Arcane: League of Legends: Season 2, Act 1 - Review

Arcane League of Legends is finally here three years after the first season debuted which means between this show and stranger things Netflix's strategy is obviously not to meet fan expectations but just to wait for us all to slowly die between Seasons this episode's brought to you by Mando go to shop m.com and use promo code Dan for a special offer and stay tuned after the video for more info hello everybody I'm Dan Merl and welcome to my review for the first three episodes of season two of Arcane League of Legends the first season as I

mentioned came out back in 2021 so this has been a very long awaited second season I was late to the party on season one I got it recommended to me from people that saw it so I'm happy that I can kind of be at the front of the line this time to see how the show is going to wrap out this is the second season and the final season for the show now one thing I've not done the last three years is to really dive into the League of Legends mythology so I'm sure that there

are a lot of fans of the games and all the other Associated media that are way ahead of me on a lot of the things that I'll talk about in the review but I think that that's all right and I actually think that that's one of the reasons that this is a very good adaptation of the show or of this mythology to a different medium because the fans the pre-existing fans that know all of the lore Etc can be excited about it on one level and then the people like me that are just watching watching

the show itself can also be invested and excited and not lost on another level and that's something the show's done very well from the very beginning one thing that has not changed since season 1 is the look of this show it is jaw-droppingly beautiful and it shows what's possible in animation or any format with the proper time and money given to the creators reports put the price tag for Riot to produce season 1 and season 2 of Arcane at $250 million which I believe would make it the most expensive animated series of all time but

you can see that money on the screen this looks like a show that's very expensive unlike some other very very expensive IP shows that are on various different streaming networks like say I don't know Amazon Prime and when you compare the price tag $250 million to the price tag of your average Pixar film which comes in around2 200 million just a little bit more for 18 episodes of streaming television versus one two-hour movie isn't so bad when you look at it in that context often times I'll wait until the season is over to do reviews

but because we're getting these in little three episode batches and it's on such a compressed time frame and it's the last season of the show I thought I'd try it out doing it batch by batch so we're going to talk about the first three episodes and if you're watching this video and you're not into Arcane League of Legends yet and you want to know basically what the show's about I'll give you a short primer I know that a lot of people are watching this and already know but we do want to bring new people into

the fold basically Arcane League of Legends is about two sisters VI and Jinx who find themselves on opposite sides of a war between the affluent city of piltover and the downtrodden por city of Z which is located just across the river and where many of the residents have been driven to live underground piltover's figured out how to use hextech which can power machines and weapons using Arcane magic which is powerful but unstable this only widens the feud with zhan where the streets are dominated by a substance called Shimmer which is both a powerful drug and

able to turn people into fearsome monster like creatures and that's the basic premise of the show there's a lot more to it a lot of political Intrigue Etc so if you haven't seen it and you're interested or you're on the fence go watch the show now uh you can probably catch up by the time we get to the last episodes which air in a couple weeks because I don't think you're going to regret it if you're intimidated by the fact that it's League of Legends and you don't know anything about League of Legends that's where

I was in season 1 don't worry about that go check out the show come back and watch all of the reviews that I've done for Arcane but if you are a fan of Arcane you have seen the show and you've seen the first three episodes then let's dive into it now I am going to start talking spoilers from this point on so if you haven't seen those episodes and you don't know what's going to happen this is your last chance before we get into spoilers about episodes 1 through three if you've already seen them or

you don't care stay tuned but this is your last spoiler warning right now so the major Cliffhanger of season 1 was who would survive the missile that Jinx shot at the council chambers over in pilt over and unsurprisingly the major characters were able to make it it would have been pretty ballsy to kill off all the people that we knew in that room but that's not how most TV shows work but even though most of those major characters survived I think that this season is putting them on some very interesting Journeys or a continuation of

the journey that those characters are already on Jace for examples on an interesting trajectory after inventing Weaponry last season which he swore he'd never do I thought he might emerge as a voice for peace which is kind of what he was moving towards but the attack has changed the math here and he's once again making weapons for the enforcers to try to suppress what's going on this war between the two cities I'm not sure what his role in the endgame is going to be but I like that they have drawn him as a character who

doesn't necessarily think in absolutes which is both good and bad he uses hextech for Weaponry when he believes it's for a good purpose but he still is against the use of it overall and that has helped him in some ways and hurt him in some ways it's opened him up to being a hypocrite in some people's eyes and to be a hero and a reasonable person in other people's eyes and I think that his endgame and the decisions that he makes and how they affect the overall outcome are going to be the most interesting part

about his character and they continue this season into this sort of back and forth with him about using the technology and not using the technology and the consequences that he's seen either way Victor's also in an interesting spot this poor guy just can't catch a break he was already dying then he was injured even more in the attack and now he has a fully regenerated hexcore body and can seemingly now heal other people in need maybe he is the unity of technology and good that he and Jace have been searching for this entire time and

it would be nice to think that he can have this rise it seems like a sort of a messic figure to the people of zon but if the show has been telling us and has taught us one thing it's that no use of Arcane magic comes without consequences so I worry that the pendulum's going to swing the other way on Victor at some point whatever ends up happening though I hope the guy finds some peace whether it's in this world or the next because he's had a pretty tough go of it then we have Mel

who has family drama on top of everything else that's happening her mother Essa as we know has ulterior motives and wants to use hextech to solve the problems that she has back home but this power struggle is getting even more interesting as she's now basically the power behind the power of piltover she's the scariest kind of antagonist in she is an opportunist and she can read people and she can find those openings to exploit we saw it in that third episode where she could obviously see that Caitlyn's resolve was beginning to waver and installed her

in a position where just an episode or two before it wouldn't really have made much sense to put her in and Mel is either going to have to fall in line with this or really stand up in opposition to her mother but we don't really know what's going on with Mel right now because she's been kidnapped or whisked away or whatever by this rival faction black rose which puts an interesting wrinkle into things I'm a little hesitant about introducing a secondary conflict in the piltover on storyline but it does seem like it is weighing heavily

on what is happening in that main story so I'm going to wait it out and see how it all plays out I'm not going to worry too much about overstuffing the narrative just yet because we're only a third of the way through the season of course the central conflict of the show is between Vai and Jinx and it's taken a little bit of a backseat so far because they have been establishing so much other stuff the biggest turning point I thought in the first three episodes was vice's acknowledgement directly to jinx that she no longer

sees her as her sister but of course that was immediately followed by yet another hesitation in killing Jinx and the show's gone back and forth on this conflict between the two of them so many times and I get it it's a very complex relationship but we are reaching the point where one of them or both of them are going to have to make the final determination about which side they're going to fall on and I think that we are approaching that point pretty quickly because these two characters can only waver so much as we near

the end of the show the decision for Vai to join Caitlyn's Special Band of enforcers is an interesting one I like that they formed this kind of Commando strike Squad with a very limited Mission which is now pretty much out the window but that Montage of them strategically flooding Z with gas to conduct a search for Jinx was another example of the moral gray area that these characters operate in and that also clouds their decisionmaking in key moments with Vice seemingly on her own again it seems like she's had yet another reset and has to

figure out what her next move is going to be and which direction she's going to take Jinx is going further down the rabbit hole as she wipes out her remaining opposition and continues her war against piltover I loved that new arm that she built for Seva with the sort of slot machine picking what the weapon was going to be that entire fight was pretty cool of course flooding pilt over with the very gas that Caitlyn's family tried to save Zan from is a major escalation of this conflict and I think that we spent most of

the series with Jinx on the knife's edge of the two between Jinx and Vai I think that she's the one that has pretty much set herself where she stands this is what I'm going to do this is who my enemies are and so really I think it's invise Court to decide what she's going to do about it and I know that everybody wants this Redemption Arc or a lot of people do for Jinx but I mean everything that we've seen in the story so far has has shown us that I think she's just too far

past the point point of no return almost none of it is her fault it's a tragic story but I think to do a 180° character turn at this point it would have to be really really well done I think this is going to be much more about how Vai is going to come to terms with what Jinx is than Jinx trying to come to terms and change who she is Caitlyn is proving to be an interesting character this season I thought that she was good in the first season but they really up the stakes with

her I knew that when she and VI finally shared that kiss that something not good was on the way way that's just the movie TV rules and it seems like she's finally reached her limits when it comes to VI's desire to both protect piltover and not go too far especially when it comes to jinx obviously Caitlyn's willingness to potentially kill a child in order to wipe out Jinx was too much for Vi and now Caitlyn is in charge at least entitle of piltover's forces and ambessa troops as martial law has been declared on the city

now this turn for me did feel a little bit sudden I mean when you look at it in the context of everything that's happened it makes sense I think maybe they could have used just a little bit more connective tissue but I think that there's going to be a lot more to this turn and to this Arc for her in the next episodes and that's why I say when you're reviewing a season piece by piece either Episode by episode or chunk by chunk I'm really slow to kind of pass down a determination or a final

judgment on anything because sometimes things may seem set up in a bit of a flimsy way but they end up getting paid off or Justified later on down the road and and that's how I feel about some of the stuff in this season I don't love everything they've done so far but we're so open-ended at this point that I'm going to keep an open mind to see how they decide to play everything out one thing that I'm really interested to see this season is what happens with the Arcane magic that is becoming increasingly unstable heimerdinger's

warnings of unforeseen consequences are coming true and we're now getting wild runes and Magic runamuk I like how they tied together the stories of piltover and Zan by having Jace build that fallout shelter underground saying like well yeah I'm protecting the city and Ekko rightfully said well sure you protected your city but now all of this magic is infiltrating my city and where I live and Jay saying like oh well it's not near anything he's like well it's near what we need it's a great example of a character who even though we're supposed to like

that character and even though they really do I think that jce does want the best for all involved he still took actions through his ignorance or just not thinking that hurt the people that lived over in Zan and it and it sort of underscores one of the whole themes of the show which is that even the best of the people in the piltover area really have no true consideration for the true Fallout or Consequences of what they're doing and I like that they added that little bit into the show the animation on the sequence where

the Arcane started to glitch and cause reality to warp I thought was really well done and I think this is just the beginning of all the threats we've talked about I think we've only seen a hint of what's to come there and speaking of what's to come singed the crazy scientist behind Shimmer and maybe the person who set all of this in motion indirectly is up to something each episode ended with another step in his latest experiment which seems to involve some kind of a wolf hybrid monster now I'm sure that the League of Legends

fans are probably yelling at the screen uh telling me what it is because this does feel like something that's probably been established uh in the Games Etc uh but again as a viewer I'm intrigued because I don't know exactly what's going to happen here the one thing that we do know is that if singed do working on something bad things usually tend to happen and whatever this monster is obviously part wolf it looked like it was maybe part human and I'm sure there are fan theories running around about do we know who that human is

or who that human might be uh this is another thing like the Arcane magic kind of going crazy that is going to drop in these next two acts that we really haven't seen a whole lot of as far as everything that's been set up so far overall I thought this was a solid start to season 2 story-wise they're doing a lot and I think the show's lost a little of the focus that we saw in season 1 but that's common when you're expanding mythology like this what's most important is the journey and where it takes

its characters across the whole season and I think the major conflicts like ambessa and the Black Rose VI and Jinx the conflict between the two cities what's going on with the Arcane these are all stories that interest me that I want to see what happens next I may have issues here and there with how they've set it up so far but a lot of that can be forgiven if they can blend everything together and really deliver something special at the end of the season this is a show at one point I think that was supposed

to go for Five Seasons and eventually Riot said you know let's just do it in two and I and I respect that they had huge ambition and huge plans as a company to bring us a lot more entertainment and it seems like they have recognized that there are limitations and I appreciate that they looked at the show which is their Flagship show and said you know instead of stretching this out into multiple Seasons that we don't really have a plan for we don't know if we're going to be able to deliver the resources for let's

do two really good Seasons hopefully that have all of the resources we can put behind it into them and deliver overall a show that might be shorter but that we think is better not a lot of people think that way and I appreciate that it seems like that was their motivation with Arcane from an animation standpoint this is still one of the most beautiful animated shows I've ever seen animated things I've ever seen such care obviously goes into every frame and these first three episodes delivered so many great sequences especially the fights and the montages

the visual storytelling on display here is superb and just on that level putting aside the story I think that Arcane is a show that's going to Merit rewatching multiple times even after it wraps up so I'm hooked back in and excited for the rest of season 2 what about you were there some things you liked were there some other things you didn't like so much are you a League of Legends fan who has their own set of theories about what's going on let me know down in the comments below and before we go I'm want

to thank the sponsor for this review this episode's brought to you by Mando the temperatures may be cooling down but let's be honest that doesn't mean you stop sweating and the last thing you need to worry about is is whether the crisp smell of fall is being corrupted by your own Autumn Aroma that's why I like having Mando around all year long no matter what you've got going on Mando is there to make sure you smell as crisp as a freshly fallen Leaf Mando is a whole body deodorant made specifically to be used anywhere and

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fans of the show new customers get $5 off a starter pack with my exclusive code that equates to over 40% off of your starter pack use code Dan at shop.com that's s h o p m n o.com and don't forget to please support the show and tell them that I sent you smell fresher stay dryer and boost your confidence from head to toe with Mando thanks to Mando for sponsoring this review and thank you for watching be sure to stay tuned right here for more movie news reviews box office and more tomorrow I'm planning to

be right back here with a review of season 1 of the penguin which wraps up its first season tonight and then on Tuesday we'll have charts with Dan and a whole bunch of reviews and story as we get into the holiday season as always thank you so much for watching stay safe and I'll see you next time bye [Applause] [Music]