‘Arcane’ Season 2, Part 1 Review: Colorful Chaos, But A Little Rushed

Arcane's first season was a genuine masterpiece. I've seen a lot of impressive animation over the years, but even Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse pales in comparison. Animation studio, Fortiche, continues its impressive visuals in Season 2, though I'm a little less enthusiastic when it comes to Part 1's story.

Don't get me wrong, Arcane continues to be a gripping drama. The conflict between the cities of Piltover and Zaun, between the powerful upper crust and the seedy underbelly, has only ramped up since the explosive ending of the first season. But this conflict kicks off in overdrive and never really slows down to let viewers catch their breath.

Yes, there are some slower character moments that let us spend some time with Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Caitlyn (Katie Leung) or Jayce (Kevin Alejandro) and Victor (Harry Lloyd). But the second season throws plot at us like Jinx's gatling gun, and the pacing feels incredibly rushed. The chaos, coupled with lengthy exposition, makes it much harder to follow not just the story, but the various character arcs.

Part of the problem is also the introduction of a lot of new characters. Jinx's rocket attack on the Piltover Council didn't really thin the herd much, so we have lots of old characters and lots of new characters and new conflicts like the introduction of the magical assassins known as the Black Rose, who are after Ambessa (Ellen Thomas) and her family, including Mel (Toks Olagundoye).

Meanwhile, we learn that Ambessa and her Noxus soldiers are the ones responsible for the attack this season, setting up the Zaun attackers to fail so that they could play the heroes of the day. Ambessa wants power—specifically Hextech power—and she's willing to play dirty to get it. By the end of the first Act, she's so influential she's able to raise Caitlyn up to become de facto dictator of Piltover, instituting martial law to bring the Zaunites to heel. Of course, she plans to pull the strings.

Then we have Viktor effectively coming back from the dead, more Hextech than human. The resurrection is fitting. He goes into Zaun and begins healing shimmer addicts in the depths, a real metal messiah.

I quite like Viktor and this arc, but we don't get much of it in the first three episodes. Mostly, we get a lot of Vi and Caitlyn's budding romance and Vi agreeing to join up as an Enforcer to track down Jinx and either kill her or bring her to justice. Caitlyn, however, is consumed by her need for vengeance, and after a very flashy fight scene between these three and Sevika (Amirah Vann) who now wields a slot-machine style steampunk arm, Vi has to stop Caitlyn from shooting Jinx, and possibly missing and hitting the young urchin who is shielding her body.

During this segment, Jayce, Ekko (Reed Lorenzo Shannon) and Heimerdinger are investigating a phenomenon deep beneath the surface. They've unleashed a "wild rune" with their meddling, and as Vi and Jinx battle, the rune begins to go off, unleashing magical distortion that's quite trippy and a little confusing.

Ultimately, Jinx and Sevika get away and nobody is killed in the fight, but Sevika unleashes some kind of explosion in the vents—the vents that Caitlyn's mother designed as ventilation for Zaun, and which Caitlyn planned to use to gas the Zaunites in a horrific chemical attack—setting off colorful, but apparently totally harmless, clouds of smoke throughout Piltover.

All told, while I did enjoy the first Act of Arcane's second (and final) season, it felt like way too much happened way too fast. The pacing feels like way too much story has been crammed into far too few episodes, something I never felt in Season 1. It's still got some great moments, but even the dialogue feels off this season, with a lot more exposition and a lot less nuance. Caitlyn's rise to power felt rushed as well, and I got the feeling throughout that we have more style than substance in the second season so far.

Is it bad? Hardly. But there's also a sense that the show has lost some of its edge. The very stylish showdown between Jinx and Vi was certainly a spectacle. The music, the slow-motion, the cuts between the fight and the wild rune, it all looked and sounded great, but it didn't feel as raw or gritty as the fights in Season 1. There's also this sense that it just happened, that it was too easy for Caitlyn to find her quarry and too easy for Jinx to fool her assailants.

I also miss Silco, who was such an integral part of the first season. There's a Silco-sized hole in Season 2 that nothing can fill. And while I'm happy to see a new threat emerging in the form of Warwick, the human-monster hybrid the mad scientist, Singed, is creating, I'm not sure that each episode needed to tease out his creation. That's a lot of build-up when just showing the scene at the end of Episode 3 would have done the trick.

These first three episodes feel like a lot of setup, and a lot of rushed setup so that the rest of the season can get through all the story. That's a big change from the much slower, more organic pace of Season 1, and feels like the result of changing the plan from a five-season arc to a two-season arc. While that's certainly a shame, I'm still extremely excited for the next two Acts (six more episodes total) that come out next weekend and the following weekend. It's not at the same overall quality of the first season, at least in terms of story, but the animation is still gorgeous and I'm still invested in all these characters' stories. I also really like some of the still montages they've put together for this season. And some of the scenes are just breathtaking to look at.

I do wish they'd replace all the modern pop music with instrumental music, however. It's not terrible but it feels out of place and a little immersion-breaking at times.