Some of the most pivotal moments in the first act of Arcane Season 2 were the attack on the memorial ceremony that was being held for those councilmembers who had been killed by Jinx, the fight for power in Zaun after Silco’s death, Mel Medarda’s abduction by the Black Rose Order, and Jayce and Viktor’s breakup. In the second act of Season 2 of the show, Piltover prepared to take over Zaun, and when the Zaunites protested this decision peacefully, the soldiers of Piltover and Noxus arrested all of them and put them in jails. This prompted Singed to unleash his abomination, Warwick, which wreaked havoc in the prison. Jinx was there to rescue her new friend, Isha, and she found out that Warwick was actually Vander. This led to a melancholic family reunion, and then Vi, Jinx, and Isha set out to cure Vander with the help of Viktor’s newfound Hex powers. While Heimerdinger and Ekko remained absent, after being sucked into the Arcane by the wild rune, Jayce made a not-so-emphatic return and caved in Viktor’s chest so as to prevent him from furthering the Arcane’s impact on the world. This caused everyone who had been touched by Viktor, including Warwick, to wig out. To avoid getting obliterated by a crazy Warwick, Isha stopped the monster by setting off an explosion with the help of Vi’s gemstones. Now, let’s talk about the lead-up to the show’s explosive finale (which I’ve talked about in detail in a separate article) and how the 7th and 8th episodes build on the events of the first 2 acts of Arcane Season 2.
Spoiler Alert
Episode 7: Heimerdinger Is Dead
Episode 7 of Arcane Season 2 was centered around Jayce, Ekko, and Heimerdinger’s journey through two different alternative realities. After being sucked in by the wild rune, Ekko and Heimerdinger ended up in a reality where Vi was dead. Apparently, the Ekko that belonged to this alternate reality had given Vi, Powder, Claggor, and Mylo a tip about the gemstone that was in Jayce’s (the version that was in this alternate reality) apartment. The gemstone exploded and killed Vi. In the original version of these events, as far as I remember, Ekko had given the tip about Jayce’s apartment being full of valuable stuff that Vi’s team could steal and sell to make a profit. The explosion did happen when they started tinkering with the gemstone they found, but nobody died, and the rest is history. In the alternate version of these events, research and development on gemstones and Hextech were shut down after that explosion and Vi’s death. Powder, Claggor, and Mylo went on to be level-headed kids. Vander, Silco (apparently the brothers had chosen forgiveness over hatred), and Benzo were all alive and well. Most importantly, Zaun and Piltover were united. This understandably overwhelmed Ekko, but Heimerdinger (the one from Ekko’s reality) was also there, thereby allowing Ekko to share what he was actually feeling, something that he couldn’t do with the rest of his alt-reality friends.
Ekko was shocked to learn that Heimerdinger had accepted his fate and was ready to live in this alternate reality because, firstly, it was a peaceful place, and secondly, without Hextech and wild runes, there was no way for them to go back to their reality. Ekko didn’t share Heimerdinger’s opinion, and he combed the apartment where Vi had died and collected every single fragment of gemstone that he could find. Then he convinced Heimerdinger and Powder to use their technical and technological expertise to recreate the anomaly (the wild rune sphere) so that he could go back to his reality. After several permutations and combinations, the trio managed to make an incredibly small version of this anomaly that allowed Ekko to turn back time by 4 seconds. Exceeding that limit caused Heimerdinger to explode for a moment, thereby foreshadowing his death, but Ekko made him whole again with his new time reversal machine.
Heimerdinger worked on turning the small anomaly into a big one to meet Ekko’s demands, while the kid went out to party with Powder and his alt-reality friends. Before going back to the lab, Ekko confessed his romantic feelings to Powder, and she reciprocated them. Ekko was ready to go back home with Heimerdinger, who had successfully amplified the power of the anomaly, but the little guy had other plans. While bringing the juiced-up anomaly to its full potential, Heimerdinger was erased from existence. I think Heimerdinger is dead, but he could’ve been sucked into the Arcane too. Anyway, this caused a chain reaction that separated the original Ekko from the alt-reality Ekko, which meant that the original Ekko’s consciousness had entered the body of the alt-reality Ekko. Powder, while holding on to alt-reality Ekko, locked eyes with the original Ekko for a few seconds before the anomaly sent him back to his reality with his time-reversal machine.
While Ekko and Heimerdinger were sent to the utopian version of Piltover and Zaun, Jayce found himself in the dystopian version. Jayce saw a hooded figure there and started following him to whatever was left of the Hexgate tower because he probably thought he could use the gemstone or Hextech there to go back to his reality. There’s also the possibility that the thought of reality-traveling didn’t cross his mind, and he thought that the reality that he belonged to had been turned into this hellscape. Either way, Jayce started his long and arduous journey to the aforementioned tower. Now, he thought that every living human being had perished over there, but it was revealed that these zombie-robot-like things were crawling everywhere. FYI, this was teased via a flash frame in Act 2 when Jayce met Salo. And if you were wondering why Jayce had aged so much between Acts 1 and 2, well, that’s answered in this segment: he was trying to get away from these robotic creatures and fell into a deep ditch and badly hurt his leg.
Given how the only way out of the hellhole was up, Jayce started rebuilding his strength by eating the critters in the dungeon and using parts of his Hexhammer to make a brace for his injured leg (where the wound had not only started to fester organically but had also developed infected markings that looked like the patterns in the Hexgate’s core and on Viktor’s body). Eventually, he did make it out of the hole and resumed his journey to the tower. After reaching the top, Jayce found a zombified version of himself holding on to his hammer, and he realized that the Jayce that belonged to this reality had tried to stop Viktor from unleashing the Arcane on Piltover and failed. He didn’t want his Piltover to suffer from the same fate. When the hooded figure reappeared, he realized it was the mage who had given him a gemstone when he was just a kid. He felt that he had a chance to save Piltover. So he asked the mage to send him back to his reality. The mage caused the alt-reality Jayce to relinquish his hold on the hammer, which in turn activated the wild rune anomaly that had brought Jayce to this reality. Jayce promised to stop Viktor and then returned to his reality. As we saw in Act 2, Jayce fulfilled his promise by killing Viktor, but the repercussions of that action weren’t all that good.
Episode 8: Viktor Begins His Final Transformation
Episode 9 of Arcane Season 2 opened with Mel Medarda escaping the clutches of the sorceress of the Black Rose Order and unlocking some of her true potential. The sorceress said that Mel was a special kind of mage, one who could sense what the other person feels and influence their magic accordingly. Mel asked the sorceress to reveal her true face, and she kind of did it, but the sorceress’ all-black appearance didn’t satisfy Mel because she thought even that wasn’t her true image. Mel inquired about Kino, and the sorceress revealed that Ambessa had sacrificed him instead of atoning for her sins. This was later confirmed by Ambessa herself, where she said that, during her tiff with the Black Rose Order, she had to choose between Kino and Mel, and she picked the latter and allowed Kino to die. Mel realized that the sorceress was saying all this to try and recruit her into the Black Rose Order and turn her against Ambessa. The sorceress didn’t deny that accusation and said that Ambessa’s “thirst for legacy” would kill Piltover and only Mel could bring a stop to her. After that, the sorceress said a bunch of incredibly vague stuff about the Black Rose Order’s feud with Ambessa. I mean, she was vague in general too, but this part is particularly cryptic, so bear with me. The sorceress said that Kino had unearthed some secret of Ambessa. What’s that? I don’t know. Mel’s birth and her powers were apparently part of a grander scheme. What’s that? Again, I don’t know. Ambessa apparently wanted to wield Mel’s powers like a weapon. Against what and why? I have no clue. Anyway, on that note, the sorceress gave Mel a necklace and sent her on her way to Piltover to confront Ambessa. A raven followed Mel, which is allegedly Swain (it’s a reference from the games).
Speaking about Ambessa, she was seen burying the dead, while Singed connected Warwick’s lifeless body to the cocoon that Viktor’s body was in. Contrary to popular opinion, Viktor wasn’t dead yet. His consciousness was still alive somewhere in the Arcane, and he was able to continue communicating with Singed and Ambessa through his undead followers for as long as Warwick’s blood kept flowing into Viktor’s cocoon. He labeled it as an evolutionary step or phase. Viktor said that he wanted to access the anomaly in the Hexgate’s core to further his reach and bring this evolutionary process to its final stages, but he was afraid that Jayce wouldn’t allow him to do so. Ambessa said that she and her Noxian army would fulfill Viktor’s wishes if he agreed to bestow his gifts upon her army. Viktor had lost touch with his humanity, and in his search for perfection and uniformity, he virtually shook hands with Ambessa and began his journey of turning Piltover into a hellscape, like the one that Jayce had witnessed.
Back in Piltover, Vi woke up only to learn that Caitlyn had arrested Jinx because she was a criminal, even though she had saved Caitlyn’s life. Caitlyn corrected Vi by saying that she didn’t arrest Jinx against her will; she surrendered herself to the Enforcers. After this exchange with Vi, Caitlyn met Jinx in her holding cell and asked her to confess her sins. Jinx, knowing full well that it was pointless, only said that she didn’t know that Caitlyn’s mother was in that tower when she’d reduced it to rubble with her rocket launcher. Later on, Vi paid Jinx a visit in her prison in the hopes of freeing her, but Jinx escaped after locking Vi in the cell. While Vi wallowed in self-pity, Caitlyn came to her rescue, and both of them got freaky with each other in those dungeons.
The scene shifted to the repaired council room (there were hints of kintsugi) where Jayce reunited with Mel, and both of them realized how much they had changed. This bittersweet feeling soon turned into anger as the former lovers started bickering about how they were unable to get a hold of things after the attack. Their argument was interrupted by a robot-looking creature, which was actually one of Viktor’s followers who had been evolved by him and was even being puppeteered by Viktor. Those who had been “touched” by Viktor used to have some sentience, but this proved that his ultimate goal was to turn his followers into robots (Edgar Wright’s The World End has taught us that the word “robot” is synonymous with slavery). Jayce didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about what he should do and started attacking the robot in the hopes of killing Viktor before he could get to the Hexgate’s core because that’s what he had promised himself in that dystopian version of Piltover. However, killing that robot was easier said than done because, even with the help of Mel’s powers, it was impossible to match its speed. It was only after both Jayce and Mel unleashed their full strength that they managed to incapacitate the robot and expel Viktor’s soul from that building.
Given how imminent Viktor and Ambessa’s threat was, Jayce called every council member of Piltover as well as the Zaunites to show them Viktor’s creature. He wanted every able hand to prepare for war and the rest to evacuate Piltover via the Hexgates. While a lot of people left, many from Piltover and Zaun decided to join the army and make their last stand near the Hexgate tower. Meanwhile, Mel went to Ambessa and requested her to return to Noxus and leave Piltover alone. She even told her mother that she was willing to join her pursuit of avenging Kino. However, Ambessa was beyond reason. She was obsessed with acquiring the Hextech’s full power so that she could level the playing field and meet the Black Rose Order and every other mage in existence on her own terms. That’s why she had colluded with Singed and Viktor to invade Piltover and incorporate Hextech into her Noxian arsenal. At the end of Arcane Season 2, episode 8, Viktor gave Singed the green light to inject everything from Warwick’s body into his cocoon. This caused Sky’s soul to merge with that of Viktor’s, while his followers turned into robots. Warwick entered the next stage of his evolution. And Viktor’s visage changed into something godly as his body was imbued with Warwick’s powers and everything else that Singed had injected him with.
