Writing Analysis
Arcane Season 2: A Writer’s Predictions
Even though I don’t play League of Legends
I’m not a videogamer. I’ve never played League of Legends. But as a writer, Arcane left me hooked on the characters and the world they inhibit.
So what’s going to happen in Season 2?
To make reasonable predictions, we need to understand two things about Arcane: 1) It’s sociological storytelling, and 2) It’s a tragedy.
Sociological storytelling is when individuals believe they’re making their own choices, but really they’re making choices pre-ordained by society. This is in contrast to the norm of psychological storytelling, in which the individual is centered.
We see sociological storytelling in Attack on Titan and in (the earlier seasons of) Game of Thrones. Each character thinks they’re the hero, but actually the main enemy isn’t another character; it’s the cut-throat society that pits them against each other.
In Arcane, Vi and Caitlyn think they’re oil and water. From a psychological storytelling perspective, they’re actually similar protagonists: good in combat and protective of their people.
But from a sociological storytelling perspective, socioeconomic class creates drives a wedge between them. Cynical after living through loss and poverty, Vi focuses on protecting her tightly knit circle and giving up on everyone else. Having grown up with excess, Caitlyn tries to shrug off her privilege even as she naively tries to share safety and prosperity with the Lanes.
Society ultimately drives them to act differently, even with the similar goals and personality traits.
Arcane is also a tragedy. Every single character is unable to change.
That isn’t to say there isn’t character development, but every character ultimately succumbs to their tragic flaw. Caitlyn goes from believing in the squeaky cleanness of Piltover to seeing its ugly underbelly. She learns she doesn’t know everything. Yet she ruins the last supper by pulling a gun. Instead of listening to a different perspective, she acts like she knows how to singlehandedly fix everything — like she did throughout the entire show.
So keeping in mind season 2 will most likely follow these same two principles (sociological storytelling and succumbing to tragic flaws), here are predictions from a non-gamer writer.
Violet will play out the key conflict in Season 2
If Season 1 was all about whether Powder would become Jinx, Season 2 will be about whether Vi will accept Powder is gone.
Caitlyn will seek her help in killing Jinx. If we didn’t know this already from the fact that that’s exactly what Caitlyn did in Season 1 (because Violet is her only in into the Undercity, a.k.a. the Lanes, let alone into Jinx’s psyche), we can infer it from snippets of dialogue in the Season 2 announcement.
Violet will help with tips and tracking, but when push comes to shove, she’ll be the one getting in the way of Caitlyn’s clean shots. That’s what happened in the final supper scene, after all, figuratively speaking. By then, Vi had already heard about the things Jinx did, yet she still wanted to bring back Powder.
This will cause friction between Caitlyn and Vi. They both want to find her, but for different reasons, just like in Season 1— only this time their intentions are out in the open. In Season 1, conflict stemmed from trying to hide their intentions. In Season 2, conflict will stem from having to openly reconcile their intentions.
Watching Jinx launch a missile on a city of civilians may shake her faith, but she wouldn’t be Vi if she didn’t want to protect her little sister.
Caitlyn seeks blood and will turn against Vi if she stands in her way
A screenwriting teacher once told me what’s worst for the character is what’s best for the story. That means Caitlyn’s parents die in Jinx’s attack.
Throughout Season , Caitlyn had a fraught relationship with her mother, who she found too strict and coddling. Caitlyn was driven to prove her worth beyond Councilor mother and otherwise privileged upbringing. She could have been a princess but chose to be cowboy, figuratively speaking. She disobeyed her mother by constantly putting herself in dangerous situations, the way Simba ventured into the Elephant Graveyard. Her father brokered peace between the two, urging both to listen to each other. But at the end of the day, her doting father and her strict mother both wanted the best for her.
But now they’re gone.
In a way, Caitlyn lived for her parents in Season 1: she lived to defy them.
In Season 2, she’ll live to avenge them.
Vi is on thin ice, because Caitlyn is all or nothing. She goes all in for the people she cares about — remember how she traded in a folding rifle in the depths of the Undercity to buy a vial of Shimmer for a woman she barely knew?
Yet, step out of line once with her, and you become her enemy. Jayce, her lifelong friend, made the mistake of giving her a job when her mother had her fired. She kicked him out without turning to look at him.
If she could kick out her lifelong best friend, she could certainly kick out someone she barely knows, even if Vi is her love interest.
Can Vi accept Powder is gone?
The main question for Caitlyn is: will she ever learn how to negotiate leveraging the tools she has? We saw a hint of this when she used Jayce’s papers to forge an official document and her own uniform to speak to a prisoner. But we saw damning evidence against her ability to negotiate during the final supper scene: instead of using Vi as a bargaining chip — instead of giving Jinx what she desperately wants — she decides to pull a gun on her.
So in Season 2, we’re likely to see her dig her heels in. Being naive, she won’t see how she (partially) caused this situation due to her inability to bargain. Instead, she’ll fortify all the skills she’s acquired by herself, skills she can continue to hone on her own — tracking, shooting, investigating — to make herself even less dependent on others.
This ties back into our key conflict for Season 2: can Vi accept Powder is gone?
Caitlyn needs her help, but she can’t negotiate for the life of her. In the Season 2 announcement, she makes a reasonable, emotional appeal: if she goes alone, she will die. Vi obviously would care whether Caitlyn dies.
But she won’t be able to make the appeal that will get Vi to get on board: she won’t be able to lie and say she believes Powder can still be salvaged, let’s go and help her.
Thus, Vi will turn her down.
Caitlyn will probably have to turn to her longtime friend, Jayce, for help.
Jayce will be disgraced and removed from the Council.
Piltover (the City of Progress) will blame Jayce for the catastrophic attack on the Council. He was the Golden Boy under whose watch the Lanes ramped up their violent attacks.
First, he provoked the Lanes: he launched investigations, shut down traffic, and then hypocritically went into the Lanes himself to destroy one of their factories — without the approval of the rest of the Council, at the behest of an undercity dweller (Vi). He even let the undercity dweller walk away with Hextech (magic-powered) gloves, an innovation he hadn’t even shared with the rest of Piltover, an innovation Heimedinger had declared too dangerous to use before decades of careful research. He himself weaponized a magic hammer in the attack — after vehemently resisting any attempts to weaponize Hextech.
If word gets out he killed a child while he was at it, he’ll be branded a monster.
Piltover might simply think him incompetent. A hypocritical brute who pushed his boundaries. Who didn’t know what to do with the immense power and responsibility thrust upon him.
Except — was he an innocent victim?
Looking back further, Jayce was the one who shoved his own mentor, Heimedinger, off the Council — even though Heimedinger was one of Piltover’s founders.
If Piltover believes he seduced Meldarda — the warlord’s daughter — to get a seat on the Council, they’ll hate him all the more.
Can Piltover trust his actions weren’t premeditated in some sick way to incur a war — giving Piltover a convenient reason to invest in Hextech, his innovation? Word has it he’s been bribing foreign diplomats with first dibs on future Hextech.
As viewers, we saw Jayce make a series of unfortunate, well-intentioned but often misinformed choices. We know he believes in justice as much as he champions technological progress. But you have to admit: on paper, his actions look pretty bad.
I predict Piltover will hate him — and that this will motivate him to redeem himself. He’s going to go rogue, working out of the Council from which he’ll be removed, without the resources of the Academy or anyone else, to go track down Vi. Maybe he’ll even resent Caitlyn, his long-time friend, for working with Vi. And when he finds out who was at the end of it all — Jinx — he’ll chase her down.
But if Caitlyn shows up saying she’s cut ties with Vi — that Vi won’t work with her because she wants to kill Jinx, and that she can’t work with Vi because Vi won’t give up on this delusion that Powder can be salvaged — Jayce will size the opportunity to avenge himself. Using her shooting and tracking skills, and using his hammer, they will race again Vi to reach Jinx first.
Meldarda will ditch Jayce — on the surface
Rumor has it Councillors Meldarda and Jayce are lovers. Maybe that’s how a mere scientist from a lowly blacksmithing family got a seat on the Council in the first place — she was the one who put the notion up for a vote, after all.
If Piltover believes he seduced her to get a seat on the Council, they’ll hate him all the more. But they’re more likely to believe she chose him for one main reason: she’s cunning.
Meldarda always struck me as Margaery Tyrell. She holds her cards close to her chest but clearly knows how to play the game. We’re see her competence in sociopolitical maneuverings well before we find out what’s driving her.
As it turns out, Meldarda is, like Margaery, driven to achieve power not for pride or greed but to instill peace and prosperity — without war. She wants to prove her warmongering mother wrong.
That was until the Council blew up.
Jayce was the Golden Boy under whose watch the Lanes ramped up their violent attacks
.In Season 2, she’ll be too clever to maintain her association with Jayce. But being kind, in love, and too clever to completely burn a bridge with a potential resource, she will probably monitor and, strategically, support him.
When he goes underground, when he sneaks back to her to tell her about his plan to go chase down Jinx with Caitlyn, she’ll use her access to the Academy and other institutions he’s been shut out of to help them out.
The bigger question is, will she seek war?
More than a pacifist, Meldarda is a strategist. Therefore, she will seek war, not because she has a change of heart, not out of rage or fury or psychosis, but because it is the most strategic thing to do to acquire peace.
Meldarda wanted to avoid war if she could. The Lanes have shown her she can’t. The Lanes may have started it, but Piltover cannot roll over and take it.
Jinx inspires insurrection — and civil war
By declaring war, Jinx will split the Undercity in two. Most will lambast her for shaking things up and bringing Piltover’s fury upon the Lanes.
But an aggressive minority will be inspired. They’ve been itching for revenge on those Pilties. They’re sick of Vander and even Silco for failing to do anything for the Undercity.
Jinx, not being a leader, will evade responsibility for the fans who form around her. Having been ostracized all her life, she can’t believe people could truly like her for who she is. She’ll push them away.
But that won’t stop her fans from seeking direction and eventually carrying out orders on what they think is her behalf. She’ll become a god-like hero to them, and everything they do will be at her service.
They won’t always be helpful, though, and Jinx, as starved for affection as she is, craves competence and power. Having been ridiculed and ostracized for her incompetence as a child, she’ll unleash the same vitriole on the fans who accidentally get in her way.
Then, they’ll turn against her, too, and they’ll prove her right — she really is better off alone.
Ekko will begrudgingly accept that in this time of war, the Firelights might have to kill Jinx and her followers.
Will there be a love interest for Jinx? Say that there was: say that this person serves as a foil by reawakening the shard of Powder trapped inside her. Then no, there cannot be a love interest. Season 1 was all about choosing between Powder and Jinx, with the main obstacle being Violet. It wouldn’t make sense from a writing standpoint to rehash the same conflict with someone else as the obstacle. Consequences are boring when they can be undone. Powder will always be a part of Jinx, no matter how much she tries to kill her. But we need some sense of finality in Jinx’s choice to become Jinx.
Say instead the love interest appeals to Jinx’s chaotic destructiveness. Then the main conflict would be whether this person is up to her standards. Can they prove themselves competent and loyal? That might be a story worth watching. Most likely, the suitor will fail, pushing Jinx further towards the dark side.
Ekko leads the civil war against Jinx
Most of the Undercity will hate Jinx for bringing war upon them. Those who want to do something about it will turn to Ekko and the Firelights, who already have been foiling Silco’s operations.
The Firelights have technology and combat skills. They know how to organize themselves on and off the battlefield. Now with Heimedinger on their side, they can create even better technology.
Ekko’s main conflict will be whether he can ditch his Batman-like no-kill policy. So far the Firelights have been using a foam-like substance that only temporarily restrains whoever they’re fighting. They might swing some weapons, but they’re always careful to avoid casualties. In hand-to-hand combat, Ekko couldn’t kill Jinx even after all she’d done, because he saw a glimmer of Powder.
Powder will always be a part of Jinx, no matter how much she tries to kill her.
But he’s also fiercely protective of his home. There might be some fractioning in the Firelights — for and against killing — but being strategic and protective, Ekko will begrudgingly accept that in this time of war, the Firelights might have to kill to survive.
Those are my predictions as a writer, having only briefly glimpsed over some of the lore.
In the works:
- My predictions after reading the lore, and new characters
- My predictions for Viktor, Heimedinger
