‘Arcane’ Showrunner Christian Linke on Parallel Universes and the Netflix Series’ Finale
[Editor’s note: the following article contains spoilers for “Arcane” Season 2.]
The final three-episode arc of “Arcane” Season 2 is just as bold, experimental, and fiercely character-driven as the rest of the Netflix animated series, in no small part because it reflects the show’s construction. Showrunner Christian Linke and the rest of the writing team based with Riot Games were constantly opening hexgates (and/or Zoom calls) with the directors and animators at Fortiche Studios to amp up the visual expression of the emotional journeys.
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A key example is the first episode of this last arc, “Pretend Like It’s The First Time.” It transports Ekko (Reed Shannon) into a parallel universe where the undercity of Zaun gets to look more utopian, like its sister city of Piltover, and where many of the characters we’ve lost are still around, and where Vi’s sister Powder has never become Jinx (Ella Purnell). And it arose out of Fortiche wanting to have an episode that would live on its own — which the writing team felt would suit whatever experience Ekko (Reed Shannon) and Heimerdinger (Mick Wingert) have when they travel to Powder’s Zaun.
“So we said, ‘OK, cool, let’s take a minute and explore this idea and see if we can make it work.’ That happened pretty early on when we started developing Season 2,” Linke told IndieWire. “They get inspired and they suggest things and we want to create the space for them to really have fun. [The writers] really try to think about the integrity of the story and the character stuff, and then it’s really about unlocking the artists.”
Part of unlocking the artists is making sure the characters make big choices in situations that are engineered to really pull them in multiple directions — and that the consequences of their actions don’t necessarily need to line up logically or morally but puts them in a new situation where they have to make a really big, hard choice.
A prime example is Jinx, who begins Season 2 adrift and done with the destructive mayhem that saw Piltover get wrecked. Her events in Arc 1 lead her to find the young Zaunite Isha (Lucy Lowe), “and now she has this little bubble of a world with Isha, like, ‘Maybe this can be my happy place. Maybe I don’t always need to become the villain,’” Linke said. “For the first time, she’s the big sister.”
But as with any relationship, Jinx doesn’t just get to have a comfy bubbly where she and Isha play mutant bug wrestling for fun. No one can fully have another person as a toy to do exactly what they need them to do and no more — much as Ambessa (Ellen Thomas) and Viktor (Harry Lloyd) try to evolve his followers into such a state. Isha believes the mythmaking about Jinx as a hero of the undercity and believes in Jinx to save Zaun. Why wouldn’t she, when she saved Isha? “It takes Isha’s guts — she idolizes Jinx so much and she resembled some of [the innocence Jinx had], and she’s like, ‘Hey, you don’t get to hide. This is what you need to do,’” Linke said.
So Jinx reaches out and tries to save her adoptive father, Vander (JB Blanc), and reconcile with her sister Vi (Hailee Steinfeld). She fails at the former, succeeds at the latter, and Isha dies in the battle for both. Then Episode 7 provides a little balm for that heartache — the reassurance that somewhere, somewhen there’s a version of Powder who is alive and at relative peace, a beautiful synthesis of Isha, Jinx, and Vi.
Episode 8 and Episode 9 pull Jinx between the extremes of wanting to kill herself and stepping up to save Piltover and give both significant stylistic weight — with the animation dissolving into chaotic, sketchy line art in Jinx’s despair, with Ekko interrupting Jinx again and again (the joys of time-travel), and with the joyously colorful graffiti imposed on their final, spectacular entrance into the battle between Ambessa’s and Piltover’s forces.
“You have that headline and then from there you go into, ‘OK, so what are the scenes? What do you do with this? What is happening?’ And so that’s where you work together with the storyboarders and Fortiche to say, ‘OK, what is this?’” Linke said. “The line work stuff, that’s Fortiche.”
But in Episode 9, it’s Linke and fellow writer Alex Yee who provide the superstructure that the scenes are all built upon. Jinx’s ultimate sacrifice, saving Vi at the cost of her and Vander but promising that she’s “Always with ya, sis,” is something that arose organically in those early discussions about the end of the series.
“One of the harder things about this kind of work is that — you know, ‘Arcane’ was the first project we’ve done of something like this, so when we started looking into [television writing], you’re looking for the golden formula. How do you craft seasons? How can you plan seasons? And quickly, the answer from every showrunner and every creator we talked to is, ‘No. You can’t. It’s too organic of an approach. When you build a story, it always kind of goes its own way,'” Linke said.
Jinx’s ultimate choice is the sum of all her choices, of all her lucky and bad breaks, and also of the constant love and the fear that has motivated her throughout “Arcane.” Otherwise, Fortiche wouldn’t have put some streaks of pink in her hair for the final battle, a nice visual nod to the person she becomes in every universe. It’s heartbreaking and heroic, but Linke and the writing team pulled the trigger on it because it feels like a true expression of the character.
“There’s an economy to animation [writing] that’s never really easy, and at the core, it is always about relationships and choices,” Linke said. “We always like to have bold choices from our characters and also have consequences feel like, you know, sometimes they’re satisfying, sometimes they’re not because life is not this perfectly constructed system of things where there’s always a gain to every cost.”
It’s an important distinction that writers can keep in mind, especially now, to make stories like “Arcane” feel as meaningful as they do.
The joy of expanding the original story of “Arcane” into two full seasons has been, for Linke, in getting to go deeper on the characters and have those ultimate choices feel even more earned. The final confrontation between Caitlyn (Katie Leung), Ambessa, and Mel (Toks Olagundoye) is just as much a product of the organic chain of events of the series — what all three women have learned from each other, want from each other, and want to destroy in themselves — as Jinx’s sacrifice.
“The moment between Caitlyn and Mel and Ambessa, I think, is really fucking special and cool. Caitlyn is such a badass. I cannot get over how she has transformed into this super cool character, and I’m really happy about that,” Linke said.
But the impact of Jinx’s story — and of Powder’s — is already being felt. Linke can’t get over the fact that the musical track “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” from Jinx and Powder’s dance in Episode 7 has shot up to the top of Spotify worldwide. “It’s like next to Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar. It’s so cool to see one of our songs next to these titans,” Linke said. “It’s a very special episode that’s close to everyone’s heart.”
It is for the audience, too, because the writing team and Fortiche brought Jinx so close to our hearts. Her story is over. Long live “Arcane.”
“Arcane” is now streaming on Netflix.
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