“It’s a really complex moment, when Jinx can say ‘Maybe you’re the baddie,’” Linke says. “So much of the show is about seeing the world through the lens of the other side. I think that is the quintessential moment for them, when they have to question how they see their sibling, at which point, they have a very loaded perspective of each other.”
This reconciliation in the face of a common enemy leads to the sisters reuniting with their long-lost father Vander (JB Blanc), now resurrected as the feral werewolf-like monster Warwick. Leaning into the inherent horror offered by prominently featuring such a bloodthirsty creature, Warwick’s inclusion also underscored Arcane’s tendency to go to the extremes, in regards to tone and visceral action. More than just presenting another adversary, Vander’s transformation into Warwick also gave the show the opportunity to highlight more of Vander’s backstory as he reunites with his adopted daughters in the mines he worked in as a human.
“He went back to this familiar place from his past and he didn’t know why because it got twisted for him,” writer Amanda Overton observes. “That mining room is the first time that [Vi and Jinx] got to see their father figures as brothers. It just reframed everything for the family dynamics for them.”
The season also features a surprise interlude with Ekko (Reed Shannon) traveling to a parallel reality where he acquires a time-reversal device crucial to the series’ final battle. More than just giving Ekko this game-changing item, the episode’s lighter tones and depictions of familiar faces gave Arcane the chance to explore elements that the creative team felt were more romantic and more fun in certain aspects. Overton reflected that more than making Ekko the one to turn the tide in the climax, it restored his faith in Zaun’s potential as well as Powder, the innocent person who Jinx used to be.
“In his own world, he lost that faith,” Overton says. “He lost that vision. He had a vision of Zaun that was very similar to that and he lost his faith in it. He needed to see that it was possible in order to fight for that again and also to believe in Jinx again – Powder again.”
This complexity and conflict between familial figures isn’t isolated to Vi and Jinx, but also between Jayce Talis (Kevin Alejandro) and Viktor (Harry Lloyd), who see each other as brothers. Though Viktor recognized the destructive potential of Hextech, the technology he and Jayce created, Jayce not only didn’t follow through on Viktor’s wish for him to destroy it, but used the unstable tech to resurrect Viktor. This turned Viktor into a figure poised to use his connection to Hextech to inadvertently destroy Zaun and Piltover, placing him in direct conflict with Jayce over the fate of the city.
