Untitled

[seasidelover09]

Arcane Episode 7 AU Isn't Real. It's a Delusion.

Ever since Episode 7 came out, I've heavily disliked it.

To me, it felt like Ekko's character had been flattened into an unearned romance. The boy who spent years protecting the Firelights, fighting for Zaun, and carrying the weight of everything he'd lost suddenly became someone drowning in guilt for things that weren't his fault, forgiving Jinx without her ever truly earning it. If I accepted that reading, it felt like Season 1 barely mattered anymore.

So I came up with another way to watch the episode.

I'm not saying this is what the writers intended. I'm not saying this is the "real" meaning of Episode 7.

I'm offering a lens.

If you're an Ekko fan who walked away feeling like this episode destroyed his character, maybe try watching it this way instead.

Episode 7 Through a Different Lens

Imagine this perfect reality isn't an alternate timeline.

Imagine it's Ekko's mind.

A fantasy his consciousness creates while he's overwhelmed by grief, trauma, and survivor's guilt. Because even someone as strong as Ekko eventually reaches a breaking point.

Once you look at it that way, almost every oddity in the AU starts making sense:

Vander is warm and comforting instead of a deeply flawed father figure.

Silco becomes someone capable of forgiveness instead of the man who built a criminal empire on the Undercity's suffering.

Mylo loses the cruelty he often showed Powder.

Claggor suddenly shares Ekko's passion for inventing, despite that never really being part of his character before.

These iterations of the characters aren't who they really were.

They are who Ekko deep down wishes they were.

What about Vi dying?

I interpret it as Ekko imagining she could have died specifically because he gave her the tip. It's another layer of him blaming himself for everything that went wrong, ever since the Jayce apartment heist.

And when he says to Vi, in Episode 7 of Season 1:

"If I had gone with you that day, maybe none of this would have happened."

At the time I thought he was talking about them going on the mission to save Vander. But I think he was also talking about the heist at Jayce's apartment.

Only shows the amount of guilt he's been carrying for years, giving weight to this very reading of S2, EP 7 being about his tired mind.

Powder Isn't Powder

But the biggest clue is Powder herself.

She's missing almost everything that defined her in Season 1.

The anxiety, the fear of abandonment, the desperate need for reassurance, the emotional instability that eventually grew into Jinx.

What's left is a sweet, calm girl who likes building gadgets with Ekko.

If this is Ekko's own fantasy, it makes perfect sense. And it can mean 2 things:

He never truly knew or understood those parts of her. Maybe he mostly knew the friend he invented with, while Vi was the one who saw the panic, the insecurity, and the constant fear of being left behind.

Or maybe he did know those parts, but his mind ignored them because he's an idealist and only saw the good parts of Powder.

Which means he never really knew Powder at all, or cared for Powder exactly as she was.

This is Ekko's perfect version of Powder.

The Voice of Guilt

This lens also changes the conversations.

When Ekko tells Powder, "I gave up on the Undercity. Gave up on you," I don't hear objective truth.

I hear Ekko blaming himself.

Because he never gave up on the Undercity. He built the Firelights. He rescued people from shimmer. He gave children a home. He spent years fighting for Zaun when almost everyone else had lost hope.

And giving up on Jinx wasn't a moral failure.

He tried to save her. That's what "Boy Savior" has always implied to me. She mocks him because he reached out and she rejected him. She didn't want to be saved. Then she kept choosing violence, kept killing his friends, until he had to stop chasing the person who couldn't be saved and start protecting the people who still could be.

That was the right thing to do.

But guilt doesn't care about what's true.

Guilt tells you that if only you'd tried one more time, said one more thing, made one different choice, maybe everything would have turned out differently.

So when Powder replies, "I've never seen you give up on anything, Ekko" I don't hear her comforting him.

I hear Ekko arguing with himself.

The same goes for Powder blaming him for the tip that set everything in motion. That's not actually Powder assigning blame. That's survivor's guilt convincing Ekko that every tragedy can somehow be traced back to one decision he made.

The people in the AU aren't speaking to Ekko.

They're his own conscience speaking back to him.

The Dance Scene

The dance scene between Ekko and Powder is animated at a noticeably lower frame rate. It's choppy, almost like an old film reel or a fading memory. Visually, it's stunning, but it doesn't feel completely real.

The reduced frame rate represents the texture of memory itself. The missing frames resemble the gaps our minds leave behind, the moments Ekko can't fully reconstruct because they never truly existed. Through this lens, he's creating the life he wishes had been possible. And dreams have a way of skipping, glitching, and blurring at the edges.

That's what makes the sequence so heartbreaking. Even within this beautiful fantasy, he can't make it feel entirely whole. There are cracks running through it from the very beginning. The illusion is breathtaking, but it's also fragile. Just like the Z-Drive's four-second limit, just like the dance itself, and just like everything Ekko has ever tried to hold onto.

This Reading Keeps me Sane

Do I think this is what Episode 7 objectively means?

No.

But if you hated this episode because it felt like it reduced Ekko to a love interest who is convinced he should have forgiven a person who never regretted her actions, I think this lens tells a much more interesting story.

Instead of watching an alternate timeline, you're watching a traumatized survivor trying to make peace with impossible guilt.

A purgatory sort of scenario.

A mind constructing one beautiful lie where everyone he lost is kinder, where the girl he couldn't save never became Jinx, and where, for just a little while, he can believe he wasn't a failure.

I know it's not canon.

It's just my delusion.

And you're welcome to borrow this delusion.

Thank you, @arcanegifs

[fulcrums501st]

every person is zaun is a product of the awful circumstances that Piltover caused idk how tf y’all can hate them for being criminals while defending Piltover’s police brutality when Piltover literally creates the circumstances that led to people’s only option being crime

[mad-not-disappointed]

here’s the thing: i think mini-series or shows with a limited number of episodes CAN be done effectively if you map it out beforehand.

if you want the show to have lore and character arcs but also wrap it up in ten episodes, you have to be mindful of what you use all the screentime for. that doesn’t mean you can’t have any filler at all, it just means you have to either limit the amount of filler or just extend the show.

OTGW does this masterfully within just 10 episodes. it knows how to balance filler and fun while also expanding on the lore in each episode. and the character developments, while not super complicated or extreme, were satisfactory.

Wirt is the only character that gets proper development but it doesn’t feel like they’re taking away the spotlight from other characters to do so. Greg is a little kid so he doesn’t really have much development but he still gets to actually do stuff. Beatrice’s arc is also actually pretty good, going from using the two boys as a pawn to actually caring about them and helping them escape.

and while some things were left to interpretation, the main plot points were wrapped up pretty well. the things that were left to interpretation was the overall nature of the Unknown, the Beast, the people living there, etc.

but even then, there's enough context clues to piece together some of these things. for example, we can conclude that the Unknown is some kind of afterlife, on account of Quincy Endicott being buried in the local graveyard and also the fact that Wirt and Greg nearly died.

Infinity Train also does this really well. we get more lore about the train throughout the show but the character arcs are limited to one season, since each season has a different cast of characters.

Infinity Train is a character-focused show so it gives more attention to the characters, their dynamics and development while dropping nuggets of information about the train in the background.

it's clear that so many of these other miniseries that fail (TADC, Arcane) did not plan out their plot well enough. Arcane had potential and did very well in the first season but then dropped the ball in the second one. both these shows cram in so much lore and subplots that they have only two options: either they stuff every episode in with a thousand different plots (Arcane) or they drop everything entirely to focus on one character (TADC).

[thewistlingbadger]

Remember when Vi openly critiqued her fellow zaunites for allowing Silco to take over and she called Sevika a traitor because she chose Silco over Vander in season one?

....now remember how Vi became an enforcer in season two? 💀

Season two gets a lot of criticism for painting piltover in a very positive light as well as for abandoning the seriousness of the piltover/zaun conflict, but it's important to look back at season one and recognize that the seeds for season two's shittinest were planted right here. Because although season one highlights the victimhood of the under city, it also goes out of its way to show nothing good really comes out of Zaun. Season one shows that the people of Zaun are forced to unfairly wrestle with oppression on a daily basis, but they're still "bad people".

Let's start by examining those who Vi has pointed out. Sevika has always been a zaun loyalist, a person who has wants and desires for the future of her city and she's willing to walk the walk and talk the talk to get there. Despite this, she's labeled and depicted as a traitor- not only for abandoning Vander for the sake of joining Silco, but later on for potentially being swayed by Finn and Renni to betray Silco.

Babette, a zaunite business owner as well as a figure in the community is portrayed as weak for not being able to stand up against Silco and letting him run the town. Vi sneakily tells her that it seems like no one stopped Silco from taking over after Vander died. Babette gives legitimate reasons as to why it happened, but she doesn't meet Vi's gaze during this conversation and her body language plus tone clearly tells us that the audience is supposed to view her and others as cowards.

Huck, who was once a meek yet humble man who was helped by Vander becomes a foe to Vi. He later in life becomes a homeless drug addict who turns Vi in just for a fix of his drug of choice. We're clearly supposed to believe him to be a pathetic rat with no morals.

Now as you probably noticed, all three of these examples of the narrative directly/indirectly tell the audience to look down upon zaunites that can be linked back to Vi/are related to Vi, but the evidence doesn't end here. Most obviously, Jinx and Silco are portrayed to an extent as evil monsters who seek chaos and the downfall of others at any cost. Jinx is a homicidal maniac who doesn't care who she hurts and who's only redeeming quality is that she's a victim of violence and abandonment and Silco is so willing to achieve his goal by any means necessary that the writers ensure that the audience forget about the goal, which in itself is a noble and reasonable goal, and only ever focus on how he's willing to use unethical and harmful ways to achieve his desires. Even the chembarons, who are supposed to be the direct mirrors to Piltover's council, are unrespectable. They're petty, foolish, and genuinely have no good qualities. Compare this to the way top side's council is treated. Mel, Heimerdinger, and Cassandra are all given moments in season one that highlight their humanity and good attributes. The chembarons of the underground are not rewarded with such luxury.

Zaun, in season one, is a sad, gross city where the only good things that have come out of it are Vi, Viktor, and Ekko. These are the only zaunite characters who are associated with being good within the context of the show. Viktor, who's so far removed from the city itself that his storyline has no association with the zaunite storyline of s1, Vi, who spends so much time with Caitlyn her loyalties change, and Ekko, who gets so little screentime he's basically an irrevalvet character.

[whatoever]

How it feel to hate on the ship that everyone single one of mutuals like

[quietspellcosmos]

i dont understand why jax being suicidal is so different from anyone else’s mental situations? (outside of him being mc?) i’m not saying it isn’t concerning or upsetting but isn’t everyone else… probably suicidal? why do people treat it as some riveting aspect of her character? she’s also just adding to everyone else’s mental struggles AND probably making many of them more suicidal?

also why the hell was it confirmed in a tumblr post. like what the hell.

[seasidelover09]

Praying for the day Jinx stans who constantly say she never did anything wrong and needs only love and forgiveness, wake up and start holding her accountable for the suffering she caused, just like what's happening now with Jax.

I liked jinx in season 1 but her forced redemption arc without any regret or accountability on her part just to please her fans in season 2 soured me on the character.

And the worst of all for me, as an Ekko fan, was seeing him being used like a puppet to force said redemption arc.

[domiej]

Something I must get off my chest

Timebomb⏳

I wouldn’t go as far to say I’ll never ship these two together but I will say I just don’t care for them as a ship.

Sure, I get it, childhood friends to enemies, what a touching compelling story. But

I just always wonder why no one hold jinx accountable for murdering Ekko’s friends…..

You’ll get hit with all her issues and her bpd, as if we can’t argue that all these characters in Arcane have some sort of mental issue. Jinx isn’t the ONLY one with struggles.

Why does everyone write off the fact that jinx KILLED Ekko’s friends? Members of his formed family.

Everyone shrugs and says “they got in the way” but can’t the same thing be said for jinx and VI’s parents?? They “got in the enforcers way”?

The firelights (in my opinion) we’re the only ones with the right idea. They built a safe haven free from whatever was going on in Zaun, and tried to dismantle Silco’s corrupt system, while keeping distance from Piltover.

Yet his people died for it for what? Because Silco’s evil ass wanted him gone? And Jinx was the hit dog to do it.

I think it’s SO STRANGE how Vi is expected to hold Caitlyn accountable and the Zaunites can hate the Piltover citizens but Ekko shows restraint and distrust to the person who merked his friends and then he’s wrong?

I hate this fandom sometimes lmaoooo

I feel bad for the firelights, what a slap in the face

[justa-side-blog]

You know what, Gummigoo was more human than any of the humans in the circus combined. He was the only character to actually react with the appropriate level of horror to his existential situation. He actually asked questions, like how valid his 'memories' are if they were just a programmed backstory. He asked why there wasn't a character model of his mother, and if she ever even had a face to begin with. And Gummigoo was an NPC. And then after learning the truth he hides it from his friends because, despite knowing what he knows, he still sees them as people.

And then Pomni just kinda does this 'ehhhh' Seinfeld thing like, well, I kiiiiinda broke his reality? 😅😬🤷‍♀️

I mean, who's the NPC in this situation really? The character who's raw and emotional, or the character who walks around with this quirky-ass dialogue 'well, that just happened. Can he come to the circus?'. 🤡

[ragathasbuttoneye]

No matter how much the show wants me to feel bad for Jax in the flashbacks, Ribbit deserved better.

Imagine still supporting someone after they told you their 'dark' secret only for them to treat you like shit, isolate you from your friends, and act like you're the "bad one" for caring.

Same for Ragatha who wanted to help him out and was close to getting the exact same treatment because he was butthurt by her comment in ep 4 (not that he already abuses her).

I really wanted to know more about these two characters other than Jax.

[ceruleanphlegmatica]

i yearn for what Arcane season 2 couldve been if the writers werent centrist cowards

[missn00tson]

Gallery dump 3.6

Hot take, they shouldnt have kissed (is that a hottake nowadays? I think so?)

They def got smth going on but it did noooot have to be shown in the series

Stil so disappointed about s2 in hindsight because s1 was such a masterpiece both visually and story wise but s2 was only visually top tier :(

Do i still love ma girlie Jinx tho? HELL YEAH

[stringcage]

Circa season 1 fanon timebomb: intriguingly tragic, conceptual, highly nuanced

Circa season 2 f(/c)anon timebomb: honest to god hetslop

[weirdotaku1000]

“Oh why are you so annoyed at a ship??”

Cause this is what Ekko’s tag looks like for me-

[whatoever]

"I hope we get a timebomb spin-off so we can learn more about ekko !!!🥺" can't even talk about him without mentioning jinx how that work 💀💀

[mooneserval]

I noticed people have been dogging on critical tags recently and I’m just going to say:

Most of us are not D1 haters in our lives or something like many people assume lol. We just found a media that we were passionate about in a positive way. Then, we found out something negative about that media, subjectively or objectively. It can be something more minor, like being frustrated with a writing choice, or it can be deeper, like writing perpetuating harmful stereotypes/narratives/etc., and sometimes, it even bleeds into real life, when we find out the creators behind something we liked are… less than stellar people. Perhaps they even partook in bigotry or a harmful act that overshadows their work. Or at the very least is something that should be kept in mind.

And so, that passion gets translated into a different type of passion. A drive to talk about what we wish was different or what bothers us. Some of us might do both, we might talk about the bad things while also still engaging with general fandom content separately because it fulfills certain aspects that canon might not or is just fun to see.

We NEED crit spaces to talk about certain media when we feel mixed or negative on them. And we usually don’t cross tag with the main tag. We vent our frustrations in critical tags because we want a space where people understand where we are coming from, and we also don’t want to bring down people in the main tag (excluding serious issues, which do happen sometimes, but you know what I mean).

I’m more of a lover than a hater, corny but true. I don’t critique anything I despise. I critique stuff I like/d that I got disappointed by for one reason or another. Maybe I even still like it but I’m exasperated and would rather not stress about the loud minority of fans who cannot accept anything but positivity. And yeah, you’ll find the occasional crit blogger who is doing it for malicious reasons, there are people who hate to hate out there, but that’s not most of us. So please, don’t go in this tag expecting just positive opinions, and then pick a fight when you see people using the tags what they’re meant for!!!

[xosnsd]

You don't enjoy anything do you

Never seen a group of shippers get triggered so fast because they don’t like their extremely forced hetero ship lmao

[sandsoftide]

Haven’t seen enough people talking about why timebomb and specifically ekko also suffered from arcane s2 being bad. Spoilers and crit

I’ll say more in depth later when I have gone back and revisited it with a clearer head and let me make it entirely clear I LIKE timebomb in concept. Much like caitvi. Like I see the vision I just don’t like a lot of the creative choices

Ekko in s1 was a REVOLUTIONARY he built the firelights w his own two hands and was sort of a foil to jinx and silco, he hated them but he wasn’t going to roll over to piltover either. He wanted independence but not through exploitation. He was a leader and a caretaker and mature beyond his years bc he was forced to be. And he hates Jinx bc she reminds him of that trauma and he’s betrayed by what she became like there’s SO much there look at it

In s2 he goes “hm my tree is being weird” and then gets sucked into the timey wimey thing and disappears for a whole act and the firelights aren’t even MENTIONED (and ik he wasn’t a major character in s1 either but like, he was still important and relevant to the plot throughout bc of the firelights?)

Then he gets sucked into this au portal (cool concept and cool execution) and falls in love with powder or whatever. And she ISNT JINX. SHE IS NOT THE JINX WE KNOW BC JINX IN MAIN TIMELINE IS FULLY BUILT FROM HER EXPERIENCES AND TRAUMA AND MENTAL ILLNESS. Like what Jayce said to viktor that’s part of her whether it hurts her or not. Her trauma doesn’t define her but it’s a part of her! And then all of a sudden Ekko’s sad bc he misses jinx (who iirc last time he met they had the whole I hate you and I miss you talk and they fought and both thought the other dead or whatever?) and then he’s talking her off the ledge even though he has absolutely no reason to! Because he DOESNT KNOW HER he knows literally nothing she’s done since s1 finale!!! Even the “jinx as a symbol for revolution” stuff from act 1 that went nowhere he would know NOTHING ABOUT bc he basically immediately went to Jayce? And they never did the revolutionary jinx stuff that was implied w the flag waving either so there’s no connection there either

Like a full episode was spent developing timebomb and it was interesting but also contributed nothing bc that is not jinx. She just feels like a mpdg and he doesn’t feel like ekko bc he needs to be in love w her for the plot? So they do absolutely nothing interesting they could for timebomb and still make it the entirety of ekko’s plot while tossing out the firelights and the zaun v. Piltover plotline as a whole

i mean again its hard to say bc this is right. objectively. like the stuff w timebomb was objectively well written. i just feel like it doesnt give ekko the space to be his own character outside of the ship? my point isnt that the stuff was poorly written i actually enjoyed it a lot and i think they did a good job w it i just also feel like it does ekko a disservice to have that be his only plotline and how it doesnt feel like it connects to his character in s1

i feel similarly about other plots in s2, like mel's. like yes this is good stuff! i love seeing mel in the spotlight the black rose magic stuff is interesting in a vacuum but also its totally separate from the interesting thematic roles in s1 that dealt with AGAIN THE CLASS CONFLICT AND POLITICS and dropping that for something different feels. like its a disservice to the characters, i guess?

also by having the timebomb development take place primarily in an au with powder and NOT jinx we dont really get to see jinx's thoughts at all. it feels like a repeat of s1 where someone is trying to save POWDER and not jinx, they dont see her as who she is now but rather who she was or could have been. which couldve been interesting to explore but they clearly werent interested in that ANYWAYS