I, like thousands of others, am obsessed with Arcane Season 2. As a fan of the first season, I couldn’t wait to sit down and watch the first act to get an update on the misadventures of Jinx, Vi, and the gang. I thought this drama would attract me deeply, but what I didn’t expect was that most of my expectations came not from the core plot, but from the little stings the writers set at the end of each episode.
(This article contains spoilers for Arcane Season 2, Chapter 1)
It’s no secret that cliffhangers are hard to pull off. The art of giving fans clues to keep them guessing and excited is difficult, and it’s a dangerous balancing act between making things too vague and giving away the game. That said, I firmly believe that the showrunners and the rest of the narrative team have managed to straddle this tightrope successfully. For that, they deserve a rose.
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It says a lot that despite the compelling main story in the first act, my attention was focused on these small moments. Forget Jinx, what the hell is Singed up to? Heading into the snowy wilderness for some wacky adventures, throwing gas grenades at dark wolves and apparently giving yourself a blood transfusion. It’s as far removed from the core plot as possible, with a bizarre escapade taking place off-screen while Caitlin and Vi become romantic and her black ops commandos are fueling the place, but it hints at the unseen Danger.
It was important that it didn’t distract from the main plot, and it didn’t. You can build walls around the first act and it will still stand out as a single story. A story about how loss can lead people to do bad things, an old story. One might say that setting the issue outside of this arc distracts from the overall arc narrative – I totally disagree. If Singed showed up for the first time at the beginning of the second act, it would have seemed rushed. Not to mention it would raise questions about what the lad was doing throughout the first act and send Singed’s love interest into a tailspin. With that, the second act is ready to go. Setup is complete. Now all that’s left is the payoff, as this established and very tantalizing subplot conflicts with the main narrative.
It’s just good planning and good story structure. We fans around the league already knew what Singed was brewing, but for those who didn’t know the context, it became a big mystery in a season that seemed happy enough to keep them in front of us as viewers. There’s just enough of a tease lurking around the unresolved confrontation that ends the bill. We know trouble is coming, and we know who the big players are, but where Singed stands in all this remains unclear. A wildcard story point, one that throws stones at what many expected to happen next.
All in all, I’m sitting here counting down the days until Act Two. Yes, I’m interested to see what’s going to happen with the main protagonists, the political push and pull, and how the relationships between the cast will be formed and broken. But I also have high expectations for the new mysteries that will be introduced to us. Arcana Season 2 has already shown that there are many layers to Piltover and Zaun that we don’t know about, and the team is slowly uncovering those layers, ultimately adding a deeper, richer world to explore. I’m locked in
Arcane Season 2 will be released on Netflix on November 16th, and Season 3 will be released on November 23rd. If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check it out! It turned out to be a very expensive gig so hopefully it will more than make up for the cost! Maybe a blue light will help.
