After a three-year wait since Arcane proved one of the biggest surprises of 2021, the series’ second and final season came and went in a flash. Once again, Fortiche studio demonstrated their visual mastery with staggering cuts that switched art styles and forms to match each narrative turn, as the series delivered the crushing tragedy and complex characters it’s known for. But while the first six episodes were excellent in a vacuum, considering how much still needed to be resolved, it was hard to imagine how the show’s final act could possibly tie up every narrative loose end this weekend. The answer is that it couldn’t really, but that didn’t stop this denouement from ripping our hearts out one last time.
Compared to the series’ initial run, the main problem with Season 2 is that it feels a bit unfocused. While the first three-quarters of the story was mostly dedicated to the class struggle between Zaun and Piltover and how this affected the characters involved, the last few episodes rapidly pivoted towards magical, world-ending circumstances. In Episode 6, “The Message Hidden Within the Pattern,” Viktor furthered his transformation into a messianic figure that offered an alternate solution to these ongoing political woes; join his cult, and you’ll become part of a nice, cozy hivemind! While it was heavily foreshadowed from the beginning that Jayce and Viktor’s Hextech would have dangerous consequences, this was mainly presented in the traditional way that technology meant for good is appropriated towards harm: Piltover used it to make weapons.
After these allusions, things took a turn when Episode 7 centered on an apocalyptic future brought on by Hextech and the power of the arcane. Here, Jayce witnessed that if Viktor completed his plan, it would convert every denizen of Piltover and Zaun into an unthinking puppet. Basically, while the majority of the series was about inequality and political oppression, it decisively shifted toward a cataclysmic Big Fantasy Threat in Act 3 that at least initially seemed much less interesting than what came before. It was an inelegant change that didn’t have enough runtime to come across as convincing as it could have. Sure, the threat of Hextech has always been there, but this alteration in priorities left some characters relatively sidelined in this back stretch, including Vi, Jinx, and Cait, the most central characters to the rest of the show.
The situation is somewhat reminiscent of Game of Thrones’ unsuccessful late-stage swerve, where a narrative that was at its best rendering political machinations and decidedly human drama became entirely about fighting evil blue guys. Again, in both cases, there was plenty of foreshadowing from the start and allusions throughout that this is where things would go. But despite this, both series were best off when they balanced grounded moments with fantasy flourishes instead of entirely skewing towards the latter. For instance, the first 15 episodes or so of Arcane posed all sorts of interesting questions. Will Zaun ever be free? Can people like Jinx earn forgiveness, and can people like Cait find it in themselves to grant it? Will the writers let the yearning lesbians kiss or acknowledge that Jayce and Viktor are totally boyfriends? While all of these inquiries were answered in some way or another, many were detrimentally put on the back burner.
Still, all this said, Arcane’s final stretch is dramatically better than what we saw with Westeros’ calamitous fall. For starters, while the finale, “The Dirt Under Your Nails,” may be one long extended fight scene about combatting the previously mentioned Big Fantasy Threat, it helps that, like the rest of the series, it’s goddamn gorgeous. Despite the large-scale chaos of this battle between Ambessa’s Noxians and the combined forces of Piltover and Zaun, there is clarity to the carnage as we cut between our protagonists. The star of this extended brawl is undoubtedly Ambessa herself, who furthered her legacy as an unforgivably badass villain as she sliced through soldiers and deflected magic bullets with ease.
And while the hectic last three episodes pivoted towards a grandiose threat that didn’t have enough space to develop, there was just enough room to resolve most of these long-running character arcs with a mixture of tragedy and catharsis, even if many of them could have landed more resoundingly with additional time. Cait and Vi’s longstanding situationship finally turned into something more in what was probably the most unambiguously cathartic turn. While Cait never really gets the chance to fully redeem herself after becoming an oppressive despot, her fight against Ambessa, the person who manipulated her into committing these acts, is a stunner sequence that at least partially gets us there. Similarly, although it feels weird that Vi is somewhat sidelined in the climactic battle, this fight allows her to fully reconcile with her sister, as represented by their matching haircuts as they face off against their zombie dad (which is admittedly a beat they hit a few too many times).
Jinx also benefits from the fact that Episode 7, “Pretend Like It’s the First Time,” is probably the best episode of the whole season, a bittersweet “what if?” scenario that envisioned a world where Hextech never was, Powder didn’t become Jinx, and her innovations helped uplift Zaun. After Ekko gets whipped into this reality by the power of the arcane, he has to choose between carrying on in this ideal world versus returning to his own more flawed one where they still need him. And, of course, Ekko being Ekko, he barely hesitates.
The doomed relationship he forms with Powder is an absolutely crushing swing that both hammers home his sacrifice and ties in excellently with his ultimate action in stopping Viktor in the final moments—his actions very literally saved the world, but that doesn’t stop the camera from lingering on Powder and Ekko in parallel shots, now separated by an impenetrable barrier of time and space. This detour also aided Jinx’s arc in the main timeline, making it even more satisfying when she decides to continue living following Ekko’s prompting. Again, it would have been nice if there was more room for Jinx to accept her role in events, but a cool music video intro as she leads Zaun into battle against Viktor’s forces, alongside the implication she escaped Zaun on an airship as she promised in Season 1 will have to do.
And then, of course, it all comes down to Jayce and Viktor, whose creation of Hextech led to this world-ending scenario to begin with. By the final moments, it fully feels like this is their story, and it’s one conveyed with aching longing and heavy dollops of romantic subtext as we see flashbacks of their journey together, making it difficult not to be swept up in the moment. “I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world. Now, all I want is my partner back,” Jayce says with cutting poignancy before we see that across countless timelines, everything always comes back to them. Their shared bond sits at the center of the universe, with Jayce always returning for Viktor despite the latter’s destructive pursuit to “save” the world from itself.
It’s a sequence that does so much work towards tying this messy season together because it hitches the Big Fantasy Threat to what this series has always been about at a thematic level: the conflict between Zaun and Piltover and all the suffering that stems from it. Viktor’s solution is to end this struggle through Evangelion-style total unity, bringing everyone into a collective consciousness controlled by arcane puppet strings. But of course, this is a nuclear option that may as well be the same as giving up because it implies that reconciliation between Zaun and Piltover is impossible, and it ties in with Viktor’s cynical speech about how human nature is a double-sided coin of cruelty and compassion that will always be at war with itself. Jayce and the combined forces of Zaun and Piltover ultimately reject this, coming together to stop Viktor in a way that suggests despite the impossibility of a truly perfect and harmonious world, it’s still worth fighting for something better.
Did Arcane need more time to reach its full potential, to be a more whole version of itself? Definitely. While there’s resolution between Piltover and Zaun, as represented by Sevika sitting on the council after the battle, most of this happens in the background, something that’s deeply odd given how much the series has previously been dedicated to this conflict. While this world and most of the characters end up in spots that feel broadly appropriate, they almost all could have used a bit more runway to get there.
But despite all of these issues, Viktor’s final speech about accepting the imperfections in the world has a serendipitous resonance. Obviously, I don’t think the series’ writers intentionally crafted a flawed finale to tie in with this idea; it just happened to work out this way. More than anything, though, these final moments between Jayce and Viktor embody the series’ penchant for tearing our hearts out while leaving trace faints of hope, the small victories standing out more thanks to the surrounding tragedy. It may not be perfect, but between its cathartic character resolutions, stunning aesthetic execution, and well-conveyed thematic through lines, there’s plenty to cling to in Arcane’s finale, and that’s enough.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11 and on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.
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