Loved Arcane, still trying to process everything, really. But one question: Does anyone else feel like they fell into the trope of „Mentally Ill/Disabled Person Sacrificing Themselves For Someone Else/The Greater Good Because They Can’t Have A Happy Live Anyways“?
We’ve seen that with Isha, Jinx and kind of Viktor as well. Any thoughts of people who have more knowledge of this trope than me about this?
I definitely see where you're coming from but I don't feel like we were cheated out of a happy or better ending for these characters, nor do I feel like their "deaths" were cheap or happened because the writers couldn't think of something better.
The trope is a problem when it seems like no other character goes through torment like that and no other character dies like that. In arcane so many people die very graphically on screen and there isn't a single character who gets a completely happy ending.
But also, I don't believe Jinx is dead.
Thematically it doesn't make much sense. Arcane is based off league of legends and is replacing some of their written lore and it would make no sense to have their poster character (Jinx) just dead. Plus, in the explosion frame you see a pink line like Jinx has when she uses her weird little shimmer power, and we see Caitlyn looking at the hex gate blueprints and zooming in on air ducts while smiling softly and holding a piece of Jinx's grenade, then we see one of the air ships going over the sea towards Demacia in an exact copy of the frame of an airship from season ome episode one when Powder says shes "going to ride in one of those someday", and the end credits flicker with a jagged written "the end" in Jinx's handwriting and colors- everything in arcane is very very intentional. Those are not errors or coincidences. Jinx is very much alive.
Plus, let's look at the writing here. Jinx is suicidal. She tries to off herself because she thinks that's the only way to end the cycle. The only way she can escape and let Vi and everyone else be happy without her interference. She needs to walk away. Like her hallucination of Silco tells her to, like in the alternate dimension when Vander says she's too smart to spend her life in a bar. Because even though she's trying to help, she has to fill her own cup every once in a while.
But Ekko stops her from killing herself. He talks her out of it. Tells her she can help. The VA mentions that Ekko absolutely told Jinx about the alternate dimension, where she's different. Shows her that she CAN change.
It's very clear Jinx now KNOWS what she has to do, and that's NOT killing herself. It's walking away from Vi in a way where Vi won't want to follow her. So she lets Vi think she's dead while she sales away in the sky to Demacia where she, in league lore, does appear frequently in.
Now, about Isha.
Isha is a character who kind of exists only in tangent to Jinx's own mental health. She really doesn't have a mental illness or a lazily written graphic death that feels like torture. She doesn't have an arc. She is the same kid we see in episode one, not changed, not totally different. Same kid. And she represents showing Jinx what Vi went through/what being responsible for someone is like. To push Jinx towards that idea that she needs to walk away from this for her sake and for Vi's sake.
And last but not least, Viktor.
Now, Viktor is complicated. But first things first, he and Jayce are absolutely not dead. Both are extremely prominent characters in Runeterra lore and they can't really be written out so early in the game. However even if they are dead, I still don't feel like Viktor fits that trope.
Viktor has a very smooth character arc in which he continues to sail downward in a spiral of quiet hatred of his "weakness" until he projects that hatred onto humanity as a whole. And it is Jayce who shows him that that hatred is wrong, misplaced. He never wanted to fix Viktor, only heal what was killing him. He clearly expresses that he loved Viktor (romantic or platonic but still very much LOVED) as a whole, not in spite of what he deemed as weaknesses. That is such a BEAUTIFUL statement for Viktor's character. And while I am not a voice for all disabled people, I speak for myself, and I found it extremely touching, and I have seen hundreds of voices in agreement. Even if Viktor did die for real, he died right alongside Jayce, and it was not a brutal death that cuts his arc in half before he can truly find happiness, because we are shown very explicitly that he has just gotten what he truly wanted and needed all his life. He has fully rejected the things that made him fall down such a dark path and we end on a note of (if he's really dead) worthy sacrifice to get all of piltover and zaun back.
The reason the mentally ill villain or antihero character death trope is a problem is because it's lazy at best and intentionally hurtful at worst, conveying a message that the only ending possible for these characters is to die because either the writers truly cannot think of a way to continue their arc of healing that usually starts right before they die or that they truly believe that that's what this character deserves.
The most blatant example I can think of at the moment is Loki in Avengers: Endgame, he's clearly got a lot of issues and traumas and he finally works with Thor again and starts to heal past some of that in Thor: Ragnorok and then he is immediately brutalized on screen for seemingly no damn reason as his death really doesn't push any kind of narrative or any other characters to change their ways or really anything. And it doesn't seem in character at all because he's someone whos faked his death several times and he always thinks ahead and has a trick up his sleeve, but no, he really dies here. It can be argued that it shows that Thanos is powerful but we already know he's extremely powerful. So it truly serves no purpose aside from being uncharacteristically brutal and dark for Marvel.
So while there are definitely similarities, I don't feel like Arcane really pulls any punches with any of its characters. Nor does it display things in an insensitive manner like that. It tries to be realistic and the reality is that sometimes you die before you can finish your journey. Sometimes bad things happen to mentally ill and disabled people.
Very interesting thoughts on this topic, thank you!
Three points I want to add to that:
1. I was watching as a person who has no idea of LoL, so I also don’t know which characters can or can’t be dead - that’s why I counted all three of them as dead (although I recognize that Jinx is likely alive with the hints they planted for that). Might be similar for other people who watched.
2. Isha was shown as mute, wasn’t she? She signed to Jinx at some point, I believe.
3. I‘m totally with you on the „sometimes bad things happen to mentally ill and disabled people.“ Also definitely with you that all the characters went through some serious shit and there were many deaths. I just felt like the things that happened to Jinx happened to her because she was mentally ill and didn’t get the help she needed.
Viktor‘s arc was built (at least in the end) entirely around him being disabled. That’s why I also feel like it’s complicated with him.
But he also „healed“ all of his cult people. They all turned into robots and died in the end though. They were addicts and had other diseases. In the end, they didn’t matter, they were faceless threats. I feel like that was another point that rubbed me wrongly.
