Way back when. You know, back in 2021, the year after the year that wasn’t. My daughter came to me and said there was this new show on Netflix. It was animated and based loosely on the world of a video game. Apparently, that meant I had to watch it.
I tried arguing that I didn’t “have” to watch it; I had never even played League of Legends. Although I enjoy video games, I am typically a console player and don’t move over to PC games all that often. So, as I reminded my daughter, I have no idea who these characters are, what the world is about, what the lore is, and I would be lost. Watching this show called “Arcane” would be insane, to which I would crudely and poorly mimic the voice of B-Real from Cypress Hill and sing out “Arcane in the Membrane” to the flow of their hit, “Insane in the Membrane”… no one said it was a well-crafted joke. It was 2021, and we were all a bit gooberish after being locked up for months due to the pandemic.
I am glad that she ignored the weakness of my attempted dad humor and pushed me to watch Arcane. What I sat down to for season one was one of the most beautiful animated shows I have ever watched, and so amazingly written as well. I was immediately enraptured by the story and loved that it required zero knowledge of the game, the lore, the characters, or anything else for that matter for it to be a strong and viable show.
Arcane was THAT show. The show that everyone talked about.
That was three years ago.
November 6, 2021.
Arcane season one wowed us all.
It was a long three years waiting for the second season of Arcane to drop. When talking about Arcane and the potential of a second season, I have often felt like I was having a conversation with Merry and Pippin from The Lord of the Rings – “We’ve had one, yes. What about second season?”
Well, that need for wait was removed on November 9, 2024, three years and three days after the release of season one. If you’d like to go back and watch season one over again, you will be happy to know that both seasons are currently available on Netflix. Well, at least the parts of season two that have been released to Netflix at the time of writing this article.
Don’t worry. No spoilers are included in this article about the content of season two.
Season two does remind us that some characters we grew to enjoy may or may not be back. We will have to see how unanswered questions from season one play out in season two. Jinx, Vi, Silco, Vander, and others all have questions.
Netflix announced that season two would be released in three parts: part one on November 9th, 2024, part two on November 16th, 2024, and the conclusion on November 23rd, 2024. Apparently, they are abandoning their shotgun release approach for this season of Arcane. I, for one, applaud this move. Not only does it give everyone a chance to consume and digest the content, but it also allows them to promote and keep it part of the zeitgeist for longer than a one-part release. In addition, sometimes a full release like that can have a steep fall off because people are done watching it and are moving on to other things, so they don’t miss out on other new items.
The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real. No one wants to be left behind, mainly when their favorite pop culture nerd show releases new material.
“Houston, we have a problem!” Those words uttered by Astronaut John Swigert aboard Apollo moon mission 13 have become a daily occurrence in movies, people working on cars, raking yards, and many other places.
That quote is fitting here, too. Season two of Arcane is the final season. There will be no season three. So, for many Arcane fans, this is a problem—a big problem. The situation becomes more significant when you consider that many fans remember, or think they remember, that this show was supposed to be five seasons long. And now, here we are at two seasons, and it’s just done?
But was it always supposed to be two seasons? According to showrunner and co-creator Christian Linke, “When we started building out the story after the pilot [that we showed internally at Riot], that’s when we were like, ‘Okay, it’s going to be two seasons,'” Linke revealed. “It was never the plan for it to last five seasons.”
So why do we all think it was going to be five seasons? Was it some kind of Mandela effect? Apparently, according to Linke and his co-creator, Alex Yee, it was all part of a prank pulled by Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent on Christian Linke years ago. It hit the internet, and, well, the rest is history.
So enjoy the story of Arcane as it is released. We are getting two seasons from Arcane, but that doesn’t mean this is all we will get from this world.
Arcane concludes the story of Vi and Jinx, but they aren’t the only characters from League of Legends. Riot Games and Netflix have a vast and varied cast of characters to choose from for future projects. And to quote Christian Linke, that’s exactly what’s coming.
So, as disappointed as I am in the current knowledge of there only being two seasons of this storyline, I take some comfort in the fact Arcane is only the tip of the spear. Yes, I want more of these characters, but I am also thrilled about the prospect of an expansive universe and stores of new characters, places and things.
To be fair, the expansiveness of the Star Wars universe is one of the things I love most about it. We get stories from all over its galaxies and get new things to love and bring into our fandom. I truly think that this could be the same Arcane and whatever League of Legends has up their sleeve.
Seasons one and two of Arcane show that, if nothing else, the creative team behind this series has earned our trust and respect and has validated our patience in their product. So whatever it is that they are brewing up in their nerdy little workshop, I will be ready for it. I am sure that you will too.
