Arcane season 2 had some pretty big character deaths, to put it lightly, and it turns out that literally anyone could have been on the chopping block.
Very big spoilers ahead for Arcane, meaning you shouldn’t read this one if you’re not caught up yet!
As messy as Arcane was (and as spoiled as it was for me thanks to “the algorithm”), there were still some pretty emotional beats that came from some big character deaths. Sometimes in adaptations of established IP, doing something like killing off a character can be completely off limits as to not tarnish, but in a recent interview with GamesRadar, Arcane writer Amanda Overtton shared that Riot was happy with her sending anyone she wanted to the next life. “Riot embraced whatever story we wanted to tell with any of the characters,” Overtton said.
“We were like ‘Can we kill Jayce and Viktor?’ ‘Yes’. There were no limits to what we could do to make a good story, which was, in my opinion, absolutely the right choice for them to do, because we are adapting a game into a different medium, into television, and you want to be able to be free to make that version the best it can possibly be.” Sure, the pacing in this season might have been a little off, and the team behind Arcane is certainly aware of that fact, but in an era where brands love to meticulously control every aspect of their content, it’s nice to see some creatives being able to do what they want for a change.
“That support from [Riot’s] side really allowed us to make characters like this – complicated, interesting, dark, vulnerable – that had fates that we needed to decide what would be the most satisfying for the show, and not worry about what may or may not be interesting for a different medium,” Overtton went on to explain.
It’s interesting to note that in another interview with Overtton from GamesRadar, the writer shared that the show’s final scenes had essentially been written six years ago. “That Vi-Jinx scene, the very last scene between them, is nearly the same as when we wrote it six years ago. We always kind of knew where we were going. And we knew the kind of moments that were important to us to show, and I think that’s the joy of Arcane – it’s really the kind of story that can expand the more you watch it, because it’s so densely layered, there is so much in there.”
You mean Overtton and co knew how much heartbreak we’d all go through and didn’t warn us? For shame! Well, at least we can look forward to more shows that’ll probably be just as heartbreaking. I guess.
