Arcane’s Magnificent Dive into the Dark (Spoliers)
For a show that spares no effort to show you exactly where it stands on darkness, Arcane does an excruciatingly good job of exploring it anyway, and in ways I’ve frankly never seen done on any show before.
Shimmer is one of the most interesting devices the show uses to that end, and although it’s discussed in ways that make it sound like a drug, the fascinating thing is that we don’t see the substance itself having addictive qualities. Silco and Sevika use it regularly and don’t seem to suffer any side-effects and don’t display any of the hallmarks of addiction.
Which means that people weren’t getting addicted to Shimmer...they were getting addicted to power. And one very clever twist was that the only addict we see on screen for a significant amount of time was the man Vander rescued from the traders in the first episode. This could be read as a signal that the same people who flourished under Vander floundered under Silco, but I think there’s more to it.
What Vander offered depended entirely upon his own power, his whims and desires, and his perceptions of right and wrong, regardless of whether or not we agree with those perceptions. There is neither law nor personal agency anywhere in sight, and no matter how grateful someone like that can be to Vander, they will always resent their reliance on him. You wouldn’t want to need Vander. You would want to BE Vander. This is why, for the people to whom he offered protection, Shimmer must’ve felt like godsend.
This is the kind of surrender to the dark that happens to people when they’ve been so disenfranchised that they pursue power blindly, desperately, stumbling and fumbling into the dark without rhyme or reason until it engulfs them.
Vander himself, when he’s on the verge of losing, resorts to Shimmer so he can continue fighting, which makes his death both a way of steadfastly standing by his ideals (he died protecting Vi, fighting Silco, and trying his best to stop conflict from erupting between Zaun and Piltover) but also an acknowledgement of Silco’s ways (you can deny the darkness all you want, but once there’s something you want badly enough to fight for and someone stronger that you’re powerless to fight, you’re going to resort to it anyway).
We also have characters like Sevika, not exiled from Vander’s community like Silco is, but not integrated into it like the man with the glasses. For someone who happens to be stronger-bodied and willed than the average citizen, Sevika wouldn’t have mixed feelings about Vander. As a moral authority, he offers her no level of protection she can’t provide for herself, but restrains her from fighting for the rights and resources to which she believes she’s entitled. To her, his cooperation with Piltover is betrayal and her only solution is Silco.
I get the impression she would very well have chosen a less extreme boss for herself if she could because she is not really a character with significant darkness in herself, but the only alternatives to Silco would be those who were only interested in their own enrichment, and not in the cause she initially joined him for in the first place. It would probably be more accurate to say that she’s aligned with the dark for personal and pragmatic reasons rather than actually ON the dark side.
And since she makes her choices with total clarity (something she has in common with Silco), she only benefits from her use of shimmer and she only ever causes harm deliberately, which is worth noting because a recurring theme in the show is characters trying very hard to reject or deny their own darkness before giving into it/losing control over it (in the form of shimmer/hextech/etc.). We’ve seen it from Jayce and Victor (arguably characters with little to no darkness in them trying very hard to be “good people”), and, devastatingly, from both Powder and Jinx, all of whom have accidentally killed someone or several people.
But never from Silco.
Silco doesn’t struggle with the dark or, as it happens, with his use of Shimmer. He uses it in very controlled doses to regain/improve his eye that he lost to his fight with Vander. The darkness doesn’t cloud his vision, it completes it. His “noble cause” isn’t a cover for power-hunger either. He wasn’t a drug lord who decided to pursue power, he was a rebel who supported the invention of Shimmer specifically to help his people combat their oppressors and consistently prioritizes that over monetary gains. He was willing to stop producing it altogether once Zaun became independent and had access to the hexgates because the power imbalance would no longer necessitate it. The power Shimmer offers him is a means, not an end.
Silco’s behaviors are all an extension of his philosophy of accepting the inevitable darkness, “the base violence necessary for change”. What makes him attractive to other characters is that he also invites those around him to accept their own darkness and allows them to express it, even at his own detriment. He doesn’t curse the fates for the dark, he embraces it in loving arms, just holding it gently -- and very very loosely. Because no one can fully control the dark and Silco knows that, and he’s willing to pay whatever price is necessary for that, up to and including his own life.
This is where Jinx comes in and where she and Silco fundamentally differ. Jinx doesn’t fight the topside because she believes in a cause. She doesn’t kill because it’s necessary. She does it because she’s in pain and doesn’t know what else to do with herself. She doesn’t punch-up at the big guy, she squashes bugs left and right because she’s bigger and stronger.
We actually saw the beginnings of her darkness seep through as Powder, when she was breaking the moving toy much like she’ll come to break any small thing that comes her way thereafter. Silco may have nurtured her worst impulses, but the soil was fertile and fresh for the digging. Jinx is the kind of dark Piltover births and then abandons, the kind of child with no instincts but to destroy, the kind of child who can only go to war, if not today then tomorrow.
But Silco doesn’t and cannot reject her when her darkness becomes inconvenient for him, and this is the main reason why I don’t think his decision not to give her up at the series finale was at odds with his character from before, and it has to do with the “could’ve been” theme of the episode.
The idea is that peace had been at our fingertips before being ruined by Jinx’s acceptance of her more destructive self, encouraged by Silco’s “You’re perfect” and the fact that she killed him, but it’s important to acknowledge that Jinx and Silco’s fights against Piltover and how they stole Piltover technology were the only reasons this peace was possible in the first place. Vander’s complacency wouldn’t have made this happen in a million years and the fireflies’ little pockets of decent living in the shadows do not a country make.
They follow the same approach as Vander in some respects, which, yes, gives some the chance to breathe and feel warmth and love, but they do so with weaponry, not with peace, and their enemy is the oppressor downstairs, not the oppressors upstairs in Piltover. Their technology, impressive as it is, has nothing on hextech and shimmer, and their capacity for encompassing change is limited.
What this shows is that Jinx was the engine bringing about real change to the undercity not despite her darkness, but through it, which means that to abandon her when independence and access to proper resources are within arm’s reach wouldn’t be an extension of Silco’s earlier approach, but a betrayal to his ideology. It would probably be the same to him as Vander standing by his side when they were brothers in arms, but trying to kill him when he decided that he doesn’t want to fight anymore and that no one else should (making use of the fighters’ darkness when it suits us and beating them down for it when we decide we’d rather have peace).
This is why I think analyzing Jinx/Powder and Silco’s relationship purely in therapist-chair terms misses a good chunk of their dynamic. Silco’s failings aren’t exactly parental - they’re political.
Ultimately, however, and despite giving his side a more than thorough examination, the show had to chicken out on him, positioning itself as being firmly against embracing the darkness, and going the extra mile to ensure there would be no mistaking it for neutral on the matter.
One subtle way it does that is by calling it an “uprising” when it was Vander leading it in the beginning, but a “war” when it’s Silco, even though the independence hadn’t actually happened yet and Zaun was still a part of Piltover. It also frames the council’s decision to opt for peace as an awakening of their conscience, forgetting (or glossing over) the fact that after years of failing their constituents, they were basically shrugging off the deadweight and calling it a day, providing whatever help they will as charity, rather than political obligation.
But I can’t say I blame Arcane for that. In the words of the late Prof. Radwa Ashour, “I'm a teacher, and I see messages of pessimism as an immoral act,” so I genuinely appreciate that the show doesn’t shy away from the cruelty that such base violence ultimately instils and how, whatever good it may do in reclaiming rights, it does precious little in healing festering wounds.
I feel like 99% of the fandom cried and loved Todoroki and his win and all that good shit And then there's me, the 1%, that got excited when Izuku punched his shit in a few times and even headbutted him. Like ye. Take that. Get down.
Me: *finds new blog and spams the fuck outta he like and reblog button* Me: *messages the owner sorry for spam* Me: *continues to spam because shit is too good*
