Self replicating and self annihilating,
Mage Viktor, his goals, and Jayvik.
I have a lot of thoughts when It comes to Arcane as a show and I love season 2 a lot. One thing the show that I have been thinking about is Mage!Viktor and his true goal.
You may wonder what I mean with this, after all his goal seems quite clear, 'prevent the Glorious Evolution/the end of the world and in the process break the timeloop/cycle Viktor and Jayce are trapped within'. And yes that is true, It is his goal! But if It was the only purpose of his actions, wouldn't the AU timeline Ekko ends up in be enough?
After all, that timeline has no Hextech and no Hexcore. The Glorious Evolution cannot take place in this timeline, so why did that timeline not break the cycle? Well let's first establish the nature of the timeloop/cycle.
Jayce and Viktor seems to be within a unstable multidimensional bootstrap paradox loop/cycle. I say unstable because the butterfly effect is very prominent in the show, so a small variable can change things significantly.
We don't know if there is a 'Original' timeline that started the cycle, so It seems safe to assume that the cycle is a bootstrap paradox with no clear origin point, something that in turn causes Jayce and Viktors partnership and the invention of Hextech to also be a Paradox. In this cycle there also seems to exist certain events that will more or less always happen, but not necessarily in the same way, or in other words, constants and variables within the timelines.
One of those constants seem to be that Jayce will always attempt to invent Hextech.
So if the goal was just to prevent the Glorious Evolution, the simple way to achieve It would just be to stop Jayce from inventing Hextech, but Mage!Viktor doesn't do this, because he can't do It, It would go against the true purpose of actions.
After a lot of thought and discussions with my older sister sense the show ended (also being insane about Jayvik), we came to a conclusion. Mage!Viktors goal is not just to prevent the Glorious Evolution or save Runeterra.
His goal is to save Jayce
To find a timeline were Jayce survives, with or without Viktor.
The reason to stop the Glorious Evolution is not only because It is the end of humanity and a world of dreamless solitude, but because It is a world without Jayce in It.
Suddenly a lot of the hoops Mage!Viktor goes through makes a lot more sense and also why the AU timeline Ekko ends up in doesn't achieve Mage!Viktors goal.
Jayce is most likely not alive in that timeline. According to Amanda, Jayce was exiled due to Vi dying in the explosion.
And well, we know what Jayce was about to do in the Main timeline when he *Only* got expelled and his research was ordered to be disposed of. It is very likely that Jayce in the AU timeline went through with taking his own life and AU Viktor most likely wouldn't be there to interrupt the attempt.
With this in mind and other key events in the show, finding a timeline were Jayce survives is actually really difficult! It is literally more likely that Jayce dies somehow than him living a full life time, I am not kidding. The amount of fail states that exist for this is honestly insane, so let's go through them shall we?
I will go through a few key events as examples and use certain scenarios to explain the potential chain reactions. Think of It like a flowchart, but without the chart. I can't take all variables into account, but I will show of some key examples to hopefully make sense of my point.
This is were the timeline spaghetti starts and were there is already multiple ways Mage!Viktors plan can go wrong.
Scenario 1: Mage!Viktor doesn't interfere
In this scenario two things could most likely happen. Either A: Jayce and Ximena die in the blizzard, or B: Jayce somehow survives the blizzard but Ximena still dies.
version A: Jayce is dead, Fail-state 1
Version B: Jayce is alive, but this will most likely lead to Jayce being exiled from Piltover due to Ximena not being around to speak up during the trial, and I am concred for Jayces mental state without a support network, the butterfly effect will most likely result in Jayce being dead somehow. Fail-state 2
Scenario 2: Mage!Viktor saves Jayce and Ximena but gives Jayce a Non-Acceleration rune or no rune at all
There is only one result of this. Jayce and Ximena both survive the blizzard.
Jayce is alive, but without the Acceleration rune, Ekko won't be able to invent the Z-drive and might be trapped in a AU timeline and as a result Arcane Herald Viktor will succeed with the Glorious Evolution, killing Jayce, Fail-state 3
There is a lot of variance here and a few fail-states, but most of the fail-states are linked to the trial.
Scenario 1: Jayce doesn't get robbed
In this scenario Jayce would still keep his research a secret and most likely would not meet Viktor because his room is no longer a crime scene. This could would either lead to A: Jayces experiments with the crystals goes wrong and he blows himself up, B: Jayce doesn't succeed and is still stuck in his research or C: Jayce still gets put on trial somehow for having illegal contraband.
Version A: Jayce is dead, Fail-state 4
Version B: Jayce has no one to ask for help with his research and according to what Jayce wrote in his journal, his grades at the academy are dropping and might be at risk of expulsion.
Considering what Jayce almost did when he got expelled....Yea i think It is safe to call this a fail-state. Fail-state 5
Version C: Jayce would be put on trial and the nature of his research would come into question. He would still probably be expelled from the academy due to the illegal nature of his research. The main diffrence is that Viktor might not be at the trial this time and not be inspired by Jayce. Meaning that Viktor would probably not seek Jayce out, meaning that Jayce probably would go through with his attempt uninterrupted. Fail-state 6
Scenario 2: Jayce gets robbed
Well we got a example of a fail-state in the show for this but it is still worth mentioning. A: One of the kids dies in the explosion or B: Jayce dies in the explosion.
Version A: As mentioned earlier, Vi or any of the other kids dying in the explosion leads to Jayce getting exiled. Fail-state 7
Version B: Jayce is dead. Fail-state 8
Won't go into too much detail here because It would take waaaay to long, but the Hexcore is basically a exponential fail-state here. Considering what the Hexcore can do and what Jayce does with It in the show, the Hexcore basically means that any scenario Viktor dies a potential fail-state. Because one could argue that if Viktor dies at any point when the Hexcore is invented, Jayce will likely use It to do necromancy on Viktor, putting everything on track for the Glorious Evolution, or fail to do necromancy instead do something else insane that may or may not get him killed. The Hexcore is a temporal mine of fail-states, one that cannot really be prevented fully because Hextech + Viktor = Hexcore gets invented, and as established, No Hextech = No Jayce and No Viktor = No Jayce. Fail-state 99+
It is impossible for Mage!Viktor to stop the cycle before the Hexcore due to all the fail-states mentioned above. The only chance he has is if Jayce someone stops Arcane Herald Viktor before the Glorious Evolution starts. The Hexcore needs to be properly disarmed, or else It metaphorically explodes and Jayce dies.
Mage!Viktor and Viktor in general is just as codependent for Jayce as Jayce is for Viktor. Both of them are fully willing to bend all of reality for each other. They both doom and save each other over and over and over again, just to stay together. The only way this cycle breaks is if they both make It out alive or both of them die together (I think they live but I digress). Mage!Viktor probably would not predict Jayce to stay with Viktor, It was not a requirement for his goals after all, but Jayce would never abandon Viktor and Viktor would never abandon Jayce.
In a way, Jayce and Viktors bond is the anomaly, self replicating and self annihilating, the beautiful intersection between order and chaos. Viktor replicates the cycle by trying to save Jayce and Jayce keeps self annihilating through his attempts to reach Viktor, knowingly or not, by inventing Hextech. They are soulmates by choice, the universe is trying to separate them any chance It gets and yet they keep fighting just to be together, and I think that is beautiful!
TL;DR: Mage!Viktors primary motivation is to save Jayce and find a timeline where he doesn't die before or during the Glorious Evolution. This process is extremely complicated because the universe does not like Jayce Talis existing because according to the timloop/cycle paradox, his existence is a time-space anomaly. Jayce and Viktor are both insane and willing to break all laws of time and space to be with each other. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
