I find it hard to participate in arcane discourse around season 2 because I just...don't agree with most of the writing choices.
Like, do I think gassing civilians is fine? No, but I don't think Caitlyn would have done that of her own accord at all. I don't think vi would have agreed to it. I don't think she would have decided that jinx had to die so early on in the season.
I think Caitlyn would have agreed to go to drastic measures to capture/kill jinx, but not to the point of harming a bunch of civilians over it. I think vi would have decided, at this point, that power is long gone, but would be angling to get her in stillwater or something, rather than dead. I don't want to argue about whether or not their choices are justified when I don't think they would make those choices in the first place.
Part of it's pacing, and part of it's clutter. As much as I love Mel, her black rose arc was completely unnecessary. Seeing Mel having to confront her own complicity with Zaun's oppression, and therefore with the current conflict; learning to navigate politics with Zaunites and their system; trying to keep her mother in check; etc. And then the writers made viktor's machine herald arc the end-all-be-all, when that was never what the show was about? Progress was a huge theme in s1, too, but it was always meant to help amplify and push forward the main story about two SISTERS and two CITIES. It was never supposed to be the main focus. And the actual characters suffer because they become whatever the plot needs them to be as soon as the plot needs them to become it, rather than having more natural arcs that would lead them there. If any of that makes sense.
I've seen this idea that the characters changed too quickly, the pacing was off, etc. a lot. And I'm starting to think that it comes from seeing the two seasons as two separate entities. When everything that happens in season 2 is coming off the back of season 1.
Like Vi doesn't decide that Jinx has to die "early on". It takes witnessing Jinx commiting an act of war and murdering people for that to happen. And Vi sees that as her own fault, because Jinx might not be her sister anymore, but she's still Vi's responsibility. Vi says as much, "I'm the one who created the monster", "You're not my sister... You killed her. I'm not going to let you stain her memory anymore." Her motivation is stated outright, and it entirely aligns with what we know about Vi: that she feels a huge amount of responsibility toward her family. Jinx is her problem, so she needs to deal with her.
I also think people tend to really downplay what the impact of seeing Jinx kill a bunch of people unprovoked would be on Vi.
Regarding Caitlyn, yeah, she wouldn't want to harm a bunch of civilians, which is why she uses the gray -- by her logic anyways, to clear civilians off the streets. That's explicitly stated. But I also think it's an important part of Caitlyn's arc that she does stuff that ends up hurting people. In season 1 she was very righteous, and always pushing back against people with more authority with her. In season 2 she gets to have authority, and she learns that it's not so easy. "No one in power is innocent" as Singed says. In going after Jinx, she could have not done anything to disperse civilians and risk them getting caught in crossfire, or she could gas the streets to clear people out, and still hurt them. There is inherently no good option for exercising her authority.
I think Mel's arc would have benefitted from having the exposition spread out a bit more, but the arc itself is entirely what it was set up to be. The mystery of how her brother was killed, and the enemy that Ambessa was dealing with, were introduced in s1. Mel's entire arc in s1 is about how she relates to her family and especially her mother, how she tries to be worthy of her name. She's introduced lamenting that she's "the poorest Medarda", and at the end of s1 she takes off her family ring. Her arc was always about family and identity more than about politics and power. And what happens to her in s2 is a continuation of that. Not to mention, the direction her character is being taken in LoL (check out her character page on the official LoL website and the letter she wrote to her mother post-series).
There's this one person who does Arcane analysis on TikTok (danpyxel) who said there seems to be a lot of confusion in the fandom between themes, setting, characters, and plot, and I have to say I agree with them. The plot, thing that drives the action forward, was always the development of hextech, which in season 2 transforms into the Arcane waking up. One of the themes of the show is duality, and that's reflected in the plot, the duality between science and magic, order and chaos. Jayce and Viktor always carried more of the plot. However, Jinx is much more of a main character; and Jinx and Vi carry more of emotional core of the show. They aren't the ones necessarily driving the action, a lot of the time, Jinx and Vi are caught up in the fallout from the hextech plot throughout both seasons. (this isn't to say that Jayce and Viktor are strictly plot, and Vi and Jinx are strictly emotion/themes, not by a long shot. But each pair leans more into one than the other.) While hextech/the arcane provided the action for the climax, the big emotional conclusion was still very much to do with the sister's relationship. The setting also reflects the theme of duality, the two cities, but that's the context of the story, it's not the story itself.
The end of season1/start of season 2 was a big turning point in the show. I think if it had been one big continuous season, that might have felt more natural. I think at the beginning of a season, viewers tend to expect things to kind of reset and then slowly ramp up again. But that's not what Arcane does, because it is one continuous story. I would really recommend rewatching it that way.
Great explanation! I will say that of course we're all entitled to our own opinions, and I think that a lot of the problems people like me have with the show would have been fixed with another season or another arc, just a bit more time to flesh everything out.
The only real critique I would make of yours is Caitlyn's arc, which I think is just always going to be a polarizing point in the fandom: whenever I say I don't think Caitlyn's arc was in character, it's not because I don't think she's capable of doing bad things, or see why the writers would have her do it. I get it, and we saw in season 1 that she'll do whatever she thinks of right (like when she very, very illegally broke vi out of stillwater), even if nobody else will support her in it. I just wish we'd seen more of her actual spiral: like talking with her dad, or having to deal with the fact that she has seen people from the undercity as regular people trying to get by, but now, most of them being loyal to jinx, they're reminders of what she's lost. I would have wanted a messy, crazy psychological spiral with Caitlyn, that ultimately leads to her causing mass pain, like with the grey.
As for mel's arc, it was, of course, set up in season 1, but I just think the black rose arc is so far removed from the rest of the story that it feels thrown in there. I would have liked to see a more natural way to continue mel's arc and introducing the black rose, but as it is, it just feels like a waste of screen time to me, personally.
And the theme of the show absolutely is duality: order and chaos, magic and science, but also two cities and two sisters, which, as you mentioned, the story is centered around. And one of the reasons season 2 feels so disjointed (to me, anyways), isn't necessarily that there's a huge turnaround of characters, but that vi and jinx are surrounded by so much more plot that they don't feel the central focus anymore. As many plotlines and characters as season 1 had, it always centered around two sisters, their struggle to reunite, and the forces driving them apart. Season 2 doesn't feel so focused on the literal representations of this theme of duality: vi, the big sister, enforcer, physically strong; and jinx, the little sister, chaos gremlin, good with long-range weapons and her brain. One lives in Piltover, the other in Zaun. Etc. They didn't feel like the ultimate focus of the story, for me. Glad you seemed to enjoy season two, though! I just had a few gripes with it :)
