Season 2 of Arcane was a highly anticipated event. I wasn’t the biggest Arcane fan to begin with, I think the animation does a lot of heavy lifting, but I liked the first season well enough and was interested in how the story would develop. After 3 years of waiting, the new and final season of Arcane is finally here.

I didn’t have high expectations, but somehow I was still disappointed. Most people seem to have enjoyed the season, and even though I had a lot of fun, when I stopped thinking about the cool animation and started thinking about the actual writing of the show, I couldn’t help feeling frustrated. The consensus seems to be that season 2, despite its flaws, was a good season, but I beg to disagree. Please don’t kill me, but someone has to be a hater.

Spoilers below.

Summary: We pick up right after Jinx’s attack, which claimed the lives of half the Piltover Council, including Caithlyn’s mother. Piltover is mourning, and any attempt at making peace with Zaun is unlikely. In this moment of chaos, Mel’s family gains power and they try to push the leaders of Piltover into outright war with the under city.

Pacing Issues.

The 9-episode format can be partially blamed for all the other issues I had with this season. The Netflix model worked for season 1 because it was a compact story with a clear three act structure and a manageable amount of characters, but even season 1 felt rushed at times (for example, Caitlyn and Vi’s relationship, or Ekko’s story). However, not only did season 2 also have 9 episodes, but it was turned into the final season of the show, which means pacing the story correctly was going to be a hard job from the get-go. To make it worse, Netflix decided to force season 2 into a three act structure as a marketing gimmick, even if this structure didn't benefit the story this time around.

The writers came up with an interesting “solution”. Instead of writing the connecting tissue in between scenes that a story needs to make sense, they added elaborate music sequences where they could quickly brush over events. The worst example of this is the sequence of Caitlyn using toxic gas on the civilian population of Zaun. We don’t get to see how Vi feels about using such an inhumane weapon on her own people, we don’t get to see how they go about “investigating” the under city and which people they are using the gas on, instead we get a cool looking montage of cops using toxic gas on innocent people, because perhaps if you are too distracted by the pretty animation and the music you are not going to think too deeply about how fucked up this is. We are going to circle back to this later. Other examples of the writers using music to fill in the gaps are episode 5 with the “Paint the Town Blue” sequence, and during Vi’s mental breakdown in episode 5 (which annoys me for multiple reasons). A successful example of this “technique” is Viktor healing Vander on episode 6, because a) Music has always been a big part of Vander’s character and his relationship with his daughters, and b) Spending more time on healing Vander just for it to fail would feel like a waste, therefore turning Vander’s healing into a music montage makes sense for his character and helps the pacing of the show.

In general, season 2 feels like a collection of AMVs patched up together with band-aids and spit. The writers speed-run all the character arcs and all the conflicts of the series in an effort to somehow wrap-up a story that clearly needed either more episodes or another season, and they also have to find ways to set up an entire franchise so that Netflix can keep milking this universe for God knows how long. This is less on the writers and more on Netflix, so I'm willing to cut them some slack for the bad pacing. I still think it’s ridiculous that the writers thought it was a good idea to add 3 new enforcer characters that ended up being a complete waste of time.

I Hate CaitVi.

Okay, time to be a full-on hater. I hate Caitlyn, and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t. I thought we all agreed that the “lesbian cop” trope was problematic years ago, why does Arcane get a pass for this? I’ve been saying this since season 1, and season 2 only made her worse and more annoying.

Act I set up a corruption arc for Caitlyn, and it doesn’t shy away from showing how she’s becoming radicalized and buying into fascist ideology. This is honestly the only part of this show where I enjoyed Caitlyn, in the way that one enjoys a well written villain. At the end of the day, she’s a cop from a privileged family, her compassion towards the under city comes from a place of superiority (her treating them with basic human decency is glorified as a sign of innate goodness), but the moment that someone from Zaun personally hurts her this compassion goes away, and she’s quick to dehumanize the Zaunites and use her status against them. Remember, she’s able to use the toxic gas as a weapon because the tunnels were built by her family. She also compares one individual act (Jinx’s murder of her mother) to the systemic oppression that killed Vi’s parents (they were murdered by enforcers during a revolt against Piltover). The show seems to be doing this purposefully, calling attention to the ways in which Caitlyn treats the people of Zaun, and her character progression towards a fascist dictator at the end of Act I was very realistic. However, this is completely wasted because the show refuses to put Caitlyn in a negative light, so even her worst actions are framed as misguided attempts to do good, a trauma response, or the result of Ambessa’s manipulation. The writers want to have their cake and eat it too: They want to shock the audience by showing how easy it is for “nice” people to turn towards fascism, but they also want Caitlyn to be “good lesbian representation” and therefore they can’t commit to her becoming a villain. Her worst action in the show, using the Gray on civilians, is shown to us through a cool music montage and never addressed again. In the finale, when the Zaunites join the fight against the Noxians, don’t you think they would be a little conflicted about the fact that the very same gas that was used against them is now being used to fight the invasion?

Caitlyn talks about “her crimes” and how there’s no way to atone for them, yet she ends the season without having faced any consequences for her actions. She ends in the same place of privilege and power that she started from, minus an eye, but losing an eye in the fight against Ambessa has nothing to do with the crimes against humanity that she committed. We are also supposed to believe that Caitlyn’s abuse of her power is somehow equal to what Jinx has done, which is simply not true. Individual acts of violence and defiance can not be compared to systemic abuse of power and State-sanctioned violence. The writers never bring up the gas again because if they did, anyone would realize that Caitlyn’s actions are not excusable. It’s also hilarious that Caitlyn never has a moment of realization regarding her prejudice, instead she reunites with Vi and apparently seeing her hot ex is enough to bring Caitlyn around.

That brings us to Vi, Caitlyn’s other half and the most incoherent character in the show.

You can tell the writers are proud of themselves for having an on-screen lesbian relationship, because Vi exists solely to be “representation”. She was a compelling character in season 1 because of the tragedy of her relationship with her sister, which was the emotional core of the show and what tied everything together. For some reason, the writers decide to make Vi’s character revolve entirely around Caitlyn on season 2, and when I say “for some reason”, I know exactly why: Because CaitVi is a popular ship. The writers are more concerned with giving the audience fanfic fuel and reducing Caitlyn and Vi to common tropes (Princess x Peasant, Cop x Delinquent, Blue x Pink, etc.) than they are interested in giving Vi an actual character arc. Her sex scene with Caitlyn, more than feeling like a victory of Queer representation, feels like the final nail in the coffin of her character. Your sister is grieving and clearly going through a mental health crisis, and you are on the jail cell where your girlfriend was keeping her, but sure, let’s have sex right here, right now, instead of going out to find your sister before an actual war breaks out. Even if she didn’t realize that Jinx was suicidal, her immediate reaction was to call her sister a treacherous liar and to get horny. It makes the final scene of Jinx sacrificing herself for Vi even more frustrating, because there’s no indication that Vi would do the same for her sister. Also, Vi was unbelievable dumb during that scene for the sake of drama, but I digress.

The writers seem to have forgotten what made Vi so likeable in the first place, which was her love for her family and her struggle to choose between her sister and her lover. The main takeaway from Vi’s character this season seems to be that she should put her romantic relationships above her family, and this is somehow “liberating” and “healing” for her. The idea that Vi should let go of her guilt regarding Jinx is not terrible in theory, but again, the writers also want the audience to feel sad that these two sisters can’t be happy together.

It’s also frustrating that Vi’s relationship with Caitlyn not only overrides her relationship with her sister, but it also erases all of Vi’s background. It’s hilarious that Ekko praises Vi as some sort of hero of the under city on episode 7, when Vi has never voiced any political views of her own. The closest we get to that is Vi refusing to become an enforcer, but this goes nowhere because not only does she join the cops by the end of the same episode, but she also has no issue with Caitlyn using toxic gas on the people of Zaun. Then, after parting ways with Caitlyn, Vi is completely detached from the political conflict going on around her, and what makes her have a mental breakdown is not the fact that she joined the same people that killed her parents or the fact that her people are being put under martial law and she can’t do anything about it, what makes her spiral is that Caitlyn broke up with her. By the end of the show, Vi is happily living with Caitlyn in her mansion. This is specially frustrating because season 1 was setting her up to be Vander’s successor just like Jinx was for Silco, and yet Vi never takes up a leadership position within her community or tries to do anything for them after season 1.

To put it simply, Vi is nothing beyond her relationship with Caitlyn. At least Caitlyn gets to have a messy and inconsistent arc about becoming a fascist, Vi is just sort of there, flopping around as the plot demands.

Jinx.

I love Jinx more than I hate CaitVi, and she’s one of the few bright spots of the season. It’s almost impressive that the writers managed to craft a pretty good character arc for Jinx and still fumbled the ending (if Jinx did indeed die, which I doubt).

Jinx’s arc this season is one of healing. When granted companionship and kindness by the people around her, Jinx is able to find joy in life and starts to heal from her trauma, which in turn makes her more stable and allows her to think about the greater picture. Unlike with the death of Vander and her brothers in season 1, this time Jinx is not alone in her grief of Silco, she’s able to share her pain with Sevika, and Isha gives her the unconditional love that Jinx needs now that Silco isn’t around to provide it. Healing, however, is not linear, and Jinx’s depressive tendencies and self-hatred don’t magically go away. Losing her support system and having to go through yet another loss (plus reliving the trauma of Vander’s death) throws Jinx right back to where she started.

While it annoys me that Sevika disappeared from the story for seemingly no reason around this time, it makes sense for Jinx’s character arc that the writers would keep her isolated, because we have already established that what makes Jinx spiral is being alone. It’s odd that Sevika and Jinx had a bit of a found family arc that didn’t continue after Act I, but since the writers wanted Ekko to be the one to save Jinx, I understand why they took Sevika out of the picture.

I enjoyed seeing Jinx become a symbol for the people of Zaun, though I wish we had gotten a more in-depth look into her political views, and we could have seen her grapple with Silco and Vander’s legacy. It would have been interesting to see Jinx interact with the firelights or show her actually organizing the revolutionary efforts instead of being mostly a figurehead. This is yet another example of the writers neglecting the social commentary of the show in favor of focusing on interpersonal conflicts. Still, I though Jinx’s arc was very well done. My biggest complaint has to do with the ending, because her relationship with Vi wasn't as important this season, and I think it’s a bizarre choice to make Jinx sacrifice herself in the same episode that she was stopped from committing suicide. To some extent, you could say that it’s realistic that Ekko motivating Jinx to save the city didn’t stop Jinx from being suicidal, but I feel that this ending is too abrupt and leaves Jinx’s character arc unfinished. This is why I think that Jinx isn’t actually dead. It also doesn’t make sense if you think about how popular she is and the fact that Netflix is trying to turn Arcane into one of its main franchises. I’m sure there’s going to be a spin-off show or something where they reveal that she’s alive after all, and it’s going to make people crazy. Or maybe I’m just coping.

And some people are going to be like “well, Jinx had to die in order to atone for her crimes, if she didn’t die she would have to go to jail” and to that I say okay, so is Caitlyn also going to jail for *checks notes*: Using toxic gas on civilians, starting an authoritarian regime, throwing people in jail without due procedure, threatening prisoners, using police violence to keep the population in check, and allowing foreign military intervention into the city? As Vi said in a rare moment of the writers remembering the social commentary of their show: Who gets to decide who gets a second chance? I guess Caitlyn gets away with losing an eye and everything is settled, while Jinx’s “crimes” are so “heinous” that she has to die or be imprisoned.

Ekko, Mel and Other Victims of Limited Screentime.

What happened to Ekko’s tree, does anyone know? I don’t, and I don’t think the writers know either.

For a story that is, supposedly, about the conflict between people in power and people trying to change the system, they sure like to focus more on the people at the top. This is a problem that was already present in season 1, but becomes even more noticeable now. I think the way Ekko is sidelined shows the limitations of the writers’ skills. To focus on Ekko and his revolutionary efforts, the writers would need to actually explore the ways in which social movements work and how these different movements affect one another. Ekko and the firelights are not fighting against Piltover, instead they work on building community and mutual support, they use force only as a way to defend themselves, and they stand in contrast with people like Silco that are willing to use violence for the sake of the revolution. This is a very complex topic, yet we never see Ekko interact with any of the other revolutionary leaders of Zaun. He never interacted with Silco or Sevika, and he’s not there to see Jinx become a symbol of the revolution. When Ekko gets to talk with Jinx, she is not thinking about the Zaun-Piltover conflict, and the one conversation they have has nothing to do with it. Ekko’s firelights are never expanded upon, we don’t know what happened to them or their community while Ekko was missing, and they are mostly replaced with the Jinxers.

Again I ask, what happened to Ekko’s tree? The tree was supposed to be a symbol of what Zaun could be, the firelights’ lair was presented to us in season 1 as a place of hope, and act 1 of season 2 creates tension when we see that this last refuge for the Zaunites is being harmed by Piltover’s “progress”, just like the rest of the under city was destroyed by Piltover’s industrialization. However, this plot line is forgotten and we never circle back to this. Instead of wasting time on the new enforcer characters like Loris (bet you didn't even remember his name) or Maddie, wouldn’t that time be better utilized developing Ekko’s second-in-command?

Still, credit where credit is due, episode 7 is the best episode of the season and perhaps the best episode of the show. Imagine how much more impactful Ekko and Jinx’s romance would have been if it had better build up, and we had seen these two interact more before that moment. Somehow, the show managed to make me deeply invested in Ekko and Jinx in less than an hour, and I loved that Ekko doesn’t lose sight of what matters to him and decides to go back to his own world. He’s a great character and would have made the season infinitely better if we focused more on him.

While we are talking about episode 7, I have to say that it’s kind of funny what happened to Heimerdinger. This man had about 10 minutes of screen time, sang a little song, and then died. Exploring his relationship with his pupils? Explaining what he was doing on the alternate version of Zaun and how it may be related to that world being so perfect? Reflecting on his complacency and responsibility regarding the gap between Piltover and Zaun? You get none of that! He’s just a silly little guy, and he sacrifices himself for Ekko so we can get back to the main plot. Aren’t you sad about his death? Probably not, we hardly knew him. By the way, how exactly did he finish the machine in the time it took for Ekko to go to the party? Whatever, moving on.

Mel’s story is alright, but her character arc suffers due to how isolated it is from everything else going on this season. On season 1, Mel’s story tied very neatly into the conflict between Zaun and Piltover. She was someone from a privileged background that wields her political power and skills to advance her own interests, these interests are beneficial to the majority of Piltover but, just like Jayce, she fails to see how hextech further damages the relationship between Piltover and the under city. Her confrontation with her mother and her decision to support Zaun’s independence is a personal triumph and represents Mel’s acknowledgment of her responsibility as someone in a position of power to make the world more just for everyone. Her story can’t be separated from the Zaun-Piltover conflict. However, season 2 surgically removes Mel from this political conflict, instead giving her an arc about gaining control of her latent magical power. She has external growth by gaining these powers, but she lacks internal growth. This is even more obvious because she barely interacts with anyone else. Mel’s story revolves around the Arcane and how to wield it, yet she never interacts with Viktor outside their shared bond with Jayce, something that was already baffling in season 1 and becomes even weirder considering that Viktor and Mel would be perfect foils for one another. While she has an arc about discovering her innate connection to the Arcane and learning to use it in a way that helps her protect the people she loves, Viktor has an arc about the Arcane taking control of him and losing sight of what really matters. This is one of the many wasted opportunities in the show that are the result of the lack of character interactions and time.

On the topic of wasted opportunities, we need to talk about Sevika. Act I established her as Silco’s successor and set up her growing bond with Jinx as they both grieve Silco and what he represented for the people of Zaun. Then, Act II continues this on the first episode with the scene of Sevika rallying the people and then bringing Jinx out of hiding so they can save the prisoners. They are partners, and they are taking up the mantle as protectors of Zaun. After the prison break, Sevika just disappears and her relationship with Jinx is forgotten. Then, she pops up during the council meeting when Jayce explains the situation with Viktor, but Sevika doesn’t say anything, and you would be forgiven if you didn’t realize she was even there (Ekko's friend is also there, but he's barely a character). On the final episode, we see Sevika leading the Zaun forces in the fight against the Noxians, but we are left to wonder why would the Zaunite actually join Piltover against the invasion when Piltover is not offering anything in exchange and just a couple of days ago they were living under martial law and being brutally oppressed (and gassed up) by the enforcers. Sevika (again, with no speaking lines) shows up at the council in her final scene, and we are led to assume that she has joined the council as the representative of the under city. Silco’s goal of an independent Zaun is never mentioned again, instead it’s implied (though not stated, as many things on this show) that Sevika didn’t even try to negotiate for independence and simply accepted to become integrated into Piltover—the ultimate betrayal of everything Silco stood up for, and completely out of line with the ending of season 1, where the scene of the council recognizing Zaun as independent was supposed to be a victory that was tragically undermined by Jinx’s attack. In the end, we don’t even see Sevika acknowledge Jinx’s death, or Isha’s, she never speaks again, and we’re supposed to accept the crumbs we get at the end as a satisfying conclusion to the Zaun-Piltover conflict and to Sevika’s character arc.

Viktor and Jayce.

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that the final scene between Viktor and Jayce is some sort of win for the shippers, and I feel that looking at media through the lenses of shipping is a reductive way of interacting with a story, so I won’t even get into whether JayVik won or whatever. Shipping aside, let’s actually look at Viktor and Jayce’s story this season.

In season 1, Viktor’s story deals with the intersection of his disability and his socioeconomic background and how this informs his choices and motivates him. His character arc is about realizing that, in his pursuit of personal achievement, he’s lost sight of what matters the most to him—helping others. Viktor essentially has to come to terms with the fact that his life work has widened the gap between Piltover and Zaun, and alienated him from his people. His use of the hexcore to heal himself also has unintended consequences, but the story doesn’t frame the healing itself negatively, the issue is Viktor’s lack of restraint, a personal flaw that carries into season 2. The culmination of his arc in the first season is Viktor deciding that, even if the hexcore has helped him, he wants to prioritize the wellbeing of others and not himself.

As an able-bodied person, I don’t feel entirely qualified to speak on how Viktor’s disability was handled, but I think it’s detrimental to the show’s themes that they stop taking into consideration the way his disability and his class interact. The way it’s framed during his final conversation with Jayce makes it seem as if Viktor’s “complex” regarding his disability is his only motivation for his actions, his desire to help Zaun is treated as an extension of his hangups regarding his body and his illness and not politically motivated. Jayce is able to “win” Viktor over by focusing solely on Viktor’s disability, instead of addressing any of Viktor’s points about the injustice and prejudice that he’s seen in their world. I think the main issue with the scene and with Viktor’s arc is that they completely neglect Viktor’s socioeconomic background.

Something that I also noticed and that I think is entirely accidental is that the show sends a weird message about the Arcane when you compare Viktor’s story with Mel’s. Since we never get any coherent explanation for the anomaly or why the hexcore reacts so strongly to Viktor, the show seems to imply that people who are not born into this power are not suited to handle the Arcane, while those like Mel who have an innate connection with the Arcane are able to use it without negative consequences. Paired with the social commentary that the show is trying to make, it’s a bit weird that the Arcane seems to be inherently tied to in-born privilege. This is obviously not on purpose, but I think this happens because the magic system is never properly explained to the audience, and we are just supposed to roll with the magical stuff. Not to bring up Brandon Sanderson’s rules of magic, but it would benefit the story if the audience understood better the difference between Viktor’s magic and Mel’s.

Regarding Jayce, his arc is just a reprise of Viktor’s in season 1, this time it is Jayce that has to put the wellbeing of the world over his personal desires (in this case, his wish to save Viktor). It is fine, the main problem I have with it is the final scene between him and Viktor, and I already explained why. I don’t particularly care about Jayce by himself, he’s only interesting in terms of his relationship with Viktor and Mel.

At least it was pretty.

With all that said, I want to end with one of the few aspects of the series that can’t be criticized. Regardless of how bad the writing gets, Arcane has established itself as a monument in the medium, it has set a high bar for animated shows and proven to the mainstream public that animation can be a valid vehicle for mature, adult stories that recognize the possibilities of the medium and get creative with it. For all my grievances with the music sequences, they are stunning and I love the unique art styles. The character designs are also great, in particular the women. It’s a pretty show, and that alone makes it enjoyable to watch if you can turn off your brain for a few hours.

Arcane is first and foremost a beautiful spectacle. The writers want to include topics like inequality, the cycle of hatred, and the cost of progress, but they are too enamored with their vision of an “unapologetically queer narrative” to deal with any of those other issues. Caitvi holds back the writing, plays into harmful stereotypes, and reduces the characters to their sexuality. The storyline about class struggle was handled terribly, and the ending feels like a betrayal of the complex conversations that season 1 promised the audience. Pretty visuals and cool music sequences became a substitute for good writing, and we end up with a season filled with so many narrative gaps that the audience has to do the writers’ job and bridge over all the holes with our own assumptions. Plot lines are set up and forgotten left and right, and a sprawling cast leads to some of the most compelling characters in the show like Ekko and Mel being sidelined for most of the season. This season works as a way to set up this new franchise, but it fails to deliver a proper resolution to all the themes and character arcs that were set up at the start of the show. Overall, Arcane ended up being little more than hype moments and pretty animation.

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