Summary
Riot Games’ first foray into television came to an end recently with the finale ofArcaneSeason 2 on Netflix. The series managed to wrap up many disparate plot threads, but many claim it came at the cost of the show’s pacing.
Arcanewas responsible for bringing to life the stories of a handful of champions from Riot’s MOBALeague of Legends. After a massively successful first season which won multiple awards, plus acclaim from fans and critics, many were surprised to learn thatArcanewould end after just two seasons. This posed a big challenge forArcaneas the series had to resolve the many complex character arcs and stories it had set up in the first season. While the finale brought many ofthese storylines to a satisfactory end, one of the main criticisms lobbed atArcane’sfinal season was that the ending felt rushed.
Arcane Creator Addresses the Show’s Pacing Criticisms
Arcane’sco-creator Christian Linke has since addressed these pacing criticisms. In acomment on Reddit, Linke penned a letter revealing that there were several reasons the creative team didn’t have enough time to explore certain aspects further in the series.“It would have been great to have more time to work on this second season, or extra time to add to the episodes, but we didn’t have it. For a number of reasons,”Linke wrote. The producer said budget and time were the main constraints the team was working against, and whileArcane’sbudget was notably generous, it wasn’t limitless. Linke added thatArcane’ssecond season is “not perfect,” admitting that“you don’t take these types of hefty swings and expect that everything wraps up perfectly with a neat bow tie.”
Arcane’s Finale Has Fans Divided
In an interview withGamesRadar, Linke further expanded on the team’s different approach to Season 2. He said,“We did approach season 2 a little bit differently in how we structured the episodes because we wanted, as creatives, to take these bets [and] take these swings.“Linke added that the creative team struggled to strike a balance between maintaining the stories they’d set up while also introducing new aspects of the world that fans were eager to see.“On one side, you have people saying it’s too much. On the other, you have people saying we didn’t do enough and we did our best… We’re doing our best to include the right amount of story.”
On one side, you have people saying it’s too much. On the other, you have people saying we didn’t do enough.
Arcane’ssecond half was no doubt a fast-paced season, with the series not only furthering the stories of characters like Jinx, Vi, Caitlyn, Jayce, and Viktor but also introducing complex new elements like time traveland the Black Rose. Some fans felt these new elements left little room to properly conclude the existing character’s arcs, while others were completely satisfied with the series’ resolution. Linke did add in his interview with GamesRadar that Episode 9 ofArcaneSeason 2 was originally over an hour long, but it wasn’t possible to achieve this under the team’s constraints, so they cut back on some moments, in particular, action sequences. Series finales are often divisive among fans, but hopefully, some of the elements ofArcanewill continue to be explored in the otherplanned projects to come from theLeague of Legends.
ArcaneSeasons 1 and 2 are available on Netflix.
Arcane
Arcane is an animated series developed by Alex Yee and Christian Linke that follows a the story of Piltover and Zaun, two pivotal locations in the League of Legends universe. The first season follows the stories of Jynx and Vi, as well as Jayce and Viktor.
