Loris and Steb: Unexplored Potential as Characters
arcane s2 rant
SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT
one of the things that i loved about arcane were how the side characters still had their own charm and plot relevance. take claggor and mylo — vi and powder/jinx's adoptive brothers during s1. they had a fun, family dynamic with vi and powder, and they still had some presence throughout despite being dead after act 1.
i get that the strike team wasn't meant to have this familial bond with the protagonists, but the writers could've at least explored their dynamic with cait and vi. we could've had this parallel with jinx finding a sister/daughter in isha and vi finding camaraderie in the strike team. aside from maddie, steb and loris just felt like nobodies and were kept that way throughout the show.
as much as i find the both of them charming, they could've honestly been replaced by mannequins, and that sucks because i see so much potential in the both of them.
steb, the arcane fish guy. his character design and quirks were so good, but my god was he so underused. it would've been nice to see more of his dynamic with maddie and his reaction to her being a noxian spy. that scene with him running to the goon jinx kidnapped, helping him out, and even giving him his gas mask to breathe, and the other scene where he takes off his bonnet when he nods to the zaunite war volunteers just makes me believe that the writers had a character for this dude that didn't make it to the final cut. but the fact that his name wasn't even mentioned in the show (from what i recall) makes me wonder what the hell the writers wanted from this guy
and loris, poor loris. i would've loved to see vi and loris' bond aside from being drinking buddies. it was so obvious that the writers wanted him to be a pseudo-vander for vi, why not explore that and make him one of the reasons why vi was more inclined to be part of the strike team. and that scene where loris leaves the team when cait becomes a dictator just felt like it was meant to be something more, but because he barely had any established character aside from being a drunk with a shield, i barely felt anything.
vi's inner conflict with being an enforcer and the issue of gassing zaunites could've been explored more with loris since he was against fascist piltover, and it would've been so much more meaningful if the writers outrightedly stated that he was a zaunite who became an enforcer, especially since it feels so implied to me. and the fact that he dies during act 3 just feels so cheap since a faceless nobody could've died in his place, and his death barely served anything in the story because nobody even mentions him in the end.
the writers could've had steb as this contrast to loris. have steb be this composed stickler who still has compassion for zaunites while loris as this conflicted zaunite enforcer who still feels a sense of duty as an enforcer to protect his colleagues.
in all honesty, my frustrations mostly lie with how the writers included these two in the story and didn't do anything with them. i'd love to hear other insights about these two that weren't in this rant.
