We know Machine Herald Viktor's ideas of perfection are flawed and influenced by societal values and personal opinion. We've already talked about Viktor's white and gold puppets representing the Piltovian ideal and the shrine Viktor keeps with puppet Jayce and letting Jayce keep his face scar. But, can we talk about the NEWTS?
Like... The only animals we see bigger than an insect that survived the glorious evolution were NEWTS?
So it turns out I do have a take on what's going on with Mage Viktor, why he's messing with timelines in the way he is, and what he hoped to achieve by bringing Jayce to the torment nexus dimension and then sending him back to his own timeline armed with facial hair, trauma, and the ruthless determination to somehow stop his own Viktor.
Of course this is just my own reading; there are many ways you can interpret the reveals of the final episode. But it's become my preferred reading because it makes Mage Viktor come off as absolutely BATSHIT. The apotheosis of all Viktor's best and worst qualities. As he would be.
First we gotta lay out some fundamental principles about how I understand Viktor that will inform this reading.
Viktor was never being controlled by the Hexcore. This deserves its own whole meta, but tl;dr, I think it is directly antithetical to the core themes of the show to think that Viktor wasn't making his own decisions all through s2.
Over and over again in Arcane, we see characters become "monsters" and do monstrous things, and every time the thematic point is that this is still the person you love. When Vi says that her sister is dead because she is Jinx now and when Jayce says "my partner died in this room" THEY ARE BOTH WRONG. The person they love is different now but they're still in there and they can still be reached.
Viktor is transformed by something terrible happening to him (like many characters in the show!) but all his decisions are still his own and to me they seem like perfectly consistent--if extreme--extensions of what we know about him as a character before he gets a Hexcore heart.
So my analysis starts with the premise that Mage Viktor is not trying to free his past self from an outside influence. He's trying to hack his own character traits to make a different version of himself do what he wants.
Viktor is BOTH genuinely altruistic and compassionate AND deeply arrogant. This is such a banger combination and I think turning down the dial on either trait makes Viktor less interesting. I think Mage Viktor has genuine remorse about what he did in his timeline and he is, fundamentally, trying to find a way he could have stopped himself from killing everyone (within certain constraints; we'll get to that). When Jayce is able to show main timeline Herald Viktor his memories of what Viktor is about to do to their world, the first thing Viktor sees is not dead Jayce, or himself left alone in an empty world. It's all the ordinary people who are going to die terrified because of him.
I do not think any version of Viktor wanted this result. But Viktor is so convinced he is always right that his arrogance carries him right past the point of no return before he realizes oh actually I haven't freed everybody I have killed them.
So I do think Mage Viktor is trying to find a timeline where this doesn't happen, but he is not timeline-hopping in order to preemptively stop other versions of himself from making the same mistake. If he wanted to do that, he would just leave all the many many timelines where Jayce dies in a blizzard as a child alone. No Jayce who grows up obsessed with magic, goes around Academy rules to get the hex crystals, invents Hextech and gives Viktor the power to fuck everything up. Easy peasy.
But no. Instead, Viktor is actively going into other timelines and changing them at the point where Jayce would have died.
He is doing things that appear to make the sequence of events that leads to his world-ending magic blast WAY MORE LIKELY. And that's because...
Viktor is obsessively selfish when it comes to Jayce.
Mage Viktor wants to find a timeline where he doesn't doom the world but not at the expense of meeting Jayce and spending years doing science with him.
If the goal was only to prevent Jayce from dying in the blizzard, he could have done it quietly, waiting for Jayce to collapse in the snow and then transporting him to the base of the mountain, leaving before Jayce had any idea who saved him. Instead he makes SUCH A DRAMATIC PRODUCTION of it that Jayce remembers and can repeat the steps of the action years later, well enough that he actually produces a working spell from a barely-tested Hextech prototype. Mage Viktor wants that shit burned into baby Jayce's brain. He wants to make sure he fundamentally alters the arc of Jayce's life, bending it into a trajectory that collides with his own.
Viktor also (as far as we see) doesn't go the route of going back in time and killing his younger self, or steering the course of his own life along a path where he never meets Jayce. He doesn't even go for a timeline where he and Jayce meet each other but they don't invent Hextech. Now maybe it's the case that some time before our Jayce arrives in his timeline, Mage Viktor tried all that, and has figured out that none of those options work. (Maybe in some of those timelines Jayce is the one who goes Machine Herald, and there's no partner there to talk him off the ledge of ending the world.) But I think it's also possible that, now that he's gotten the experience in one timeline of spending years with Jayce making once-in-a-generation scientific breakthroughs together (which I truly believe is just as important a part of their relationship to Viktor as any romantic or sexual element might be)...he can't bear to deny any version of himself the chance of having that--even if the price is the rest of the world. Because a world where Jayce isn't his partner isn't a world worth saving.
So what I think Mage Viktor is doing is sitting there with his stubborn engineer brain and the husk of his dead soulmate, fiddling with the timelines like a Rubik's cube, going Not meeting Jayce CANNOT be the only option. There MUST be a timeline where Jayce and I meet each other and entangle our lives in an alarmingly codependent way AND we dodge the apocalypse at the last minute, I don't end up killing him, and we do not doom the world together. And I'm going to fucking find it.
So he's been hitting timeline after timeline, trying to find the combination of factors where everything works. He is not trying to preemptively save every timeline from himself, he is trying to prove to himself that meeting the love of his life doesn't doom the entire fucking world. It's devotion that is SO PROFOUNDLY SELFISH that he is willing to doom timeline after timeline, but driven by someone with enough compassion and pride that he doesn't want the guilt and shame of knowing he can only have this one life-changing thing if he ruins everything else for everyone, and enough arrogance to still look at this as a problem he must be smart enough to solve.
At some point in this process, I think he also figures out that Jayce is the only person who has any chance of reasoning with any version of himself. I think it's worth paying attention to the exact wording of his "in all timelines, in all possibilities" speech, because it's not just a love confession (although it is that).
"I thought I could bring an end to the world's suffering. But when every equation was solved, all that remained were fields of dreamless solitude. There is no prize to perfection. Only an end to pursuit. In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this."
And while this is some hella romantic cosmic soulmate level shit, it is also Viktor saying I need you, because you are the only person I have ever trusted enough to save me from myself.
It's the Hexcore promise all over again. Viktor knew he couldn't destroy his own creation. I read this not as Viktor being physically unable to destroy it because the Hexcore had some power over him, but not having the will to destroy it. Because this huge leap in Hextech technology was his big breakthrough and not (as I think he saw it) him supporting Jayce's dream. He knew he couldn't do it. So he asked Jayce to do it for him. Please, save me from my own pride, my desire to leave a legacy. I can't do it on my own.
It's a huge extension of trust, for Viktor to admit such a need. And now he's doing it again when the stakes are MUCH MUCH higher. I need you, because you are the only person who can show me the horror of what I am about to do and have me believe it.
Of course, the deep irony is that really the only person Viktor trusts to tell him he is wrong is HIMSELF FROM THE FUTURE. Astral plane Machine Herald Viktor is standing right behind Jayce, watching Jayce's memory of Mage Viktor telling him what the consequences of his actions will be, and that is the moment the horror sinks in and cracks him fully out of his machine shell.
But of course Jayce is the only person he would ever trust enough to carry such a message (from himself!!) to somewhere close enough to reach him.
It's not clear exactly how much of a detailed plan Mage Viktor has when he sends Jayce back to the main timeline, or how much of that plan he shares with Jayce. But I think he has figured out some broad strokes which affect how Jayce behaves.
(1) Jayce has to immediately go and kill commune Viktor. Squishing Salo is maybe a bonus side quest, but Jayce doesn't even take time to fucking shower before he heads for the commune. (I would love to see the part of the conversation where Mage Viktor is like yeah you know that pit you just climbed out of? Yeah the first thing you gotta do is go right back in there, all the way to the bottom, and find me looking like ethereal cyborg Jesus and blast a fucking hole through my chest.) Maybe this is because if Jayce waits around at all, commune Viktor finds a way to get to him and he folds and joins the cult. Maybe this is because there are just fewer variables involved in forcing Viktor to speedrun his own villain arc by Jayce repeatedly turning him down in one "perfect" form after another. Maybe Mage Viktor knows himself well enough to realize "yeah if you say no to me even ONE TIME but ESPECIALLY when you are HOT and SUFFERING I will go fucking apeshit and we can use that to our advantage."
(2) I think Mage Viktor has realized that he can only be stopped at the very very VERY last minute. He has to be able to see the direct line between what he is about to do right now and the arcane-blasted hell world he's about to create. Otherwise his ego will get in the way and tell him he is smart enough to figure out a way to somehow not kill everybody. Yeah Mage Viktor fucked that one up obviously, but I, main timeline Viktor, will be smart enough and well-intentioned enough when the time comes to simply not do that. I think this is why, for example, Jayce doesn't go to the commune trying to get Viktor to see the error of his ways. It won't work until it is allllmost too late.
Main timeline Viktor stops literally seconds before the point of no return. The arcane corruption spikes that we see everywhere in Mage Viktor's world are already starting to appear.
I think Mage Viktor knows that Jayce has to let him get right up to the edge, close enough to be looking over into the abyss, before he'll be able to pull him back.
But he knows Jayce can do that. That's what they do for each other, right?
This is why I think it was always the plan for Jayce to fight him all the way to the top of the Hexgate, and then surrender. Jayce has to survive until the end of the fight, and maybe for magical physics reasons he has to wait until Viktor sends the anomaly into the sky above the Hexgate. But once they get to the top of the Hexgate tower he stops trying to fight Viktor altogether. Maybe Mage Viktor told him exactly when it had to happen or maybe he just realizes this is the exact same place where he died in Mage Viktor's world; this is his last chance. But in any case, Jayce lands on the top of the Hexgate on his knees and he doesn't try to get up.
He waits, and when he senses Viktor behind him he doesn't try to fight or run away.
I think he knows, either because Mage Viktor told him or through his own intuition, that he has to let Viktor pull him into the astral plane if he wants a chance at reaching him.
How exactly he was going to get through to him and/or get close enough to share the memories before Viktor assimilated him...ehhhh I don't know if either of them had that figured out. The "you were never broken" part of Jayce's speech, while important from a character perspective...very crucially DOES NOT WORK. IT DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. Viktor is assimilating Jayce the whole time. You can see Jayce's astral body changing from the unique version that's still him (like his hands on the left, when he first enters the astral plane--which still look more or less human even though Viktor has already erased "imperfections" like the scrapes and cuts from his time in the pit and the arcane corruption that's spreading up and down his arm from where the rune is embedded) into a featureless gold blob like the other assimilated people.
You can watch the gold light creeping up his body steadily during those lines until it reaches his eyes.
The ONLY thing that stops this timeline from ending the same way Mage Viktor's does...is EKKO.
I think you can make the case that Mage Viktor sent Ekko to the no-Hextech timeline intentionally. But it is such a complex chain of causality for Ekko to get to the point where he's chucking a time machine at Herald Viktor's face that there is no way anyone--even a remorseful demigod with lots of time on his hands--could control every possible factor.
However elaborate Mage Viktor's plan was, and however determined Jayce was to keep his promise to him, it all would have failed if not for factors outside their control and random fucking chance.
Arcane is FULL of near-misses and what-could-have-beens and characters who are trying their best to do something getting knocked off course by consequences they never could have foreseen. Season 2 in particular introduces a persistent thread of chaos and the sense that even events that have understandable root causes are now spiraling out of characters' control. So it feels fitting that such a moment factors into the show's ending.
This is Jayce right before Ekko blasts through spacetime right above Viktor's head.
Yeah that guy was cooked.
The only thing that stops Jayce from being assimilated is Ekko breaking time to throw the Z drive at Viktor's face.
Which startles Viktor enough that he takes his hand off Jayce's head in the physical realm (ETA at first I thought it looked like he did, but upon closer rewatch I don't think their physical connection ever breaks; the assimilation link in the astral plane does though), and also breaks a piece of his machine mask off in the astral realm.
As he always does when one of his "perfect" bodies gets damaged, Viktor withdraws and tried to hide, enough that he lets go of the assimilation connection with Jayce.
Jayce starts to regain his own identity/autonomy.
And he gets a do-over. Exactly the same way Ekko used the Z drive to get a do-over with Jinx when he was trying to talk her out of suicide. Jayce gets another chance, and that's when he goes for "all I want is my partner back" and "because I promised you." Which works.
Mage Viktor's plan, I think, was for Jayce to help main timeline Viktor realize what he was doing before it was too late, and then give him the runestone, which allows him to release all the minds/souls that are connected to him before this becomes some runaway chain reaction of arcane power that swallows everything around him. (How the runestone does this exactly, and how the anomalies play into it, is stuff I am still thinking about. But tbh I am less concerned with the details of made-up magic physics than I am with the character beats.) Mage Viktor had accepted that main timeline Viktor was probably going to die in this process and he'd made peace with it. That's what "should" have happened anyway, if Viktor never found a way to forestall his illness, right? As long as this Viktor got to spend the best years of his life with his Jayce, it was okay.
I don't think Mage Viktor ever expected Jayce to stay there until the end. His goal was to save the world and spare Jayce from himself. And why would he plan otherwise? We know why Jayce stays, but Mage Viktor never got that part of the story. He schlorped up his own Jayce's consciousness with everyone else and maybe he only understood the depths of what Jayce felt for him in the moment that he was killing him. And main timeline Viktor certainly does not expect Jayce to stay. He's shocked when he realizes Jayce has no intention of leaving. No, that wasn't part of any master plan. That part was all Jayce.
Jayvik & Timebomb Parallels, AKA, why isn't anyone talking how Viktor and Ekko mirror each other in Arcane??
I'm surprised I haven't seen more comparisons between Ekko and Viktor, not to mention how those parallels between the characters also create parallels between the Ekko/Jinx and Viktor/Jayce relationships, which I'm gonna argue here are both romantic relationships.
1 ) Both Viktor and Ekko see it as a personal cause to make life better for people in the undercity, to the point of both becoming a local leaders focused on creating a place of peace where Zaunites can retreat to in times of peril.
Indeed, from a narrative perspective, I would argue that one Doylist reason Ekko needed to go into the Anomaly in Act 2-3 is to make space on the scene in Zaun for the rise of Cult Leader Viktor.
If Ekko had been around, he would have either served as a roadblock to Viktor's rise out of a general sense of distrust, I imagine, or he might have easily become a supporter, or maybe even a cult follower of Viktor's if he admired and believed in the vision, which would of course doom the world.
(This further illustrating just how narrowly Jayce, Wizard Viktor, and Ekkko had to thread the needle on defeating the Machine Herald in the final act, since I would argue Ekko like Jayce remaining in the canon universe for the months of Cult Leader Viktor's rise would also have led to Ekko and Jayce's defeat or assimilation before the final act had either stayed.)
2 ) Both Viktor and Ekko are, of course, genius undercity scientists who are able to grasp quickly concepts like wild runes and the Anomaly. But it's their partner's actions that bring Hexgems into their life. Powder by causing the explosion where he gets the shards from, Jayce of course by creating Hexgems in the first place.
3 ) Both are Heimerdinger's close assistant and pupil before they meet their true scientific partner in Jinx/Powder and Jayce.
4 ) Aaand, this is where it gets gut-wrenching, because both Ekko and Viktor have to say goodbye to the alternate universe version of the person they love and this is where it gets wild because they make the same face while doing so. And their loved one, Jayce and Powder, make the same face back of startling when they realize they're looking at an alternate version of the person they love.
(Source here if you want to watch the full videos side by side because it's NUTS how similar the faces Viktor/Ekko and Jayce/Powder make to their alternate universe loves: https://x.com/yearnerjayce/status/1863132466346656031)
In the blocking of the scene, they've even both got a version of one half of that universe's part of the relationship lying between the two of them (Powder holding her version of Ekko, while the Hexcorized version of Jayce lies between Wizard Viktor and canon Jayce), so the blocking is visually very similar too in a clear romantic parallel that is mind-boggling.
By the way, these moments are also technically happening in the same episode as far as romantic parallels go, we just don't learn about this parallel on Viktor/Jayce's side until the final episode with the full reveal.
And of course, both future Viktor and canon universe Ekko must make the ultimate sacrifice of losing access to an alternate version of the person they love who is happy and healthy (instead of, well, Jinx, and/or dead in the case of Hexcorized Jayce), in order to save the world.
By the way, there is a parallel that stretches throughout the whole 2.07 alternate universe episode, with the heavy implication that Ekko and Powder are this world's Viktor and Jayce. They're even doing an Innovators Competition. In both universes, Hextech is explored through the loving partnership of a pair of young scientists.
5 ) Finally, both Viktor and Ekko stop their loved one from committing suicide. Interestingly, both Jayce and Jinx attempt to do so in a way that's related to Hextech, with Jinx using Hexgems in her grenade, and Jayce getting cut off from Hextech being the reason he's seeking to end his own life. They also, coincidentally or not so coincidentally, attempt to do so in a way that's related to falling from a height.
Both are interrupted by someone they're not too happy to see at first, but who goes on to be their partner. Even Jinx/Ekko get one last partnership in the final Act, which is an interesting mirror to Jayce/Viktor, whose suicide attempt -> partnership helps launch the action of the whole series in the first Act of the first season, making these two couples in a way, mirrors bookending the series.
Crazy Arcane theory: there wasn't supposed to be a multiverse.
Originally, there was one singular timeline, where Jayce was either saved by a different mage or survived the snowstorm on his own (but his mom didn't?), and where Viktor ended the world and became Wizard Viktor. This is the timeline where Jayce got stuck in the apocalypse.
Wizard Viktor tried going back in time, but rather than change the past to prevent the end of the world, he just kept splitting off more timelines. At some point he decided if he just kept doing this enough he could figure out how to make different timelines where everything turns out fine (and Jayce and Viktor are together of course). There's probably some natural variance in how the timelines turn out, or perhaps which rune Jayce gets makes the difference here (leading to the timeline Ekko visited, which is also a timeline where wizard Viktor saved Jayce since he was doing hextech research).
Wizard Viktor might even try intervening at other points, but as this leads to more timelines splitting off, we wouldn't have seen it in the main timeline as that is one where he only saved Jayce in the snowstorm. The only change he can make without making any more splits is Jayce in his dimension, if he stays in the pit for long, what exactly he tells Jayce, how he shows himself etc, since that happens in his own timeline rather than one he's altering, so that's probably the main point of strategy to ensure other timelines don't end.
I don't know if this makes any sense, and it's probably not what the writers intended, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
