schroedinger's jinx part 2
beware; arcane spoilers and lots of speculation. again.
in a previous post, i dissected the three most common clues that jinx might still be alive at the end of arcane s02.
today i would like to add three more aspects that intertwine.
first. in the opening scene of the memorial service - the mourners write names on papers, burn them and let them fly - we see for a brief moment from behind a blue-haired girl who looks somewhat similar to powder from ep. 7.
but … it's not powder. the ribbons in the hair are different. and arcane fooled us once before when jinx mistook the pink-haired girl for vi during her fight with the firelights and then killed her.
a blue-haired girl at the memorial: that‘s a simple distraction.
second. jinx has changed. she has become caring: for isha, for the jinxers, for vi, for vander in warwick-form and - for ekko. if she’s alive, she leaves piltover on her terms. this changed jinx would leave without telling vi she was alive - because vi would never let go of her. but she wouldn't let ekko grieve for no reason. an ekko who knows she's alive but chooses to stay in zaun for zaun's sake wouldn't need to burn this paper because there would be no one to grieve for (and it's not just for appearances, because no one in zaun can see him, he's alone in that moment which means: he’s really grieving a death).
third. jinx embraces warwick. during the fall, she actively turns towards him. she hugs him. this is not the gesture of someone who then detonates a monkey bomb and runs away. this jinx doesn't want vander/ warwick to die alone. this jinx would stay. her own life is not so important to her that she would want to escape by any means necessary.
wait, there's a big “but” in this case: i really don't think that explosion would have killed the enhanced warwick beast.
if jinx had known he could survive the explosion, she might have left. or she might have stayed around to make sure the explosion actually killed them both.
in summary, i have to say: i hate these open-ended questions because i think “who is dead and whose death is faked?” is not a story-driven decision, it's just studio-interest-driven. this decision leaves all options on the table in case the studio needs some familiar characters to support another series with cameos.
it's an unsatisfying non-conclusion to jinx's indeep psychological journey.
