#heimerdinger ekko subplot vs jayce subplot

[simply---words]

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[funnyscienceman]

Jinx & Vi and Jayce/Viktor are the most important relationships of Arcane

(and why the collector’s edition of Season 2 is thematically consistent with the CE of Season 1)

i said it in a post earlier but i wanted to expand on it. This whole thing about the collectors editions brought to the forefront something I’ve always believed since s1, and so I thought why not make a whole post about it. This was originally much longer, but if I went into greater detail we’d be here forever, so I’ll just try to go through the main points and show you what I mean.

Arcane really loves doing mirrors and parallels and duality, 2 cities, 2 sides of the same coin, so on and so forth, we know this. But why do I say that this extends to its main characters?

Almost every story ever has an A plot and a B plot – the primary and the secondary storylines – and Arcane is no exception. It’s just that within these 2 plots, there are also 2 especially prominent characters whose stories are so intertwined with one another, to cut one out would render the story incomplete. So what I’m going to do is lay out those plots as concisely as I can, and then go into how the two seasons mirror each other. Arcane is an ensemble show, but for the sake of organization, we’re gonna sort everyone out into main, supporting, and minor roles, OK?

Season 1

A Plot: Jinx & Vi, wanting to reunite but getting torn apart by circumstances out of their control

Supporting Characters: Silco, Caitlyn, Ekko

Minor Characters: Sevika, Vander, Claggor, Mylo

B Plot: Jayce/Viktor, getting torn apart by Piltover’s corruption before finding each other again

Supporting Characters: Mel, Heimerdinger, Singed

Minor Characters: Sky, Rio

Season 1 opened with Jinx and Vi wandering the massacre on the bridge, looking for their parents. They find Vander, who has to break the bad news, and takes them in. Everyone else who isn’t any half of the main pairs has their own little subplots, but primarily the season is about Jinx and Vi, and secondarily Jayce and Viktor. Individual and together. The climax of the finale is the family dinner hostage situation, where Jinx ends it doubting Vi’s love for her – “I thought maybe you could love me like you used to, even though I’m different. But you changed, too. So here’s to the new us.” – and shoots a rocket at the council building. There is a montage of all the surviving characters, before the final tiny scene of the council reaching a unanimous vote, and Mel turning to the window just as the rocket crashes through some signature Jinx scribbles.

This gets flipped in Season 2.

Notes: Each pair has quite a few characters in supporting, but the ones of priority who actually are part of the ensemble cast are the ones with flashbacks (Silco, Caitlyn, Mel, and I’m counting the bridge fight in ep7 as a flashback for Ekko).

Season 2

There isn’t so much of an A/B plot dynamic this time as there’s so much more happening and storylines blend into each other sometimes and half the cast is largely absent or separated from the rest of the drama in Act 2, but there are definitely two primary storylines, and the main players of each are largely the same:

Jayce/Viktor vs the Hexcore

Supporting Characters: Ekko, Heimerdinger, Singed

Minor Characters: Sky, Salo, Vander

Jinx & Vi vs trying to heal Vander

Supporting Characters: Isha

Now what do I mean when I say Season 2 is Season 1 flipped?

Season 2 opened with Jayce finding Viktor dead in the rubble of the council room, carrying him and running all the way to the lab, and bringing him back to life using the Hexcore. As noted, everyone has different stories going on, but what Jayce does here ripple effects to the rest of the cast. Without it, there would be no commune for Jinx and Vi to take Vander to, and to seriously consider settling down in (or around) after having their family reunited. There would also be no threat to Ambessa wanting to make a weapon out of Warwick, if she would even want to to begin with, as theoretically there would still be at least 1 Hextech expert for her to try and get weapons out of. Possibly, Mel might not have been kidnapped either. Who can say.

The point is, we all know it, the season culminates in a “stop the end of the world” type of story, and in-universe this is almost entirely because of Jayvik, at least on the surface level.* It was their Hexgates whose anomaly/wild rune reached Ekko’s tree and caused him to seek out Jayce and led them down to get sent to different timelines. It was Viktor’s sickness in the first season that led to Jayce kicking Heimer out and put him on the path to Ekko and let him bring Ekko to the Academy to meet Jayce to go down to the anomaly. It was Hextech weapons that messed up the Jinx-Sevika vs Caitlyn-Vi fight in episode 3. It was Jayce not wanting to live in a world without Viktor that led him to taking his body from the council room and running all the way to their lab to break the promise he’d made just hours before, which led to the commune, to the anomaly, to Jayce in the bad timeline, to Jayce meeting the mage, to the vow he made and killing Viktor and meeting him again at the Hexgates.

The climax of the finale is entirely about Jayce and Viktor. The mannequins have overpowered almost everyone, assimilation to the hivemind is almost complete. Viktor makes one last “rule the galaxy with me” type of bid with Jayce, and Jayce reaffirms his love for Viktor. The imperfections speech, and then “I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world. Now, all I want is my partner back.”

Do you see it now?

Season 1 could not have happened without Jinx and Vi. If Jinx didn’t feel the need to prove herself to her sister all the way in s1e3, then she wouldn’t have been taken in by Silco and there wouldn’t have been anybody to steal the gemstone in s1e4, the theft of which kickstarted everything going so wrong so fast to begin with. Season 2 is the same. If Jayce did not love Viktor so much, need him in his life so much that he would disregard the government (heimer ousting) and basic human life (it killed sky and he thought it reviving viktor was more important) and even break the trust Viktor had in him to begin with (not destroying the hexcore, despite promising to) — then none of Season 2 would have happened.

Of course the collector’s edition is basically Jayvik ft Ekko/timebomb. We’ve seen it already with the CE of Season 1 — it’s the main relationship and the most prominent supporting character.

Season 1 was Jinx, all Jinx, but also some gemstones (which she stole) and the map Caitlyn used for her conspiracy rug, complete with her family emblem! (the map which led her to Vi that Vi later commented on in their bedroom scene in act 3.) Why is Ekko in the set? Because he’s the one who brought Jayce to the anomaly! Because he used the acceleration rune to make a time machine!! Because he threw that time machine as a bomb right at Viktor’s face!!! Of course he’s there! He helped make that final jayvik scene happen!

Season 2 closes out with a montage of the surviving characters; no Sting song this time, but there is Caitlyn and Vi by the fireplace, and then not a rocket, this time, but a ship flying off. Then, again, some Jinx scribbles.

So, basically, the collector’s editions are fine, and Arcane is a lot about love, as we all already knew. If you made it to the end, thank you for reading. Celebrate what you love and curate your online experience everyone.

TLDR: the most important relationships of Arcane are Jinx & Vi and Jayce/Viktor because s1's first scene was with Jinx and Vi and the climax of the finale was entirely about them and then s2's first scene was with Jayce and Viktor and the climax of the finale was entirely about them and s1 ended with jinx doubting vi's love for her and s2 ended with jayce affirming his love for viktor. the end

*the real root cause is piltover’s politics and capitalism (corruption, as said before) but that’s a topic for another day

[littlebigmouse]

There's a confrontation I'd like to see in Arcane season 2 that would be incredibly dramatic to me AND that I'd be the most apprehensive about.

I think Ep 7 established a sort of "safe" combination of characters, that being Vi, Caitlyn, Ekko (and by extension the rest of the Firelights and Heimerdinger, but this isn't about him because he only cropped up later). They have practically the same goal and similar values, Caitlyn and Ekko especially are portrayed as the most morally upstanding and sympathetic characters of the show. The alliance they formed in Ep 7, while brief, was only broken up spatially, not ideologically. If Ekko gets a bigger role in s2 than he had in s1, it would feel like a sort of gang-up: As soon as the two teams wind up in the same location looking for Jinx, it's practically a simple confrontation between everyone and her. This could be complicated further by Vi and Cait disagreeing on how to handle Jinx going forward, but I think they'd be able to put aside their differences long enough to at least stop her (they've all done it before).

But I think to really ramp up the drama, they'd have to break that up.

There's, in my mind, two different ways to do this:

Avoidance: They simply won't put these three in the same room again. Both parties will have enough other stuff going on that they logistically cannot cooperate further. If they encounter Jinx, they'll do so seperately. For example, Ekko could get more involved in Heimerdinger's side of the plot (vs Singed, Viktors and Jayce's messy divorce), while Cait and Vi stay with the Jinx plot and whatever mess the Council will be in after that blow up of a S1 finale. Jayce and JInx are the biggest connecting pieces here, but the plot could very well be timed in such a way that Cait&Vi have interactions with Jayce while Jinx deals with Ekko and vice versa. There's also a whole Noxian war subplot brewing and whatever will happen with Vander/Warwick (although against my better wishes I doubt Ekko will be involved in either of those).

The ideological break up: And that's the one that hurts me the most, because the most (initially) obvious way to do this is to have Vi become an Enforcer and pit her against Ekko this way. I don't hope this happens, because I cannot see Arcane Vi as an Enforcer at all, and ironically Arcane Ekko is a lot more willing to work with the Enforcers than his LoL counterpart anyway. Of course further plot shenanigans could occur that would pit Vi and Ekko against each other - again, they could disagree on treatment of Jinx, or Warwick, or treatment of the undercity going forward, or maybe even on a more fundamental level (Ekko's commitment to non-lethal diffusion tactics and vandalism vs Vi's more violent tendencies). They could also have Caitlyn hardline more towards lethal violence against the Undercity due to the council attack, although I highly doubt this will happen (I'd rather see Caitlyn fight Jayce over this very conflict instead of betraying all her morals for vengeance, and I genuinely think the Arcane writers will do better than that anyway). Orr there is a yet unexplored third option that pits these three against each other.

Either way. Personally. I'd love to see Ekko and Vi seriously fight, because it would be a great dramatic escalation, they'd lose their only "other" undercity ally, and I'd love to explore their differences more while ramping up the angst to their continued isolation. But I am also apprehensive, because they'd need a really good reason to make these two fight each other while they have so many other issues to focus and join forces on.

And while we're talking about fights I'd love to see, we haven't had enough Piltover-folks beating the shit out of each other yet. Give me a fight between Jayce and Cait. Heimerdinger and Jayce. Mel and Jayce. I know we haven't seen 2/3s of these characters involved in a fight yet, but especially the Mel&Jayce&Vikor trio needs to have the messiest, most dramatic break ups possible, and if Mel doesn't get to at least slap someone, what is even the point.