By 
Who’d have thought the ultimate solution to the conflict in Arcane would come from a phantom Silco, existing only in Jinx’s mind?
“We build our own prisons, bars forged of oaths, codes, commitments, walls of self-doubt, and accepted limitation,” the spirit of the former crime boss tells his adopted daughter as she wallows in a literal jail. “We inhabit these cells, these identities, and call them us. I thought I could break free by eliminating those I deemed my jailors. But, Jinx, I think the cycle only ends when you find the will to walk away.”
Jinx tells her mentor, “I’m done running in circles,” and seeks to solve the problem by taking herself out of the equation. Thankfully, Ekko with his new Zero Drive keeps her from blowing herself up, but it turns out her death wouldn’t have been enough to end the killing anyway. Another cycle needed to break in order for Arcane’s story to resolve itself: the one that reaches all the way back to Jayce’s youth shown in the series premiere.
It seems that Viktor, just before his ultimate ascension, wasn’t wrong when he told Jayce, “This chain of events started with you. In my confusion I was unable to reconcile this.” While Viktor concluded that Jayce’s hextech meant the Glorious Evolution was destined to be, it actually also turned out to be the instrument of its undoing. It was a cycle that began when an older, more mage-like Viktor went back in time and gave young Jayce, freezing in the snow with his mother, a blue rune-inscribed shard.
This single act was the catalyst for both Jayce’s research and Viktor’s ascension, but after many attempts with different runes over who-knows-how-many timelines, future Viktor also provided the means for his misguided younger self to “walk away” from the cycle that only led to “fields of dreamless solitude,” a future of loneliness where the hive mind of humanity he created left him with no companions in life.
As Viktor put it: “There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit.” His Glorious Evolution meant that there was no human suffering anymore but also no striving, no struggling, no triumph over adversity. But the only way he could stop his younger self from pursuing perfection was by showing Jayce the wasteland that resulted from his partner’s hubris, awakening him to the dangers of blind ambition and progress.
Ironically (or perhaps fortuitously), one of the failed timelines turned out to be a necessary ingredient in persuading Viktor to “walk away,” a version of history in which he never had access to hextech in the first place. This is the timeline that Ekko and Heimerdinger visited, one in which, because Vi died during the heist depicted in the Arcane premiere, Powder never did anything with the stolen hextech prototype gems, and Jayce likely never made any brilliant breakthroughs for Piltover or for his ailing friend Viktor.
However, Ekko’s visit to that more peaceful Zaun gave him more than simply the means to stop Jinx from killing herself, not to mention a heartwarming chance to meet a more loving version of his childhood friend, Powder. The Zero Drive also provided the paradoxical power of the Anomaly that was needed to crack Viktor’s mask and allow him to see the future that was in store for Runeterra if he took away everyone’s free will.
In that sense, Ekko is the real hero of Arcane, both in the defeat of Viktor and in the uniting of Piltover and Zaun, the latter under the banner of a more resolved Jinx. And in the end, Jinx was able to “walk away” from her own cycle the way she wanted to, but with a lot more reconciliation and meaning behind her sacrifice. It’s like Ekko said, even way back in the season 2 trailer, “Sometimes taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind.”
Sure, there’s Mel and her newfound mage powers along with Caitlyn’s successful disarming of Ambessa that brought down the forces of Noxus, too, but the Arcane finale seems to indicate that at least one of those stories will continue into the next League of Legends adaptation. Never mind the glimpses of Singe’s clockwork daughter, Orianna, or the three-eyed raven that portends the arrival of League of Legends hero, Swain, the ruthless Noxian tactician!
But all of that, perhaps, is reserved for the next cycle.
The post Arcane Season 2 Ending Explained: Breaking the Cycle appeared first on Den of Geek.
