It is December 2024, I’ve recently watched Arcane (first TV series for me in years), and I really need to rant about it. If you didn’t watch it — please don’t. Period, now you can close this tab.

Arcane consists of two seasons, first one is very promising, while scenario for the second doesn’t meet any reasonable quality bar.

Let’s go over most infuriating plot holes.

Jinx (Powder)

First season: Jinx is death from above (and below), a master of melee, a perfect shooter, a grandmaster of stealth,
fearlessly scheming attacks of all sorts to steal key figures and artifacts from both the undercity and upper city, kills a dozen enforcers in a blink of an eye, has an infinite supply of bombs and devices, is a perfect engineer, and a more advanced scientist than all the researchers in upper city together.

Second season: Jinx can’t win a single fight (except maybe that last one), all devices and skills have disappeared. Nobody suspects Jinx of killing Silco, while she’s the most likely one to do it. Alliance of Jinx and Sevika made zero sense from both sides (Sevika got her previous mechanical arm without Jinx).

Ashi

Ashi’s appearance is laughable – 3 gorillas with weapons chasing a kid who can’t even speak? Ashi’s self-sacrifice made no sense and had no effect (for anyone except Jinx), was just smashed into plot to artificially derail Jinx.

Vi (Violet)

First season: shows some planning, responsibility, and agility. Punches faces a lot.
Second season: punches faces.

Vi is dumb and annoying. She failed as a daughter, sister, and even as an enforcer. Scriptwriters use Vi as an excuse why conflicts appear again and again, or why another character would die.

Positive spin in the second part is alternative branch where Vi died and things go great.

Another cool moment is Vi becoming a pit fighter — that’s where plot should’ve forgotten her existence. Sadly, Vi is the one lived to tell the story.

Viktor

The last minutes of series completely scramble Victor’s arc.

If Victor can travel in time (apparent from the ending), why wouldn’t he leave a message for himself? If he succeeded in his ‘final evolution’, why everything in that universe is destroyed? That’s nonsense.

If ‘final evolution’ is ‘dreamless solitude’, maybe one can stop before ‘converting’ everyone? Viktor’s initial success is a clear proof of that. Why Victor didn’t start with jumping over hexgates first? Why not starting experiments with a simpler/smaller world?

What’s the point of taking Vander to attack? (aside from ‘scenarist wants ending with Jinx+Vi+Vander’)

Joyce

In the final Viktor told Jayce ‘you can show me this’, not ‘get this hammer and kill me first, I’ll get mad and start conquest, then we should discuss matters more sanely’. Joyce’s behavior after return makes little sense. Minor question: how comes Joyce got out of massacre after Ashi’s self-sacrifice? Where Joyce been while everyone was planning for attack/defense?

Shimmer

Some are ‘sick/infected’ with shimmer, and some just use it without consequences (like Sevika). Why upper city did not use shimmer during defense?

Mel Medarda

Is Mel a part of Black Rose after all? If so, why Rose killed her right hand Elora? And why would they kidnap Mel? If Mel is good at finding/empowering talents (we saw that in the first chapter), why she doesn’t use this power afterward, relying purely on magic?

Ambessa Medarda

Whole Ambessa’s storyline in fked up to unbearable levels.

Runes are all that protected her and nobody could take it off? Really? Why wouldn’t Rose attack her soldiers one-by-one? Why runes are just hanging there for everyone to see? Why Ambessa had problems with black rose? What’s the story with brother? Why she was not confused when Mel disappeared?

How comes that Ambessa survived Vi’s trap? Why Vi survived it too? That whole part was a complete mess. Did Ambessa want to develop hextech into a more powerful weapon? Then she should’ve appointed anyone but Caitlyn, but she appointed Caitlyn — who for sure will avoid any big conflicts. How comes? Why Mel claims that Ambessa “is not Medarda”?

Final antagonist without a consistent storyline — worse than no ending at all.

Caitlyn

Caitlyn’s romances are absurd. Romance with Maddie comes out of the blue, Maddie’s betrayal also comes unexplained. Why no help was asked from hexgate-connected worlds? If trade center (Piltover) is under attack, there is strong economic incentive to bring external forces to protect it.

Commander Caitlyn guards the camp while catching Vi? Not what commanders do.

Ekko

Why returning back from the world where everything is ok? If returning, why not taking several well-raised folks with you? (specially those who died in your reality?) Knowing how things could be, they would be in best position to fix undercity?

Time machine (even for 4 seconds) is a powerful tool in discussions, why not using it even more?

Honorable mentions from the first chapter:

  • Vander’s line was ok (until he reappeared as werewolf)
  • Enforcers’s stories (Grayson, Marcus) were consistent.
  • Silco — storyline of the second part makes it sound like Silco would care about Vi, but it was the opposite in the first season. When considering just first season, his story is consistent, and has some meaningful turns — he has to run underground, and faces both external and internal pressure that he deals with in his ways.
  • Council — sometimes funny, controllable, over-reacting, sometimes full of under-the-rug fighting and ultimatly deciding on Zion’s independence. Multiple interesting parts there.
  • Second chapter has some nice parts with Ekko and time travels.

In total, scenario of the second season hardly contains any interesting turns, and ruins some nice arcs that could be built. I’ve intentionally ignored broad questions like “why nobody uses runes if they are powerful” and “if there are hoverbards, why building/blocking bridges at all?”, focusing more on character development.

Animation of the second part is impressive, I believe animators had a lot of fun with shuffling visual styles. However animation is a wrapper and medium for content; content left me deeply unsatisfied, and wrappers can’t change that.

Are there ways to fix this?

A number of plot holes can be patched easily:

  • remove Ashi, replace with some pet
  • Sevika — comes to realize she needs a symbol for union; some leaders reasonably want to trade Jinx for better positions for themselves with upper city; afraid that it is so easy to set members against each other, starts fighting for Jinx;
    then comes to realization that Jinx could be a symbol, and uses it.
  • redo fight Sevika/Caitlyn/Vi/Jinx — Vi wins Jinx, Sevika wins Caitlyn; Vi releases Jinx in exchange for Caitlyn, everyone is disappointed in each other.
  • forget Vi in pit-fighting until the end where sisters “reunite”, (and maybe save commander cupcake for some epic moments, and maybe die for tragic moments).
  • move appearance of Joyce till the very end — he discharges gates, and after some fighting disarms Victor by showing some artifact he and different Victor made together
  • Caitlyn’s appointment can be fixed in many ways, most appealing is council again playing under-the-rug games, with Mel winning (reveal can happen in the end)

Hard parts:

  • story with attack on Victor’s camp and Ambessa should be rewritten, Ambessa should plot this to get Victor’s help as she failed her experiments
  • give more of Ambessa’s back-story — why/where she runs from, does she want to conquer or just run; Ekko with time machine vs Ambessa — that’s a way to make her talk. World outside Piltover should have some names and story or shouldn’t participate at all.
  • would be cool to have more of ‘alternative worlds’ — we got only two. Animators would be happy.

I’m pretty sure a much better scenario could be created with little effort, but this was not made.