Arcane: In the Face of A New Age
Written by Cetta (Kru’22)
Would you resist perfection given mercifully by the hands of a God?
This seems to be the question frequently asked throughout season two of Arcane, a beautifully animated show with a story covering themes of class, humanity, and oppression backed by an amazing soundtrack that further enhances the viewing experience. If you’re still reading this and haven’t watched the show then what are you doing?
What makes Arcane such a compelling show is its characters. This show has managed to blend and find the balance between character-driven and plot-driven storytelling so well, but at the end of the day it is the characters that we love, get attached to, and make fan art of. Every character in Arcane serves a purpose in the story, with significant meaning and impact, no matter how small the role. Beside characters, the relationships between these characters are created with so much heart that makes us, as viewers, feel some kind of connection with them, touching our hearts and moving us by their interactions on screen.
But back to the question at hand, is it wrong to embrace one’s imperfections when faced with a greater opportunity? The story between two characters, Jayce and Viktor delves deep into the complexities of humanity and how ideologies clash in the face of progress, and this is how their stories intertwine within the fabric of the cosmos that is the Arcane world.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
BOYS OF PROGRESS
Being Piltover’s golden boy, Jayce believes that arcane is the future, bringing the era of magic to the people. His ambition comes from a childhood experience where a mysterious herald saved him and his mother through magic, forever imprinting him that miracles do exist, that they can be harnessed to save his loved ones only if he’s smart enough to know how. Though being a celebrated figure in Piltover, Jayce is still gullible and impressionable. Throughout his character arc, Jayce had gone through numerous experiences and environments, constantly shaping and changing his views concerning the use of Hextech, making him struggle to make the right choices. He sees Hextech as a tool that can improve lives but he lacks the maturity to foresee the future.
In contrast, growing up in the streets of the undercity, Viktor had witnessed the horrors that lurked beneath Zaun. Limited by his own body, he believes that Hextech is a power that is urgent and necessary for change, improving mortality for the people in need, since he is also one himself. Viktor later becomes fixated with improving Hextech, taking even more risks into unknown territories in order to achieve his goal. Viktor is focused and single-minded, favoring individuality on his views for Hextech’s use, contrasting Jayce’s collectivism. Viktor’s cause would later become a dangerous obsession towards the idea of perfection, curing the weaknesses of the unfortunate like him, and getting corrupted with Hexcore in the process. Jayce and Viktor are two sides of the same coin, separated by their upbringings. Though they both share the same dream and ambition, Jayce is always chasing for the future while constantly learning new things along the way, while Viktor is always chasing after the future, trying to catch up on the world, while battling his mortality every day.
GLORIOUS EVOLUTION
In the Arcane world, Hextech and Shimmer act as catalyst devices, the tools necessary in the advance for change. Throughout the series, multiple characters are cornered into making impossible decisions, forcing them to act against their nature inevitably. Viktor, in his journey to achieve perfection, takes Shimmer to enhance his physical abilities in order to hold back against his high risk experiments, mutating the Hexcore with Shimmer, and accidentally killing an innocent in the process, a sacrifice for the greater beyond. Witnessing the threat that it would cause, Viktor makes a plea to Jayce to destroy the Hexcore. However, when Viktor got hit by the attack at the end of season one, Jayce couldn’t bear to let his friend die, using the Hexcore to resurrect him, and binding them as one in the act. What later emerges is no longer the Viktor we know. Sure, his voice and face are the same, but his body and mind are now alien.
One with the Hexcore, Viktor takes on the form of an unnatural robot-like body, experimenting with his newfound abilities to cure imperfections to end senseless suffering for the ones in need. Even though what Viktor is and what he is capable of now can only be classified as otherworldly, his motivation to help humanity still remains. It is almost naive in a way that a higher being such as himself, some even calling him the messiah, chooses to preserve individuality and humanity over succeeding nature.
Between all the themes that are ingrained in the writing of this series, Arcane has a strong sense of philosophical undertones. Take Plato’s allegory of the cave for example, Plato explains that it begins with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they’ve known nothing else. Plato posits that one prisoner could become free. He finally sees the fire and realizes the shadows are fake. This prisoner could escape from the cave and discover there is a whole new world outside they were previously unaware of. This prisoner would believe the outside world is so much more real than that in the cave. He would try to return to free the other prisoners. Upon his return, he is blinded because his eyes are not accustomed to actual sunlight. The chained prisoners would see this blindness and believe they will be harmed if they try to leave the cave.
The sun in this allegory is the arcane. The people of Piltover are driven to pursue greatness using magic, striving to understand and harness the higher levels of what could be accomplished. Jayce and Viktor, the only two who have made contact with the arcane are the prisoners who set themselves free from the cave, with sunlight shining down their faces. When Jayce touches the arcane, he is transported into a deserted realm where the future is promised, a desolate wasteland void of humanity. He is scarred and is forced to reflect back on his past actions, and that is where he realized that humanity is already perfect for all its flaws, finding beauty in imperfections because that is what has made people who they are, mortality itself being the thing that drives us to live to the fullest. He finally finds the importance of preserving what we have through losing everything in the alternate realm. While Viktor, touching the arcane and completing his final glorious evolution, loses his humanity in the process, transforming into a supernatural being known as the Herald, his body purged of any human remains. Viktor gets out of the cave and finally sees the truth of the world, seeing that individuality no longer matters, including the cruelty, injustice, and senseless suffering that it caused. Through his evolution, Viktor gains a higher sense of importance beyond human comprehension.
Jayce and Viktor had the sun shine down on them but have two completely different perspectives and understanding. If the beginning of the series pushes the narrative that Jayce wants to achieve the greater good using Hextech while Viktor wants to improve the current living conditions, it is now completely switched after touching the arcane. Jayce desires to take care of what’s already there, while Viktor sees humanity’s contradiction, desires to renew humanity as a whole. As Viktor had said, “But emotion clashes with reason.” It’s an age old debate between emotion that exists in the present, Jayce finding gratification of the world he has now while he was stuck in the other realm, And reason that is future oriented, Viktor wanting to evolve humanity to perfection through finding flaws in the current world.
IN EVERY UNIVERSE
“What am I?”
“You’re alive!”
Since season one, Jayce and Viktor had already established themselves as partners, sharing dreams, ambitions, and hope for the future. The relationship between both of them can’t only be defined as friends, family, or even lovers. Jayce and Viktor simply cared for each other, seeing the other as equals even when their paths diverged. Even acting as the Herald, Viktor would relentlessly remind Jayce that they are partners, sharing his vision of the perfect future with him until the very last moment.
Jayce didn’t care at all how much Viktor had changed after he was resurrected, all that matters is that Viktor is alive. The first thing that he said after seeing Viktor’s transformation was “You’re alive!”, and didn’t even spare a second glance at his partner’s new body. Jayce would break the boundaries and fundamental laws of nature if it means giving Viktor a second chance at survival, in whatever form that may take. Jayce has become Viktor’s savior, and in return, Viktor now looks like the Herald that saved him.
“In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this.”
Both of these characters are each other’s saviors, taking the role of the other’s beacon of light of hope in times of need, saving each other’s lives multiple times since the beginning of the series. Viktor has spent lifetimes searching every universe, and in every single one, Jayce is the only one capable of saving him. Viktor realised Jayce has to be the one he invented Hextech with. He went back to Jayce’s childhood and gave him hope, ambition, and a sign, a path to lead Jayce to him and the creation of Hextech so that Jayce would always be the one who’d be with Viktor when he reached the point where everything falls apart.
Jayce and Viktor’s destinies have been and forever will be intertwined. Only Jayce can make Viktor understand his faults. It is also fitting that in the end, it was affection that held them together. As Jayce had said, “I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world. Now, all I want is my partner back.” This soulmate-like bond between the two of them is what makes it possible to keep the good in their hearts. It’s the trust that you will always have someone who would love and accept you for who you are, instead of despite. It’s about the good in our hearts that we should never lose, instead of the greater good we should have.
Jayce and Viktor’s story covers the recurrent idea of love being the one most powerful thing that triumphs fate, but the writers of Arcane took so many nuanced steps to deliver an even more satisfactory pay off, successfully separating the theme from the wearisome cliché that would just end up being cheesy if it were not for the writing. Arcane itself is a masterclass on bringing philosophical topics through art and animation and remains an unrivalled piece of media when it comes to it. Whether it be through its beloved characters that undergo greek-shakespearean tragedies or its animation that makes us feel like we’re watching a living, breathing mural every second.
