I’ve seen a number of people talk about they don’t understand Jinx’s line to Vi: “You’ve changed too.”
Some comments note how this doesn’t seem to make sense because Vi *seems* like the most static character in the show.
I completely understand the confusion, because on the surface that’s true, adult Vi definitely does act very much the same as teen Vi. She’s brash, courageous, hot-headed etc. Her surface attitude and personality are basically the same. People have noted that it’s almost like Vi went into stasis when she went to prison and she remained the same while the rest of the world outside completely changed. This is especially true when you compare her to her sister, because Jinx of acts 2 and 3 is an almost completely different person from Powder in act 1, so much so that it practically slaps you in the face.
However, Vi has we might say *subconsciously* changed in a way that’s not immediately obvious but is almost as radical as the changes in Jinx (in some ways perhaps more so).
Vi in act 1 is extremely rebellious against the class structure of Piltover. We’re shown multiple times how resentful she is against the enforcers and the topsiders in general for living it up in the sun while the undercity inhabitants scramble for scraps. Episode one starts with her going on a dangerous, risky mission to score from a pretty difficult mark just for a chance to strike in the very heart of Piltover. By episode 2 she’s ready to go to war over harassment from the enforcers. Powder of course is intensely aware of all of this, and this is how Jinx remembers Vi.
Now think about Vi in acts 2 and 3. Does she show any of that revolutionary spirit? No, quite the opposite. She still despises enforcers and Piltover’s upper class as her first interactions with Caitlyn make clear (although this too significantly softens the longer she spends with Caitlyn), but at no point does she show any inclination to go to war against the class structure. In fact in her famous rain breakup scene with Caitlyn she very obviously (bitterly) accepts it as an immutable reality.
In fact, she accepts it so much that at the first opportunity she throws her lot in with a Piltover noble (Jayce) and the enforcers for a shot at revenge against undercity criminals and coldly justifies the collateral death of a child in the process. Can you possibly imagine act 1 Vi doing something like that?? Of course not.
Now there’s a couple of reasons for this shift. First of all, for Vi, Silco’s criminal empire, not the class structure, not the enforcers, are her main enemy now because of what happened That Night, because Silco and his goons are primarily responsible for her losing her (second) family.
But there’s also Vi’s experience in prison to consider. If you read her Council Archives files you can see a subtle but extremely significant shift in her character over the course of the 7 or so years she was at Stillwater.
The first violent incident she initiates is against a guard, where she attacks and strangles him with her handcuffs. The file says that she was so violent “that additional staff arrived on the scene and subdued the prisoner” which means, essentially, that a bunch of guards jumped her and beat the shit out of her. We know of course from episode 5 that the guards beat her regularly.
After that initial report, there is no other record of her attacking guards. All the other violent incidents reported in her files are against fellow prisoners, when she attacks, beats up, and interrogates Silco’s associates (or inmates she believes are associated with Silco). Interestingly the files also mention that when guards arrived on the scene to intervene one time when she was fighting other prisoners, Vi let herself be led away without incident.
So what can we surmise from this? It’s simple; the enforcers, on some level, broke her. They pounded it (literally) into her head that fighting against the power structure is futile. She of course still hates that structure with all her heart, but she gave up trying to fight against it. So what does she do? She fights with the power structure instead. She turns her anger and violence against her fellow prisoners because hey, that’s a fight she can win.
In short, Vi was “institutionalized”
(tip of my hat to my favorite prison movie, The Shawshank Redemption)
This same psychology is still entrenched once Vi gets out of Stillwater. Basically the same power structure is in place in the city at large, it’s just a bigger prison, with the topsiders as the guards and the undercity the prison. So yeah, sure, the enforcers and topsiders still suck. But fighting them is pointless. Vander basically told her that point blank in the last real conversation they had together.
But Silco and his goons? They can, and should, be beaten.
This is actually a complete inversion of act 1 Vi’s psychology.
Jinx on the other hand has had the exact opposite experience. Her experience with enforcers over the past 7 years (or however long) has been seeing Marcus, the Sheriff of Piltover himself, come to Silco hat in hand every week and take his marching orders in exchange for some coin. And the enforcers have gradually lost their foothold in the undercity as Silco became more and more powerful to the point that, to Jinx, the enforcers probably seem pathetically weak.
Also, as a bomb maker instead of a fist fighter, Jinx can absolutely win in a fight against enforcers in a way Vi never could, which she shows when she almost lazily wipes out an entire heavily armed enforcer checkpoint like she’s stomping on an anthill.
So when Vi comes back to the undercity working with enforcers (and even falling in love with one ffs!!), smashing up a shimmer factory, and even basically destroying The Last Drop, her old home, Jinx sees (correctly) that Vi has changed, perhaps as much as she has. Perhaps even more so.
This is very important to keep in mind as we go forward into season 2, because Jinx is not the only one in the middle of a Corruption Arc. Vi absolutely is too, it’s just more subtle and insidious as she becomes a tool of a corrupt and oppressive power system.
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