Animation's a conundrum.
Arcane’s second season is all done, which means an end to the series, too—though there’s been a whole heap of winks and nudges that Riot’ll be cooking up more seasons of stunning animation with Fortiche in the future. For now, the current debate is whirring around whether the season happened to be ‘rushed’, or if certain scenes were cut for time.
While I’m of the opinion that Fortiche is the master of storytelling so dense it gets stuck in your teeth, co-creator Christian Linke hints at the idea that there were, indeed, words left unsaid or cut for time. That’s as per what he says in Arcane’s “Afterglow” series, featuring himself and fellow creator Alex Yee, as well as actors Hailee Steinfeld (Vi), Ella Purnell (Jinx), Reed Shannon (Ekko). Spoilers for Season 2 ahead.
As a quick recap, Jayce managed to convince his totally-platonic science pal Viktor that his glorious evolution was going a bit overboard, with the two vanishing into the ether. As Linke reveals, they’re probably not coming back: “I would say that they have unfortunately disintegrated.”
What’s more, Linke would’ve loved to explore their relationship more, saying that “to me, the Jayce/Viktor ending—to a certain degree it feels unresolved, because even though there is an understanding for them in the end, I just always feel like more should be said, and they should experience more together. But we’re not given the time.”
While that might set off alarm bells in your head, I don’t think this necessarily means that Linke and Yee were cut off from the story they wanted to tell, or anything. “Kill your darlings” is writing advice for a reason. Not every story needs every single idea you have for it, nor can it fit every idea you care about. It’s entirely possible that Linke is simply speaking from a place of writer’s woe, even if what was cut needed to be cut for the story to work.
Mind, a recent interview with Techradar does raise an eyebrow or two on my end. Linke notes that, in response to the season’s detractors, “there’s a specific pace and a specific way we did things in season one … we wanted to do things a little differently in season two. So, yeah, I understand that, I respect that, and I want to learn from that.” Very curious indeed.
At the very least, it looks like fans aren’t knee-deep in cope about Jinx’s survival after all. When asked if she lived, Purnell adopts a ruinously poor poker face, says “um, we don’t know” then hides behind the question card, adding “we’re gonna leave that open to interpretation.” Yeah, I think she made it, folks. I’m excited to see her again, whether it’s just a quick cameo in whatever Fortiche is cooking next or not.
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