‘Arcane’ Season 2 review: The best fantasy show of 2024, hands-down

Oh Arcane, how I’ve missed you.

Netflix’s League of Legends-primarily based sequence rocked my world when it first got here out in 2021 — and I did not even know the very first thing about League! However regardless of my lack of know-how of the supply materials, I discovered that Arcane had every little thing I wished in a fantasy sequence: a richly developed world, distinct factions filled with nuanced relationships, and breathtaking magical powers and motion sequences. Plus, there isn’t any beating that animation.

With Arcane Season 1 setting the bar so excessive, I used to be apprehensive there was no approach its second (and tragically ultimate) season would dwell as much as that customary. Fortunately, Season 2 measures up in each conceivable approach after which some, with the primary six episodes made obtainable for overview elevating the stakes to gorgeous, usually surprising new heights. Brutal, beautiful, and completely devastating, Arcane Season 2 calls for to be seen proper when every new batch of episodes drops.

What’s Arcane Season 2 about?

Let’s begin with the first purpose for wanting to observe Arcane Season 2 as quickly as attainable: to search out out who lived after the explosion on the finish of Season 1.

For 3 years, we have puzzled whether or not Hextech creator Jayce (voiced by Kevin Alejandro), Piltover Councilor Mel (voiced by Toks Olagundoye), and inventor Viktor (voiced by Harry Lloyd) survived Jinx’s (voiced by Fallout‘s Ella Purnell) shark rocket assault on the Council of Piltover. Arcane wastes no time informing us that there have been, actually, survivors (I will provide you with time to be taught their precise identities for your self). Nonetheless, there have been additionally a number of catastrophic casualties, and these losses drive Piltover’s response to the blast.

Whereas the Council voted to provide the undercity of Zaun sovereignty mere seconds earlier than Jinx’s rocket hit, that probability at peace is now formally off the desk. Now, the dual cities threaten to spill into all-out warfare. Mel’s mom and Noxian warlord Ambessa (voiced by Ellen Thomas) is able to crack down with martial legislation. However Enforcer Caitlyn (voiced by Katie Leung), herself recovering from deep loss, has different plans. She assembles a strike pressure that features herself and Jinx’s sister Vi (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) to take Jinx down for good, particularly since she’s turn into a logo of resistance for the Zaunites. Now, the stage is about for a knockdown, drag-out struggle between sisters.

Arcane Season 2 presents a painful have a look at warfare, and a lot extra.

Ambessa rallies her troops to warfare in “Arcane.”
Credit score: Courtesy of Netflix

That Vi-Jinx showdown, when it comes, is an ideal encapsulation of what makes Arcane‘s strategy to battle so sensible. Sure, there’s an simple cool issue right here: We’re watching two nice fighters pummel one another with supercharged gauntlets and weapons, full with extended slow-mo photographs to emphasise the badassery on show. But all of the character work that has led us right here is on show too, with Jinx and Vi’s each transfer knowledgeable by the love they as soon as shared and the horror at what the opposite has turn into. It is the tragedy that wins out over the coolness, and that is the identical with Arcane‘s bigger portrayal of warfare within the League world.

That is as a result of warfare pushes each Arcane character to an excessive, generally taking them within the complete wrong way from Season 1. Vi joins up with the Enforcers, although they killed her mother and father, as a result of she thinks it is an unavoidable necessity. A grief-stricken Caitlyn turns into a harmful monster in her pursuit of Jinx, unleashing hell upon the Zaunites. The latter is especially painful to observe, as chemical warfare and police brutality turn into the norm in Zaun, and as characters we have grown to like develop corrupted by energy and the necessity for vengeance.

Jinx and Vi battle it out in “Arcane” Season 2.
Credit score: Courtesy of Netflix

However as a lot as Arcane‘s advertising pushes that this season is all about warfare and the way it hyperlinks to the rift between Vi and Jinx, Season 2 truly makes some strides into extra cosmically bizarre territory. Improvements within the Hextech house push the boundaries of what’s attainable in Piltover, igniting discussions about transhumanism in methods which can be each disquieting and utopic. That these conversations are occurring alongside the Piltover-Zaun warfare is a reminder that the world of Arcane is a lot greater than these two cities — and a lot stranger.

That strangeness additionally manifests within the arrival of recent types of magic and new factions for Arcane‘s gamers to cope with. And as thrilling as that growth is, it additionally threatens to trigger points for the sequence by way of sticking the touchdown. Can the three episodes of the season that I nonetheless have not seen wrap up these many free ends, particularly given Arcane‘s breakneck pacing? (Generally, I do want these episodes had been an hour lengthy as a substitute of 40 minutes, and I do not say that usually.) Arcane has but to steer me really fallacious, however the jury’s nonetheless out on whether or not it could totally stick the touchdown whereas juggling so many complicated concepts and storylines.

Arcane continues to push the boundaries of animated TV.

Hextech will get bizarre in “Arcane” Season 2.
Credit score: Courtesy of Netflix

Even when Arcane does not totally nail its ending, there isn’t any doubt about how unimaginable it appears to be like. Fortiche’s animation was all the time masterful, however Arcane Season 2 in some way ranges up.

As soon as once more, we’re handled to the present’s mixture of hand-painted and computer-animated visuals, which deliver Piltover’s hovering towers and Zaun’s dirty underground to life. Now, although, Arcane performs additional with animation kinds that talk to particular characters’ factors of view. We noticed a little bit of this in Season 1, with scribbled line drawings and textual content overlaid on sure scenes bringing Jinx’s perspective to life. In Season 2, it is an entire new ballgame.

As soon as once more, we get Jinx’s frenzied drawings. However we additionally get total sequences made up of black-and-white charcoal drawings, neon panels straight out of a comic book e-book, and watercolor flashbacks. Unusual glitches in Hextech permit animators to go buck-wild with flesh-and-metal fusions, trippy house scapes, and bizarro structure that calls to thoughts the warped biology of Annihilation. In considered one of Season 2’s largest swings, the sequence locations us inside the perspective of the beastly wolf-creature Warwick, to the purpose the place all we see is a nightmarish frenzy of pink blood trails and the clawed fingers carrying us ahead.

The flexibility of Arcane‘s artwork model is only one of many explanation why it should harm a lot to say goodbye to this sequence, even when it is getting a conclusive ending. Nonetheless, in keeping with a Nov. 6 report by Selection, the sequence was initially budgeted for a five-season arc. Selection additionally reported that Arcane price roughly $250 million to provide, making it the costliest animated present of all time. Resulting from its hefty price ticket, it is unlikely we’ll see something fairly prefer it once more — at the least, not for a couple of extra years. Till then, we are able to proceed to understand Arcane for the marvel that it’s: a real Hextech gem within the tough.

The primary three episodes of Arcane Season 2 at the moment are streaming on Netflix, with three extra episodes dropping on Nov. 16 and Nov. 23, respectively.