Review: Arcane Season Two Act Three
I hope you learned your lesson: Never play League of Legends. Ever.
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Ekko goes on a ride through the multiverse, Mel unlocks her magical potential, and all of Piltover has a final battle for the fate of the future.
OUR TAKE
And with that, Arcane’s three year, two season journey comes to a close…with probably one of the fastest escalating last few episodes I’ve seen in a WHILE. SO MUCH SHIT happens in just these last three episodes that it’s actually hard to comprehend it all in order to talk about it here. First off, a baffling use of what little time the show has left, we finally give the spotlight to Ekko, a character who has mainly been having his story happen in the background of more prominent characters. That’s not to say he’s not interesting or doesn’t have things about him worth going into, but he just hasn’t been the focus for so long that it’s kinda weird he’s only getting it now, and in an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE no less. Yeah, the third to last episode finally tells us what happened with him, Heimerdinger, and Jayce, with the former two having been flung by the Hextech they encountered into a world where everyone they know actually had nice lives with little to no hardship…well, aside from Vi dying early on, but otherwise everyone else seems pretty well adjusted! This world’s Ekko even seems to have some chemistry with a Powder who never became Jinx! But alas, we have two more episodes to cram like half a season of plot into so we must move on.
The final two episodes truly feel like they are highly truncated and condensed third season squished into a two parter. Things were already moving pretty dang fast with the introduction and IMMEDIATE subsequent destruction of stuff like Jinx’s sidekick Isha, Vander being in a giant furry body, and Viktor’s whole hivemind hextech sanctuary, but now we’re hitting the fast forward button like crazy. I don’t know if it was the cost of the animation or Riot Games wanting to move on from the show or simply the writers really thinking they could fit everything into just these two seasons but…yeah, I can’t honestly say they pulled it off. I could list every single thing that happens and is resolved in these last two episodes but I think my point is clear enough: it’s pretty to look at and I can see how this could be the destination for most of the characters, but it all happens way too rapid fire to feel all that earned. Some things survive the collision like Caitlyn and Vi finally hard launching and the concepts of Viktor and Jayce’s resolution work well enough, but the fate of certain characters feel just too rushed, unearned, or simply feel like they were done to add needless tragedy. But now I can look over the season, and probably the series, as a whole and determine what worked, what didn’t, and where the world of Arcane can go from here.
