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The second season of Arcane came to an end this weekend, and with it, the first of what Riot clearly wants to be a larger League of Legends TV universe. While we don’t know what’s next in store for this franchise, we do know that we’ve got some thoughts about what went down in the final season—some good, some bad, and all spoiler-heavy.
We Liked: The intro is better than ever
© Netflix For better or worse, there’s no separating Arcane from Imagine Dragons. “Enemy,” the opening theme from the pop band and hip-hop artist JID, was the first original song heard in the series, informing the characters’ journeys. Where season one’s intro displayed the cast as statues whose League importance was teased, season two’s opening was different. We see the characters in loose-fitting clothing as they move around their individual spaces, either venturing into unknown territory or on the verge of breaking. But from Ekko’s time-bending cartwheel to Mel being swarmed by shadowy hands, it’s clear that they’re all coming into their own, and the song’s lyrics feel more fitting than ever.
Arcane‘s intro also shows its leading players assuming poses that reference Julius Caesar, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Macbeth. This display of artistic prowess, combined with unique, fleeting, glitchy frames in the opening of each episode, established the benchmark for Fortiche’s enhancement of visual flair in the show’s concluding season. It also underscored the significance of each minute and monumental frame of animation, urging fans to observe closely.
Yep, it still looks good as hell
© Netflix Season one was a feast for the eyes, and has been touted as an example of what happens when you just let animation studios cook without much inference. This sophomore outing was no exception, and if anything, further cements Fortiche as a studio worth paying attention to in the future. With the League universe’s more magical elements taking center stage, things got much trippier and much freakier on a visual level. Every time the show did a wide shot or hits slow-motion during an action scene, it felt like Riot and Fortiche were flexing off what they were able to accomplish after being in sync for so long.
Ambessa is evil in the best way
© Netflix Mel’s mother, Ambessa, shows up at the tail end of season one as another person attempting to get Jayce to build Hextech weaponry. She’s never been quiet about wanting Piltover and Zaun to go to war, and this season showed how far she’s willing to go to get what she wants. She’s a very different villain from Silco and Jinx, and even before she gets into battle herself, she’s a compelling force of nature that should’ve gotten to live so she could be much worse.
Whether dominating the battlefield or engaging in covert political maneuvering, Ambessa’s formidable presence permeated the final season of Arcane, compelling both characters and viewers to scrutinize courtesies, loyalties, and strange disappearances in each episode. It’s no wonder she’s the first Arcane original character coming to League. Hopefully, we learn more about her in her upcoming book Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf by C.L. Clark.
The best characters got the best moments
© Netflix The camera loves the cast of Arcane, and it can’t get enough of ‘em. Scenes like Mel going super saiyan unlocking her mage powers, or Ekko learning how to manipulate time, landed so strongly because of the work that went into guiding the characters toward these payoffs. Even less bombastic moments, like Ekko and Powder dancing in a four-frame-per-second sequence to accentuate his time powers, are as moving as the boy savior’s big hero moment in its finale.
On the other end, Fortiche and Riot Games’ continued attention to detail, with all the circular narrative rhyming leitmotifs and referential moments from Arcane‘s previous season, hit better than any blockbuster space soap opera. Season one also had strong, fist-pumping scenes, but they made a bigger impact here in part because we now know the full scope of the story—and for some of these characters, it’ll be a while before we see them again.
We Didn’t Like: Act 2 broke the show’s stride
© Netflix Each Arcane act is structured like a trilogy, and it’s in the second act where this season stumbled. By skipping ahead to months later, significant changes for Piltover, Zaun, and the cast felt rushed and unsatisfying. (Caitlyn Kiramman, for example, is never fully allowed to be seen as being complicit in Ambessa’s fascist takeover, or even grappling with that beyond just telling Vi she knows she was a part of it.)
While the characters’ final destinations are logical, the rapid pace at which the show moves viewers toward them only leaves the festering feeling that extending the series to three seasons, akin to its act structure, would have been advantageous. Act three’s opener, “Pretend Like It’s the First Time,” is arguably the season’s best episode since it forces the show to slow down and tell the stories of three specific characters—and the entire season would’ve greatly benefited from that similar patience.
Not all characters were handled equally
© Netflix Arcane‘s core players were made very clear—but the collection of side characters seen throughout season two also made strong impressions that had fans geeked over the past three weeks.
Unfortunately, in this respect Riot and Fortiche did their jobs too well: several supporting players felt like they could easily be mains if the show were willing to afford them more interiority or give them a chance to be fully realized. With few exceptions, most newcomers who showed up felt like (often blatantly) they were just on hand to justify a body count that couldn’t otherwise happen with the leads that new and old fans cared about way more.
It was too musical for its own good
© Netflix Does Arcane have good music? Yes. Do we like listening to it? No doubt. But this season often used that soundtrack in the corniest of ways or for the wrong purpose. At times, it felt like the show transitioned into a music video to convey character or plot information when there wasn’t enough time to flesh it out properly in an episode (especially in act two).
Music is a part of League’s DNA and, by extension, the show’s, but there were still a handful of moments where it seemed the writers’ room was conceiving scenes specifically with a future song in mind. Rather than underscoring big moments as it did in its previous season, it felt like a bit of a crutch to make do with the show’s blisteringly fast pace.
League of Legends overwhelms everything else
© Netflix Silly as it is to say a League of Legends show has too much League of Legends, Arcane’s big turns lost some bite when things were twisted to add in elements or lore from the games. It’s never been a secret that Riot wants to do more League TV shows. Still, how it teases the larger world of Runeterra and other characters who may be waiting in the wings can be jarring and underscore how much we’re getting in just two seasons of television. That’s especially true when teases to the larger world of Runeterra nipped the nuanced drama of Piltover and Zaun’s class conflicts—something that season one built up so masterfully—to rush toward an unearned united front in its finale. It is never good when you rely on AO3 to pick up the slack for nuanced storytelling from an otherwise smash-hit television show, but that’s the case with Arcane‘s latter half.
Overall, Arcane—faults and all—is still the cream of the crop in the pantheon of video game adaptations and a testament to the earth-moving quality of animation as an expressive and complex art form. Both seasons are now streaming on Netflix.
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