Ok strap in cuz here are my major criticisms about Viktor’s Act 2 development
(Keep in mind that we all have interpretations of what we choose to take away from the characters, so my interpretation, while I’m trying to write with as much sensitivity to the nuances of both Arcane and the lore, is definitely colored by my own experiences and how those have shaped my perception of Viktor’s character as a whole - you don’t have to agree with me, but I just wanted to spill my heart for this man and get my thoughts out there Q.Q)
OK here we go:
First, I appreciate that they’re not completely manhandling the chemistry between Viktor and Jayce (and I’m not talking specifically about the shipping here). Like, we got a great dynamic between Viktor and Jayce in Act 1, and that bond between them is still very much there in Act 2 (with how Jayce stands up for Viktor’s desire to continue developing the Hexcore because he also wants to cure Viktor of his illness, despite feeling the pressure to start choosing sides in the political game that Mel has dragged him into). That emotional and very genuine relationship was sorely needed in the old Viktor-Jayce lore. I also appreciate that Viktor is still so driven by his ideals to improve the lives of Zaunites (this King is pulling all-nighters while literally dying from illness and We Respect That). The animators and Harry Lloyd did a wonderful job of emphasizing Viktor’s sense of fear, desperation, frustration, loneliness, and small moments of hope in the facial expressions and voice acting.
However, what I’m uncomfortable with is the framing of Viktor’s good intentions to develop hextech to its fullest potential. I’ve already seen more than a few people before Act 2 released today talk about how “Viktor is only helping Jayce so he has the tech to fix his leg” - I’m worried that the fact that Viktor is terminally ill is going to feed into that sentiment, or the idea that “all his talk about “saving and improving lives” was actually an excuse to improve his life.” There are several problems with this, of course: it’s perfectly acceptable to NOT want to die painfully from a terminal illness, especially when you have made it out of a terrible socioeconomic condition and now your whole life is before you, so I don’t see how anyone could criticize Viktor for wanting to live and continue his research. However, I found that there is such a lack of meaningful interactions between Viktor and Zaun that the stated ideology (of him wanting to help Zaun) doesn’t align with what we’re shown.
What we’re shown is that Viktor was an “outsider” among Zaunite kids even as a child because of his disability (which is a whole other discussion that I want to have later); however, we’re never actually shown what kind of relationship he had to the people he grew up with that would make him want to dedicate his entire life to helping them. Of course, it’s totally fine to have Viktor be motivated to help others because of his own experiences with being disabled in an unaccommodating world, but the impression that I get from how the show integrated that disability and his subsequent illness into his character (and I’m speaking as someone who really loves Viktor’s character, and not as someone who thinks Viktor is “evil”) is that helping Zaun is a smokescreen for his real desire to cure his illness. Again, that’s a perfectly acceptable reaction for someone to have to being ill, but it takes away so much of Viktor’s agency.
From this perspective, Viktor is not framed as going down the path of augmentation because he chose this as an ideological and personal response to Piltover’s narrow-mindedness and Zaun’s horrible conditions—instead, he’s framed as going down this path because the only other route is death. He’s not going down the path wherein he will be rejected by Jayce and Piltover for being “too utilitarian”, according to them, in how he wants to solve problems (i.e. the diving suit fiasco in lore), but because he’s somehow being corrupted by the magic of the hexcore (wtf riot??). He’s not turning away from his original idealism because he saw through the shining facade of Piltover’s idea of “progress”—progress that comes at the expense of the poor and starving in Zaun—and because of his own grief, but because (as it seems to be implied) the manner in which he will prolong his own life is incredibly dangerous and will force him to lose his humanity. In other words, Viktor isn’t making an ultimately “bad” choice to pursue augmentation and the ideology supporting it because he fought a hard but equal fight against Piltover’s discriminatory and alienating academic culture, but because, in the context of Arcane, he has no other choice except to die.
Instead, Viktor became what I was worried the writers were going to do with a canonically disabled/ill character: his physical weakness is turned into a form of “othering” and source of fear/hatred (i.e. Viktor being forced to suffer because of this physical weakness and going through depression because of it). I had actually thought that we would see Viktor interacting with the kinds of factory chemical spills described in lore as a child—I had even thought that maybe Viktor’s disfigured leg would be the result of it being caught in a malfunctioning machine as he watches members of his community get hurt or killed in chaos caused by the lack of safe equipment in Zaun. Like, wouldn’t that have been a solid and unforgettable setup for why he’s so motivated to help Zaun, instead of having him spend time with Singed of all people because the writers wanted to isolate him from other children by using his disability against him?
I still love Arcane and I’ll always love Viktor, but his characterization in Act 2 could really have been so much better, and I’m disappointed that this is what newer fans are going to get for his character instead of something more fleshed out. I don’t know what they’ll be doing for Act 3, but like, I feel like we collectively fell in love with this man because he kept building and creating for others, not just himself, and because he managed to keep a spark of his humanity despite going down an extreme path. Instead, Act 2 was just 3 episodes of watching Viktor suffer and be miserable when the lore already provided a way to give him more agency and stand up for what he thinks is right—Act 2 didn’t even give him the opportunity to address a Council whose decisions will substantially affect his work. For the love of god just let me nurse my boy back to health with some sweetmilk and let us forget the Choices that Act 2 decided to make for Viktor’s development.
