the market for a game where you could have Leonidas team up with both Alien and Predator to fight Godzilla.
This series was always going to turn into that eventually. It's better if you rip that band-aid off now.

It's a shitty climate change allegory.

Anon, these fears around the discovery of nuclear technology and its unknown potential have existed for a century now
Arcane intentionally parallels technologic exhibitions of the early 20th century and chose a steampunk aesthetic for a reason.

We get a sitcom episode where Ekko bonds with Powder. And then decides he cant just give up on Jinx for some reason even though these are two different persons.

His name is Ekko.
His inability to let go of the past and get hung up on how things could have been has been hinted at multiple times.

His inability to let go of the past and get hung up on how things could have been has been hinted at multiple times.

No S1 kind of made it abundantly clear he gave up on Jinx, which matched his LoL characterization

Season 1 ekko was pretty much done with jinx.

No S1 kind of made it abundantly clear he gave up on Jinx, which matched his LoL characterization

Until he had her dead to rights and couldn't do it.

MCU shit implies that characters don't die and that multiverse must be done as fan service and not a serious but temporary plot device. Having no plot-armor, no resurection, and contain the multiverse to only show "good future" "bad future" isn't MCU.

His characterization in lol was that he he was able to live care free specifically because he didn't have to let go of the past anymore.

why did the Arcane end up being a big deal in a show called Arcane

???

Its a show based on a game full of magical people like a guy who is basically the god of death or an evil witch who controls a whole country.

Next you'll act confused as to how a little girl made a burning teddybear monster or some blonde chick can shoot a giant kamehameha

it's weird man, i actually won so hard for the astral gay shit it ended on, but I think I would have preferred something more grounded
I don't think hextech corrupting is bad, but I wish it was something more...idk, natural? something isn't so eldritch, something that feels more analogous to radiation and natural disasters
also would have preferred the caitvi arc to be more bitter, them getting all sappy after the hitler turn just felt off, and it made the loveydovey sex scene later on feel undeserved and kind of uncomfortable
I think there was more to tell for the piltover/zaun dynamic, and it could have been told in a way that matched at least more of what was in the og canon of runeterra, but it fell way, way by the wayside due to the magic timeloop shit (also the vander pandering which sucked ass, also the sevika/isha/jinx found family being forgotten was depressing)

Didn't Arcane start with a magician who teleported young Jayce to another part of the world, and a small magic rock that could blow up the buildings?

And Arcane not being any of that is what made people interested in it

He was trying to kill her the whole time, she shocked him with the puppy eyes, the fact she tried to kill him would've also realistically make him write her off for good

I think we can ALL agree that the biggest plot hole was that Ekko broke the "never go past 4 seconds or something really bad will happen" and when he did, nothing bad happened. In fact, because he broke his own rule, he ended up saving the universe.

We saw the bad thing that happened when he went back more than 4 seconds, Heimerdinger's head exploded. No Heimerdinger, no Heimerdinger head explosion so no need to not go back 8 seconds.

Series about a game where you kill and come back to life via crystals

People have forgotten that this is about LOL and they're not going to change the game because the side program is popular. If a lot of people know about Arcane because it's associated with LOL

That was tasteful and subdued

That would be because he threw the device at Viktor so that when the bad thing happened, it happened to Viktor.

Everything I like is tasteful.

Yes, and the act of teleportation is surrounded by wonder, and the blue rocks that can blow up buildings are the subject of fascination and concern. This sense of wonder is absent in the second season.

What the fuck was that character?

An anchor for Jinx to rediscover her humanity the same way Silco discovered his when he adopted Jinx.

Is it or is it not evil?

It's beyond human comprehension. Hextech was always painted as something that should absolutely not be tampered with. The show is about the fallout of tampering with it.

Was it viktor's blood?

The hexcore blends science with magic and organic with the inorganic. When it absorbed Sky and then Victor, the two were blended together along with whatever sentience exists in the core.

Why? Why was this needed?

Because the show is an allegory for what happens when you fuck with forces beyond your understanding. Victor didn't start the whole thing, but the timeline has a logical end point that the characters were lucky enough to see coming and avert at the last possible second.

Why? This was just to pad the time. What did he gain?

Living in the darkest timeline for that long destabilised him and cemented in his mind the necessity for avoiding this outcome by any means necessary, even killing his best friend.

Does the show really have the time to waste on this?

Yes.

this show has more insufferable fans than actual LoL players which is impressive.

No, he went back in time over 4 seconds to escape being held by the robots. Once he was free of the robots, he then threw the anomoly he'd made in the other world at Victor? IDFK it was a mess. But still the fact remains- him going back in time over 4 seconds caused literally nothing bad to happen.
Why did they even put such an arbitrary "limit" in there just to ignore it?

Oooo. No you're right. The bad thing was that it ended up breaking Viktor's Arcane form's helmet/head that allowed Jayce in to talk to human Viktor.

Nevermind. No plot holes. What a great show.

show establishes that doing X makes Y happen

character later deliberately does X to make Y happen

anon thinks it's a plot hole

The degree to which some of these retards can't even follow the most basic narrative structure in the history of storytelling says a lot about why Anon Babble is bitching so much about this show. It's fucking astounding. What the fuck is it that's eroding human brainpower this much? Did they start putting the lead back into gasoline again?

ok since you're actaully answering questions, here are things I didn't get:
Ekko's time-rewind only goes back 4 seconds safely... so then why does it go back further in the final battle with no dire consequence to anyone around him?
How was Victor the mage that gave Jace the rune that set him on this path? And also- isn't Victor's whole "in all the timelines, you were the only one to teach me this" line absolute bunk? Jace didn't teach Victor the lesson that stayed his hand; Ekko hitting him upside the head is what made Victor stop long enough to reconsider what he was doing! (semi related: I will never be convinced the og mage was never supposed to be Victor and the new head writer for season 2 decided to make it so.)
The invading army somehow moved Victor's orb from the Zaun underground, to their own boats, then sent those boats back into the Piltover harbor? How?
How did Orianna-bot come into being? How can she continue to exist post-Victor?
What was up with Sky's parting goodbye? Victor: "I will miss our conversations." Sky: "No, you won't." ??? Moreover, how tf was Sky there in the ethereal space? Figment of Victor's imagination? Why would him getting Warwick's blood transfusion make her leave? I also really don't understand the transition Victor had between "yes it will kill me to help Vander but he is worth it!" to "Ok Dr, pump me full of that werewolf juice, it's time to transform everyone and use them as weapons."

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Both of those became mundane during timeskip.
The big hexfuckup in e3 had a sense of concern definitely though.
Anyway it is fitting that the big threat of the series came from the foreshadowed arcane and not from something that drops out of nowhere. Imagine if e9 was just Aatrox suddenly marching into town.

But Viktor's head didn't explode from the time rewind 'bad luck'. Ekko flung the anomaly in his device at Victor which reacted to the on inside of Viktor. Even if you want to believe Viktor's injury was because of the time rewind, the "bad thing" didn't happen until well after the "rewind over 4 seconds" occurred, instead of in tandem with it.

Sky was implying that robo Viktor doesn't feel regret.

An anchor for Jinx to rediscover her humanity

and basically rolled back all progression from season 1. Plus she just randomly self immolated and nobody mentions it after. All we get is a homage in Jinx's balloon. Pretty weak if you ask me for such a pivotal character.

Hextech was always painted as something that should absolutely not be tampered with

No. Heimer was always paranoid about magic and about new things. All have as reason for his paranoia is that mages are powerful and human society is too volatile for sources of immense power. But then it turns out that the issue is not the complexity of human society but rather that hextech is just intrinsically flawed or evil or something bad.

the timeline has a logical end point

No, the timeline is a loop. Viktor saved Jayce in the beginning, but were did that viktor come from? Another timeline? Is it the very same viktor that fucked off with jayce in the end? It is a paradox.

Living in the darkest timeline for that long destabilised him and cemented in his mind the necessity for avoiding this outcome by any means necessary

Nothing in the show implied he needed that. Also, its never explained why Jayce had to try and kill viktor. Did he also have to fail just so the timeline played out deterministically? Why didnt he just try to talk to viktor and explain the new insight. The show already resolved itself by Viktor being shown himslef. Why couldnt Jayce just do that instead of trying to kill him?

Yes.

No, it doesnt have that time. The Piltover/Zaun plotline and all its threads are so woefully forgotten just so we can stare at Jayce in a crevice.

"in all the timelines, you were the only one to teach me this" line absolute bunk? Jace didn't teach Victor the lesson that stayed his hand

The actual paradox comes from the fact that it was neither Jayce nor Ekko who showed Viktor anything. It was Viktor himself who told his past self that his future self is miserable because there is nobody to talk to. But future viktor already killed past Jayce, did Jayce get reborn? The answer is that future viktor is just alternate universe viktor. Which is makes Arcane yet another show that falls into the retarded multiverse trend that has infected modern media.

It isn't a "head explode" magic spell. The anomaly creates bizarre side effects and Ekko surmised that 4 seconds might be an approximate safety limit because the one time he tested it that far, the unstable side effect that happened was Heimer's head exploding. That doesn't mean that what the anomaly always does is to always make nearby heads explode at the 4 second mark. It's an unstable device. It also only happened to Heimerdinger, notice how Powder was unaffected.

The show has repeatedly underlined the fact that magic is a wild, unstable force and that Jayce was playing with fire by trying to control it with science. Ever since early in season 1.

so then why does it go back further in the final battle with no dire consequence to anyone around him?

It does. It explodes in Viktor's face.

How was Victor the mage that gave Jace the rune that set him on this path?

Time travel shenanigans.

Ekko hitting him upside the head is what made Victor stop long enough to reconsider

Getting hit upside the head gave him pause, which gave Jayce the opportunity to speak to Viktor. Jayce's words are what made him reconsider.

Piltover harbor? How?

What do you mean, "how?" Did you think the orb was immobile, or do you just not understand how logistics work?

How did Orianna-bot come into being?

We literally see Singed take Viktor's Arcane juice from the orb using the same syringe we saw him adding shimmer into Ori's casket, and throughout the season we see that he plainly understands how the evolution seems to work. It isn't difficult to extrapolate that he simply replicated the process in a controlled environment.

How can she continue to exist post-Victor?

The same way Warwick does. The two of them -Warwick and Orianna- aren't simply Evolved like the dolls Viktor made. They're both a synthesis of hextech, chemtech, and Arcane. The difference is that Orianna was never directly augmented by Viktor, and never had her mind subsumed. She was never bound to him.

"No, you won't."

Sky wasn't "real." She was a representation of Viktor's humanity and emotion. His Jiminy Cricket, if you will. When he gave up his humanity for Evolution, that part of him died and she vanished.

I also really don't understand the transition

He saw that simply trying to be "good" didn't work and realized that the source of humanity's virtues -our emotions- were also the source of our evils. Therefore, he endeavored to remove emotion, not understanding that removing things like compassion doesn't necessarily remove things such as callousness.

How's that? You good now, champ?

Sky was implying that robo Viktor doesn't feel regret.

I appreciate the answer- that works to explain her parting line... but I still don't get how she was there. Or how he/they both knew him getting Warwick juice was going to make her leave. Or why getting Warwick Juice even made her leave to begin with.

Not him, but what stopping Jayce from dismantling the core long before Viktor got there? That their main defenses were powered by it?

I think she was a memory echo shaped by Viktor's lingering human emotions, that's why going full bot erased her.

so then why does it go back further in the final battle with no dire consequence to anyone around him?

Cause there's no other option at that point. Going back 4 seconds only gets him back in the clutches of the husks. He's pretty much thinking "ok, I'm suck, now what?" It was either risk 6 seconds or get fucked.

Jace didn't teach Victor the lesson that stayed his hand; Ekko hitting him upside the head is what made Victor stop

...uuhhhh that's a good point. Plot hole?

semi related: I will never be convinced the og mage was never supposed to be Victor and the new head writer for season 2 decided to make it so.

I second this. Only cause if MageViktor didn't want HexTech to get out of control ...why would he keep giving Jayce the thing that creates HexTech?? Just let Jayce and his mom die and that's it. No more magic-obessed-Jayce to create HexTech.

The invading army somehow moved Victor's orb from the Zaun underground, to their own boats, then sent those boats back into the Piltover harbor? How?

Hmm...

How did Orianna-bot come into being? How can she continue to exist post-Victor?

Bot-body, why not? Semee the Yordel was a full working robot with just his head. Why not her?
And I think she's alive without Viktor magic cause she was never under his control. Singed said VIktor was the key to the whole "bringing back from the dead" thing. Singed just took what he needed (maybe that orb juice) and gave it to Orianna.

What was up with Sky's parting goodbye?

Sky was saying goodbye to Viktor's human side as he was turning into the creepy Arcane God thing with no emotion or humanity.

how tf was Sky there in the ethereal space?

It's inside the Arcane itself. When her body was dusted, herself/"soul" was sucked up into the core. Maybe she's not even there, and just there to talk to Viktor through his own physicy.

-She was there because Viktor was thinking of her. Do you understand the concept of a tulpa? Look it up.
-They knew it was going to make her leave because it was fucking anti-humanity juice and she represented his humanity.
-Singed says his orange potion would block Warwick's ability to connect with his humanity. Anti-humanity juice!

They were using the hexgate to evacuate people from the city.

It does. It explodes in Viktor's face.

But it doesn't explode in his face. It's the hexcore Ekko mde in the AU that tears through him. If he had thrown it sans-time rewind overload, the same thing would've happened. Meanwhile, in the AU, Heimerdinger's head exploded in an entirely different way, no contact witht he device necessary. He was much further back than Ekko so it wasn't a proximity thing either.

What do you mean, "how?" Did you think the orb was immobile, or do you just not understand how logistics work?

I mean like- tf was it on boats coming from the other direction for? That shit was under the city. Then somehow it was on boats coming in from the opposite side. Doesn't really break any plotlines, it's just stupid and lazy bit of writing.
thanks for the other answers though, helped clarify some things.

Oh, yeah, you're completely fucking right, my bad. Thank you.

-Singed says his orange potion would block Warwick's ability to connect with his humanity. Anti-humanity juice!
I totally either forgot or missed that. That actually made the Sky thing, etc all make sense. TY.

I don't know, man. What's stopping someone from dismantling a nuclear reactor by themselves before the cops can break down the door?

Also, the attack on the surface was a distraction. They all thought Viktor was in the big meatball, but he wasn't.

They changed the writing team from geniuses to midwits.

I know this show has a recurring theme of characters having visions of their dead loved ones, but in Viktor's case I think it's entirely reasonable that Sky was actually sucked into the Hexcore when it killed her and ended up riding along with Viktor when Jayce grafted the core into him.

There's a few moments in Viktor's arcane mind palace thing where we see Sky act independently of him, moving and emoting for herself when Viktor's own attention is elsewhere. I feel like that wouldn't be a thing if she were just a figment of his psyche.

it's just stupid and lazy bit of writing.

See: They purposefully brought the meatball up from below and sailed it in on the boats in a very visible manner to make the defenders think that's where Viktor was, when in truth Viktor was working his way up into the Hexcore chamber on foot. It was a classic bit of misdirection.

-Singed says his orange potion would block Warwick's ability to connect with his humanity. Anti-humanity juice!

Singed even invented Covid 19 vaccine!

If she's a part of his subconscious mind, then she would absolutely be able to act independently without him noticing. Your brain does all kinds of creepy autonomous shit without your conscious mind having any idea.

Did you know that your organs move? The intestines in particular are very active. Your brain actively dulls your nerves in that area whenever it happens so that you can't feel your guts wiggling around. If you ever get abdominal surgery and the doctor has to pull your intestines out, when it's time to put them back in there's no attempt to put them back where they were. Your guts just get shoved back in willy-nilly because they fucking know where they need to go and will literally move themselves back into the proper positions entirely on their own. You brain just decides, "Yeah, you don't need to know that's happening" and blocks it from you.

...but I digress. If she was an actual spirit trapped in there, she wouldn't have shown up outside the astral plane and the werewolf juice wouldn't have melted her.

I know it was a ruse, but even as a ruse it just logistically makes no sense. They'd have to have rolled the ball up past all of Zaun, then out past all the Piltover guards to the docks to get it on a boat, then loop that boat back around in the harbour and dock again at the very same docks. idk, shit's weird.

This. S1 was emotional without going into melodrama. It was heartfelt, and felt genuine. Meanwhile S2 is what I was expecting S1 to be, a cookie cutter YA story with pretty animation. It's not terrible, but it nowhere near measures with what S1 was.

I swear to Janna, is there anything that man CAN'T do?

and dock again at the very same docks

...what? First off, Viktor's commune wasn't in the heart of Zaun, it was on the outskirts. Second, you understand that the Piltover/Zaun area is built over a river canal, right? There are literally hundreds of miles of unguarded coastline Noxus could have docked their boats at. Getting the ball to the surface and on a boat unaccosted would 100% have been the easiest part of the entire plan.

They had everything set up perfectly, Jinx bombs the council. A distraught Caitlyn blames Jayce for being too soft and he gets demoted. Piltover goes full fascist and Cait orders Jayce to build hextech weapons. Viktor is repugned by the idea and leaves with the hexcore to try and help zaunites. Zaun rallies under Jinx to fight the brutal repression and all hell breaks loose. Vi has to choose between cait and zaun. Sevika and Jinx have to keep the chembarons in check and get them organized to fight Piltover. Viktor goes off the deep end with trying to help people and starts modifying them, trying to cure them of their imperfections. Ekko is trying to organize a resistance to Jinx and Sevika but has to begruddingly work with them to oppose Piltover. Heimer is there somewhere helping Ekko.
They had all perfectly set up and then lost themselves in random shit. The Vander plotline wasted a bunch of time, Viktor just randomly turning into a messiah was sudden as fuck and ruined his character progression.

The whole bridge thing seemed to be a bittersweet last moment in their relationship.

This. The bridge moment is him realising she's too far gone, she's telling him she's too far gone, and she tries to end it when he can't bring himself to. Which is something that Vi should have had to go through at some point in S2, doing what Ekko couldn't, but no, shitty lesbian melodrama is more important.

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the angle makes it looks like he's running on water.

I like the Jesus allegories till he gets Jayced in his chest.

The black rose subplot added literally nothing

its called breadcrumbs for a future show.

Hm, I kinda like that as the explanation but then it still is lazy writing because out of all the targets, and all the infinite possibilities of wild wacky stuff the rewind could've done, it's super fortunate and improbable it did the exact right thing and held itself together until launched at Victor's head. the 4 second time-limit being a soft, breakable timelimit felt like a needless addition. There could've been plenty of drama with a hard 4 second max limit. Like imagine Ekko fails, resets 4 seconds, tries something new, it fails. He resets but milliseconds are added on because of the time it takes to activate the device. Give it enough desperate attempts to pile up and suddenly that 4 second rewind has been whittled down to 3.5 seconds, then 3. Have him try a thousand times then finally throw the Z drive at Viktor in a desperate last-ditch act of brilliance that guarantees if it fails, so does his chance at resetting.

the og mage was never supposed to be Victor and the new head writer for season 2 decided to make it so.

Correct

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The Black Rose drove Ambessa to Piltover.

The Black Rose also awakened Mel's real power. Mage Mel saved Cait, and then was able to defeat her mother so she can tell
Noxis to get the Hell out of her city.

It also set up how powerful the Black Rose Mages are, since they can body posses from the other side of the world effortlessly.

I dont get it man, the new writers got handed perfection and they fucked it up for jj abrams level plot escalation and muh vague cosmic bullshitery

I have a question! So with all this time travel mumbo jumbo, does that mean normal Viktor is aware of all this Arcane stuff? And that's why he saves Jayce from jumping to his death in season 1?

The hextech stuff was better as a background detail. Making it the focus of the season was a mistake.

The Black Rose drove Ambessa to Piltover.

Ambessa went to Piltover to look for weapons. We dont need more than that to understand her character.

The Black Rose also awakened Mel's real power

Mel was a secondary character in the first season who spent most of this season within her own story completely detached from everything else. Her story should have been part of the Noxus animated show, not this one. The black rose doesnt matter for the specific events of this show to transpire.

how powerful the Black Rose Mages are

I dont care, leave that for the Noxus show, that has no relevance in arcane.

Ambessa went to Piltover to look for weapons.

Correct. To fight the Black Rose because of the beef she stirred up with them with Mel.

leave that for the Noxus show

Well, I mean, they could have left it for the Noxus show, yes, but you said that the Black Rose did nothing. But they DID do stuff. Hence the answers. Just cause it's in Arcane doesn't make the answer's not count.

No he is not, but victor was destined to save jayce. Otherwise the timeloop where he becomes a hextech wizard doesn't happen.

That's exactly what I thought the show was going to lead into. An escalation of S1 but still following the same general themes. Even Noxus has some room, Jayce and Silco talk about the threats beyond their walls which united them in the first place, which would have been a fitting finale to end on, Zaun and Piltover putting aside their differences to fight off the Noxus invasion while Vi tragically finishes what Silco and Vander started and puts Jinx to rest. Or even reconciles with her only for Jinx to make the ultimate sacrifice to defeat Noxus. Something like that. Not the crap we actually got.

To fight the Black Rose because of the beef she stirred up with them with Mel.

And we do not need that in Arcane. It is too disconnected with the rest of the show.

the Black Rose did nothing

What I mean is that the black rose subplot added nothing to the central plot of the show. Its just there for Ambessa and Mel's arc which is too disconnected from everything else that is happening. It was much better when that was just background in the show, not the main thing.

I honestly think Noxus should not have factored in at all. The Piltover/Zaun conflict is enough to carry the show through the characters that embody different aspects of the conflict. The finale would have been a battle between Piltover and Zaun just like the very beginning of teh show in the bridge. But maybe jinx fucks them all over and they have to give chase to her one last time or something.

The bridge moment is him realising she's too far gone

No way. That encounter on the bridge is all about Ekko realizing he was wrong, and that Powder was still in there.
He invites her to 'play' that game they used to play when they were kids. She immediately gets on his wavelength and plays along. When he wins and is about to knock her out/kill her, he looks in her eyes and sees that hint of the Powder he remembers, and hesitates. And SHE sees that look on his face and knows he's not going to be able to kill her, so she tries to save him the trouble by grenading both of them. From Ekko's perspective, in that moment, he had a brief chance to save Powder and he failed.

And then of course in S2, Ekko meets the alt Powder and learns more about what could have been, about the kind of person that might still be inside the Jinx from his world, and when he returns to find her about to kill herself, he tries to save her- and this time, he succeeds. The Boy Savior indeed.

Science bad Magic good

Powder was still in there.

The whole point of s1 is that there is no more powder.

then he has the most hype "one man against the impossible" moment I've seen in quite a while.

I gotta argue your point about Viktor. Your take is so god damn boring and cliche. Turning the cripple well meaning nobody into an Arcane God of controlled chaos was so new and interesting and fun. You can't tell me that's where any of this was going. It for SURE needed some time to breath. Maybe that could have happened with all your other points. But either way, I really like what we got (to a point) minus the stupid multiverse and time travel crap.

God dammit, I'm so mad they red harringed the fuck out of Ryze. What a perfect way to have introduced other countries and tie it back to magic in other places once they started making other IP.

Just some random mage. Proves magic is real. It didn' have to connect. Jayce just fucking loves magic cause he saw it. Didn't have to be Viktor giving him the keys to his own madness. Boooo.

I mean yes and now, there is a "good person" in her, and that's good enough, Vi comes to terms with that by the end of S2.

An escalation of S1 but still following the same general themes.

That's exactly what happened.

Zaun and Piltover putting aside their differences to fight off the Noxus invasion

That's what they did.

[Vi] reconciles with her only for Jinx to make the ultimate sacrifice

Vi did do that, and then Jinx did do that.

So is leblanc in this show or what? i didn’t quite get it

Turning the cripple well meaning nobody into an Arcane God of controlled chaos was so new and interesting and fun

Is it? Maybe the idea is good but the execution was so rushed and felt extremely random. The hexcore just rewrote viktor's character. There was no progression at all. Viktor was turned from a grounded, relatable and extremely compelling character to a straight supervillain with the goal of world domination. I dont know man, doesnt sound all that new or interesting.

Powder was the good person, Jinx is a thug Silco created to serve his ends even if he ultimately cared for her.

That mage being viktor all along crap makes the world that much smaller. It's all one big timeloop, part of viktors keikaku going to plan, no room for any mystery or sense of wonder or letting your imagination go wild, it was viktor all along. Removes a lot of agency from Jayce too, what's the point if it's all Viktor's masterplan? Just shitty, shitty writing.

As a sidenote, I've noticed that there's not nearly as many memes for this season as last time round, which I take to mean that people are much less enthusiastic and involved. It's sad, I really wanted this season to be good.

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yea the rose lady is her, she has a million faces.

Viktor doesn't change because of the core, he simply was made capable of doing all the things he ever wanted.

also the vander pandering which sucked ass

It went on way too long. Only so much Vander deaths and revives the audience can take before they stop caring.

Viktor wanted to actually help people, not change them into mindless automatons. That is a pretty big character change without any explanation at all beyond hexcore showing him dead gf. And yes, I get that turning people into mindless automatons is how he thinks he is helping them. The point is that at no point viktor thought that doing that was helping them before hexcore bullshittery and then he just randomly believes it.

We all agree that the best characters are silco and singed right? not like anybody can compete with them

people are much less enthusiastic and involved

s1 was groundbreaking and actually created massive interest in league again. I remember all the big streamers trying out league after s1.
s2 is just fanservice ao I expect the honeymoon phase to last while people cope into thinking its just as good and then slowly realize that its not.

he does not change his mind about how to help people from his Messiah ways to his Machine God ways because of the hexcore,he does because of the actions of others.

he assumes that emotions are the crux of humanities suffering, so he seeks to get rid of it, and perfect everyone in the process.

it isn't the magic rock telling him to do shit.

BOLD move of Riot to not turn Warwick into a full blown wolf face at the end though. I was NOT supposed to giggle when human face buff monster thing pops up in slow mo from below with a serious frown on his face looking down at Vi.
That was my biggest grip.

Again, that assumption just comes out of nowhere and needs a lot more support in order to turn viktor from champion of the disfigured and neglected to mass genocider. That abrupt change comes after being fused with the hexcore out of nowhere. Even Jayce, the person who knows viktor the most, is just completely dumbfounded at the absolutely sudden change. Like, viktor just gets up and leaves everything behind after the magic rock whispers shit to him.

People forget that the hexcore had a will of its own. It isn't just a macguffin, it's a character. That Viktor would be so dramatically changed after merging with it, isn't terribly surprising.

I can post plenty of memes I saved from the S1 discussions and I'm sure there's plenty more, but other than the Jinx killing herself while Cait and Vi have sex thing there's barely anything to post from S2.

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Thats fine. What irked me is that there is almost nothing in between Viktor at the end of season 1 and him becoming a messiah. All that character development just happens via magic rock whispers.

Then make some, you dingdong

As overwhelmingly disappointing as this season has been, I don't want to trawl the thread and accidentally spoil the last 3 eps before I can sit and watch them with my husband tonight.

Has anyone got the ol' Jayce Kidkiller Tallis copypasta?

Why did you find the season disappointing?

Poor pacing in the storytelling (seemingly in favor of fanservice) and frankly I found the animation/soundtrack underwhelming compared to the first.

Maybe I've just developed depression in the past 3 years, but season one really tickled my brain right.
I appreciate the varied animation styles, absolutely, but it's such a stark and unexpected change from what I was hoping/expecting to see.

I feel like it was well established early on with Heimerdinger's "you kids shouldn't be fucking around with this because magic is a real and profoundly powerful thing in the world and you're just little children who live in an ivory tower" (a little on-the-nose with Piltover's architectural design, to be desu.)

Why, oh why didn't they go with Isha being an avatar of Janna? Instead of just being a wasted plot device, they could have her pull Jinx out of the pits of despair instead of Ekko. At least, that would justify her existence.

I feel like Isha = Janna was one of the plots set up in act 1 that they dropped when writing act 2/3.

I legitimately don't think the writers were smart enough to have implied this on purpose

avatar of Janna

So we're just legit busting out the fanfiction cope now

and people saying ArcaneViktor gave them whiplash....

All and all, I'm just happy they gave Silco's VA some work cause he was the best.

We've been theorizing this since the leaks bc act 1 sets up the whole janna connection with jinx that goes nowhere

Whatever, post SEXO rankings. For me it's

1. AU Powder

2. Caitlyn

3. Maddie

Vi and Cait brapping Zaun with the Grey

Jinx laughs at the idea of Janna helping anybody down there ...

Isha not only cures her insanity, but saves Jinx by blowing a gust of wind to throw the Pilties where they belong

Janna's goal is to use Jinx as an icon of hope to restore Zaun

Janna cannot, however, communicate her desires well because the incarnation is mute; people have lost their faith in her

Having fulfilled her mission, she departs

Her winds will guide Jinx' airship at the end

I think the connection is still there.

Pretty sure the mage wars referred to by heimer were more nation ending events than the world eradicating threat viktor posed at the end of s2, though.

All of this. Not to mention the bird on the cover art of Isha's song.

Isha being the embodiment of a real Goddess, giving color, life, health.. without loss of life, as we see with the Hexcore miracles.
Perhaps the writing wasn't as bad as I thought.
Although the characters ping ponging their stances hurts, and the MCU stuff is bad, there's still these profound truths hidden in the subtleties here and there.

Caitlyn got progressively sexier to me over the course of the season, not sure if it was the different hairstyles or her outfits or what but damn.

That one shot of Mel's ass in her new outfit was top tier as well

The kumbayah is MCU shit. Or Hollywood shit. It's so inauthentic it causes cringe.
The writers know this.

To sell skins faggot

shows relying on vague mystery boxes for fans to theorize about really needs to end

Cosmic Horror

Are my boys in it?

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Seeing Isha as a divine blessing sent to aid Jinx creates a meta where the real Gods and Goddesses care for these characters, these people much like the audience does.
The hope being that this applies to our own lives and we should live them to the fullest, even if it takes us to difficult and horrible places.

The hexcore is linked to the void, but we can't say which void entity took hold of Viktor. Some weird god of automatons and timeloops.

Nah, cool NON-HUMANOID monsters aren't gay enough, we need magic twink and his boyfriend having cosmic sex instead

No shortstack yordles, no eldritch void kino.

There's definitely nothing in this show for me then.

Speaking of the void, League introduced new void monsters after Arcane S1. So Void invasion or something like it was likely planned and discarded.

It's probably going to be a thing for real in the show currently in production.
Or maybe I'm just coping.

I see a lot of people defending the blunders this season with "well, the did the best they could do with only 9 episodes". I can think of about 5 plot lines that should've been removed that could've prevented s2 from feeling rushed.

IMO Ekko should've been doing fucky wucky time shit from the beginning and not have it near the end of the series.

Yeah, they crammed in too many plots.

Put Viktor in the backburner, he will slowly get more and more cybernetics and starts building more hextech limbs and solutions ... becomes a faction in the Undercity but without major plotlines

AU content can be safely removed, although it was a great way to give and remove Z-drive from Ekko - potentially keeping the series safe from timetravel shenanigans from hereon out

Warwick intro was good, and he was teased as the earliest content.

Piltover vs Zaun conflict was sidelined and undermined too easily. This season cheapened so many conflicts it felt offensive at times.

With AU gone, Mel and Ambessa seek to control Jayce for the hextech and its future

Ambessa seek to control Jayce for the hextech and its future

I WANTED THIS. I wanted Jayce to feel the foly of his ways, but not in a literal world ending case.
So sick of "the world ends or you save it" plot lines. Give me normal consequences again please. Jayce is just a guy. He didn't need to end up being the choas bringer and solver all in one go.
(Though I did highly approve of the slow gay burn of him realizing that he loved Viktor more than Mel in both a brother/friend/lover/howeveryouwishtoseeit way).

Warwick intro was good, and he was teased as the earliest content.

No, Warwick must go. Huge time drain with no benefits.

I went back and watched the climactic moment with Ekko again.
When he pulls the cord for the big rewind, it does in fact blast away all the Viktorbots that were holding him, pic related.
Then after recovery, he pulls the cord again and hurls the whole thing at Viktor.
I assume rewinding that far back simply overloaded the Z-Drive, and then revving it again right away just pushed it too far and it exploded.

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Go to a universe that is practically heaven

Childhood crush who turned into arch nemesis is you're your loyal, loving girlfriend

Everyone you lost is there and happy and life is good

Realize you fucked up in your universe by not trying harder to lock down what is apparently your universal soul mate.

Be such a massive moralfag that you decide to go back and help save your universe

Land in front of your soulmate now nemesis, about to kill herself

Through use of actual time travel, manage to talk her down and onto your side

Single handidly save the day and the world

Realize you didn't save the girl

Ekko must be on suicide watch if he doesn't know. IMAGINE being the only Ekko in the multiverse to not get your girl. They probably clown on his ass during the conventions. Theres probably a few Ekkos who want to beat his ass for fucking up with their girl that badly

Well it's not the negative associations with the MCU

I'd feel more from the criticism if it didn't all boil down to

UGH.

It doesn't you're just a retard with your ears closed also Rogue One and Abdor are better written than this

Rogue One

Vader Wank is a big yikes from me, anon.

Abdor

don't know what that is. Why don't you abdor deez NUTZ.