"Arcane Season 2" Chaos on All Fronts

 

    Respectfully, and I do mean this respectfully because people have some very strong opinions on this show, I simply never understood the hype around Arcane. The modern miracle that is a video game adaptation around League of Legends that is not only watchable, but amazing has not been able to replicate all of the magic from season one. That's not to say that I did not enjoy watching this show, I think this show is worth watching for the animation alone, I think visually it is that pretty. However, I'd be remiss to mention that overall I think this season is a step down from season one in terms of storytelling. In only nine episodes, they expect you to follow around six storylines, all of which never actually receive enough breathing room, and in the end it's all messily shoved into one giant tube. A very pretty tube at that, but not pretty enough that it magically fixes all of the issues with the multi-headed beast that is the plot of this show.

    I think the perfect example of this is the character Loris. If you've watched the show and you're saying "who?" I don't blame you because I legitimately had to search up what his name was before writing this paragraph myself. Despite that, I say this because Loris is supposed to be a minor character in this season, except he just kind of shows up, is introduced as a unique face viewers should remember, and does absolutely nothing. He befriends a drunk Vi during episode one, then pretty much does nothing else for the remainder of the show until he shows up in the finale, and the show pretends like viewers are going to be sad that he died in the final fight. His death is semi-crucial to the plot too, because he's manning the big laser they need to break open the big magic egg as well, but once again its hard to care because they never quite explain why it's so important this giant gun is fired, and why he played such a crucial role. What was the point of this all? Why should we care at all about who he is if he shows up as quickly as he dies?

    The worst part is? Based off of interviews the creators have done, all of these wounds are self-inflicted. There was no reason for them to rush all of this other than because they wanted to do a bunch of spinoffs. It is giving strong late-game Game of Thrones vibes where it felt like the seasons were getting worse and all the showrunners cared about was getting to do Star Wars after all of this. Easily, a character who got shafted the most in all of this is Ekko. He has a storyline, and it goes nowhere, shamefully too. As a young man he leads this entire small community, a small refuge from the underbelly of Piltover. He learns that there's a virus infecting the tree upon which this entire community is built around, and visits the topside to figure out how to save it. The only issue is they find out that Hextech is causing all of this damage, and he gets sent to an alternate reality. Here he see's a life where everything is better, he's still allowed to grow up, the underside looks half-decent, and he has a healthy relationship with Jinx. Although, he ultimately gives it all up to go back to the proper time, because he recognizes that this isn't how its supposed to be, and he still has a duty to the people he has sworn to protect. The only issue is as soon as he goes back he sort of drops all of this and just helps Jinx fight people at the very end. The same Jinx that dies without him involved by the way, so he gets no closure, in fact I'm not sure you even get to see him in the aftermath of all the fighting.

    Do you see the problem there? His character doesn't show up for large swaths of the season, and all of the questions involving his character, and his motivations are thrown away at the end so he can play a role in the big fight and never show up again. Pretty much every character is victim to this, because they throw away any form of class war that was building up for a nonsensical "fight for the fate of the entire world" that doesn't even make much sense for the two characters involved. It's just some weird time loop where you ask yourself why Viktor is doing anything that he's doing, and Jayce is just in some weird manic phase for most of it. Mel is literally missing in action in some weird science prison for most of the season, only to get some weird magic powers from a cult that isn't explained well at all. Not to mention I can't figure out for the life of me when her mother randomly became the villain, or what her motivations are, or what happened to that secret group of people that showed up once they bombed the wake for all those fallen in Jinx's attack.

    All of this to say that there were plenty of storylines to follow in this season, and all of them feel underdeveloped, whether it's due to a lack of screentime, or just for the sake of remaining "mysterious" for some reason. Even the one storyline that does receive ample screentime, the Vi-Cait-Jinx storyline doesn't make much sense. Jinx magically becomes lauded as some folk hero, and they give her a child to look after her to somehow humanize her even after it is revealed that she is clearly unwell and also a terrorist that routinely murders people. Then, because Cait broke up with Vi (which is revealed as some weird gotcha later even though it clearly wasn't because Vi was spiraling), they try to make Vi look like the bad person for still being so mean to Jinx. Oh and did I mention that their father figures are brought up but never really do anything in it at all? Or that there's a character named Singed who is pulling a lot of strings in the background and is pretty much the only character who somehow manages to get a happy ending? 

Final Score: 60/100

    The more I talk about this show the angrier it makes me to be honest. I promise it's not as frustrating a watch while you're watching it. It only gets frustrating by the end. Like I usually say, the only reason I'm so angry right now is because I genuinely do feel as if this show had so much potential. It's still pretty too. Visually I think it's a triumph, but for me that does not paper over all of the damn issues I feel about this show. Like come on, there wasn't a single storyline that I thought was done well, not a single one. My friends had hyped this season up so incredibly hard just for me to watch it fall on its face on all fronts, all because it couldn't decide what it wanted to explore, and decided to drop everything for some compromise that no one enjoyed. Maybe this show will recover with its spinoffs, but all I know is that I won't.