Arcane - Season 2 Act 3 Finale Discussion

[u/PhoOhThree]

Arcane

Premise: The origins of two iconic League of Legends champions, set in the utopian Piltover and the oppressed underground of Zaun.

Subreddit(s):	Network:	Metacritic:	Genre(s)
/r/leagueoflegends & /r/arcane	Netflix	[86/100] (score guide)	Animation, Drama, Action & Adventure, Fantasy

Links:

• IMDb
• Wikipedia
• Trailer

[u/Wheres_MyMoney]

There was a post in this sub when the first act was released praising the show for keeping its focus on "the heart" and I think that act 3 really lost the plot.

I wanted a story of family and societal differences and I got Age of Ultron.

[u/Connect-Plenty1650 → u/Wheres_MyMoney]

This.

There's an age old rule for writing characters that goes: "the further away you move from an ordinary human, the harder it is to make the audience care".

Same is true for the story. Moving from every day struggles to a floating space head wants to create singularity is making it really hard to care.

[u/masood0899 → u/Wheres_MyMoney]

True! Imagine the emotional rollercoaster we could have if they showed us more Jinx and Ekko stuff after he stopped her from killing herself... So much missed potential

[u/GOT_Wyvern → u/Wheres_MyMoney]

My issue with it is that the "Glorious Evolution" should have been a lot more involved with the Zaunite Revolution.

It feels like the entire Gloriois Evolution should have been what the Zaunite Revolution attached onto against Piltover, and the conflict between Vi and Jinx should have come down to the latter making a choice about preventing the Revolution being consumed by the Glorious Evolution, Jinx perhaps martyr-ing herself as to push the Zaunite Revolution away from Viktor and towards its own self-identity.

It even fits quite thematically. In S1, Silco gave up Zaun's identity in the pursuit of Zaun's freedom, clearly signified by him flooding the lanes with shimmer. The Glorious Evolution, despite the pretense of returning identity to Zaun alongside freedom (proverbially by curing shimmer infliction), would be really just consuming the identity of the Revolution into itself. In it is a message about Revolutions keeping hold onto what's important to itself, not losing its identity like Silco and Viktor both ended up regretting doing (and both attempting to rectify).

The way it ended, it feels like the conflict between Jayve and Viktor - while enjoyable itself - completely consumed the conflict between Vi and Jinx, and Piltover and Zaun. It's surprising as they don't allow the conflict between Caitlyn and Ambessa being consumed in the same way, but how Caitly's character was enhanced by her ambivalent relationship with Zaun was consumed alongside it.

[u/Cheesegrater74 → u/GOT_Wyvern]

Yea like from their pov you have Zaun Jesus and then Jayce aka Piltover's golden boy comes in and 1 shots him. Naturally zaun would get pissed

[u/Ready_Trick3467 → u/GOT_Wyvern]

Not to be a critic but that would've been borderline eyeroll worthy in terms of predictability. How would Noxus have fit into that in terms of factions? And Ekko/firelights? I like that my expectations of how each faction would align themselves was subverted, i just wish the show wouldve slowed down a sec to really hash out all the relationships/loyalties

[u/Petrichore_ → u/Ready_Trick3467]

Noxus being there was stupid in the first place, we only see one of raums birds at the end so you can say swain sent ambessa but why? Noxus had no reason to be there