Arcane has ended, and so has my punctuality apparently, because this Blog post is wayy too late my god.
But regardless, while it sure would have been amazing to have me be a completely efficient unthinking machine who just churns out blog articles, I mean it certainly seems that way, it similarly would have been quite amazing to see what would have been the end goal of Viktor's commune, were it not for Jayce, but unfortunately it was not to be.
This is a feeling I almost myself expressed while writing the previous post, before I realized that what actually was going on was Viktor becoming Viktor from league of Legends, it is still very much present in the Article though, if you do happen to read it.
The feeling of wanting to see what could have been had a certain instance been different is certainly not new, which is why it is so in theme that the first episode of this act is almost entirely dedicated to an alternate present that could have been the main story line, was it not for the most pivotal moment in Act I of season 1, the Job.
The one that went horrendously, so horrendously in fact that almost every terrible event in Arcane can be traced back directly to it, Powder goes insane and becomes Jinx? Well in the end of Act 1 season 1 she killed her entire family on accident, The war between Zaun and Piltover? Oh that job killed one of the top enforcers and someone else took over who worked with Silco who killed the old owner of Zaun during that same time.
Hextech while an undeniably good thing overall has had some repercussions that this act emphasizes on and episode 7 explicitly says that it exists because of that moment.
Shimmer? It was tested at that time.
So, what would happen if that one moment in time changed, what could have been?
Peace! It turns out. For all except Vi, because she died, and everyone else survived, making her a Martyr, so Jinx is still Powder, Vander is alive and so is his friendship with Silco, and all of Vi and Jinx's childhood friends are also here.
This is the reality in which Ekko and Heimerdinger find themselves in as the first episode of the last act as it takes off.
Because "It seems the Anomaly that dislodged us from our proverbial Reality..."
I remember after the previous act, once all of Arcane's fandom had witnessed Jayce perform a Nietzsche on Viktor Jesus, hence ending his commune and everyone in it, the Audience was straight up split down the middle, Is Jayce suddenly Homelander now? I mean he already looks like him a bit!(Yes I stole that joke from a YouTube video, I have hyperlinked it here and loved it and wanted to use it there, check it out! It's awesome!) OR, Is Viktor Jesus a cult leader?
I mean how can he be? He is doing so much good for everyone, and so much help, and he speaks through his followers, and oh... Glorious Evolution.
Yes, there is truth to the fact that Viktor's work began as an attempt to do good for the world, and if his commune was allowed to exist peacefully maybe it would have been amazing and prosperous for everyone who would choose to be a part of it.
Except the small thing about, Viktor Fading constantly and his Commune being tied to him, or like he put it, the world being shit, regardless, eventually, Viktor would be faced by the end to all he had wrought, and in an attempt to fix it, he would do something... unthinkable, something that would leave him changed, almost always for the worst.
And the thing is, he would do it to help everyone, his existence means the existence of the commune, or he could perhaps... let go of his incessant need to fix all the damage he has done by his recklessness with Hextech leading to the death of a young Skye, which he now uses as an excuse to wash out imperfections off of all who come to him for help, because you know if he did that, he would find a way to disconnect his commune from himself and let them live on their own, and what not.
But he won't do that will he? I mean only he knows how dangerous Hextech can be, and his search for answers has to go on! See problems like this arise only when someone is in power for too long, eventually something changes making them unfit for power or forcing them to change their very core to hold on to it, and eventually the chase for power becomes paramount as you relentlessly tell yourself that you are doing this for the greater good and forget why you were doing this in the first place.
So while yes, Viktor becoming the machine Herald was triggered by Jayce nearly killing him, really, it was only a matter of time before all of it fell apart, and it doesn't matter why, whether it is Ambessa at his door step, or his draining power level, or some other thing, who knows!
All Jayce did was Hasten the inevitable, and here we are, the Machine Herald is here.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves, the reason I went on this tangent from my discussion on Ekko and Powder and Heimerdinger is because I wanted to impress upon you that when it comes to Viktor, every reality leads to where he is now, it is only when he sees the consequences of what he has wrought that he realizes how wrong he is, has always been, but of course by then it is too late.
Or is it?
See for a power as vast as the Arcane, at least as it has been presented in the show, it is almost to be expected that it spans across space and time itself.
So what does a Viktor who has seen the disaster brought forth by his actions do? How does he make sure he never makes the same mistake again when the very mistake is him taking away all choice, all variation, there is no next time, at least not for him, I mean he could time travel himself and try to fix things, but the unfortunate truth is, the disaster struck world we see in Episode 7 is a result of him trying to fix things.
Clearly when it comes to power he cant be trusted to wield it alone, and that is the point, for power to be used effectively it must be shared, so he turns to the only person he knows that can bring him back to the right path.
Across all timelines and across all possibilities, how could Jayce have betrayed Viktor in the previous Act.
When the one to give him the mission, really the one to start all of this Hextech and Mage business really by giving Jayce that very first runestone.
Was Viktor himself.
And he is right there is no prize to perfection, see it is very interesting that Viktor is called the Machine Herald, when Machine's are universally known as the symbol of efficiency, and efficiency is universally seen as the means to achieve perfection.
Except, Efficiency can only be towards a certain end-goal, and for a certain input, but the thing about the world is that there are and will always be more than one goals and more than one starting point.
And too much efficiency for one direction, inevitably means that as a whole, the other paths you could have taken play a lesser and lesser part in the whole, even if the progress you have made in them doesn't reduce, which it does.
So you could say, try to be efficient in every direction all at once, which is impossible as there are infinite, but even if you could, the process is very slow, do it too fast and you will fall apart, So really what we need is, balance and to do it slowly, and to not do it alone, because we can't as I have stated above, what we need is someone to guide us so we can all be equals and look at each other with no differences....
And oh fuck we you see what I did didn't you, even when arguing against it I am advocating for Viktor's Machine Utopia-Dystopia.
I mean look at them, they are all equals now, no disharmony, no individuality and no freedom, they are completely non violent, except against those who would threaten them, then they are extremely violent, I mean just watch the episode, my god.
So really what is the way out? How does one avoid this what steps must one take? I mean there must be a logical solution to all of this? There must be!
What if I say no, because the problem is, Logic and reason are just as inherently flawed as their counterpart of not thinking at all, in-fact if I were to go on another Tangent, one can prove without a shadow of a doubt that any system of Logic will always be incomplete, meaning there are always going to be true statements that can never be proven to be true, it will always be undecideable, meaning even if we know some goal is reachable, there wont always be a means to reach it, the best we can hope for is for it to be consistent, but then we would never be a way for us to know for sure that it is so, I am oversimplifying here, but these ideas are more well put together in this Video by Veritassium.
The point I am trying to make here isn't that Logic and reason are bad, go on, abandon them right now, see where that gets you.
The point is, when one person, or a small group of people think they know what's best for everyone, you always end up with some form of Dystopia, No matter if what's backing them is Religion, the will of Human spirit, or in this case Logic and Reason.
The problem is, it is a Cycle, Violence, peace, war, the will to escape it, all of it, and the fact that an episode is literally called that hasn't escaped me, really the only way out of it is to break the cycle.
But what does that mean? And what is this cycle, what does it look like?
Does breaking the cycle mean to end yourself like Jinx was about to do? I mean it sure seems like it if every path leads to destruction.
But that is not it, to break the cycle, means to break the mold, if no single system of Logic can give one a complete view then the right way is to keep changing the system of Logic, to always be unpredictable, and that is what Jinx represents.
I mean every single creation of hers is just overly and needlessly complicated, just to give it that little more flare, and the truth of the matter is, while a lot of it is unnecessary, Jinx truly could never work if she didn't do all of this, so in some sense Jinx does represent the anti Viktor, the Chaos to his Order, that's right Viktor, You are not the Sublime intersection of Order and Chaos.
I mean it is no surprise after all this rant I have gone on about how no way is perfect that Jinx's way inherently lead to a lot of needless bloodshed.
But it is like she said, in some sense of the words... she didn't know.
If Viktor is the destruction that comes from needless pondering of the future, Jinx is the consequence of Staunchly being stuck in the present(you thought I was going to say past didn't you? Oh we will get to that, don't you worry).
Look at Jinx, she is always living in the moment, she can't think of the past, it is too Traumatic, and the future? to hell with it! Who cares when it can all go to shit at a moments notice?
See that kind of attitude, leads to selfishness, I mean if everything is going to end tomorrow anyways, then sure, you will work tirelessly towards every goal and dream you have been putting off, sad part is, a lot of those goals will also be, getting back at others for what they did to you, I mean their lives are going to be over anyways so...
I don't need to tell you that short term thinking like this makes you selfish.
And this show has shown that very well, more than enough examples of characters sacrificing the greater good for some small emotional catharsis in the moment.
I mean that was what incited season two, remember Jinx's missile?
So it is kind of poetic then, that it is her arrival, alongside Ekko that really throws a wrench into Viktor's plan.
See Viktor cannot understand Ekko or Jinx, therefore he seeks to control them, but he can't, it is as he said here.
Ekko is the leader of the Fireflies, a known terrorist group, at least that's what the first act of the second act of Season one would imply when you look through the eyes of an enforcer, but he also leads a commune of sorts, underground, safe from all the conflict above, yes he may use extreme means sometimes but as we have seen, so does everyone else.
So it is therefore very poignant that he attacks and defeats Viktor.
Because while Viktor is everything we fight against, Ekko has seen what we are fighting for, and that is not just because he leads a commune of his own, but because he has seen what could have been.
Finally, after all this circling around we come to what the Article began with.
What is in the alternate future? Well, there is peace, no Hextech, Vander and Silco are pals, all seems well, except... one small thing, Vi is dead, Viktor probably died as well with no Hextech to save him, Jayce never got to realize his dream, and Jinx... Jinx is still powder.
Everyone is here, Everyone is happy, once you ignore all the ones that aren't, and unfortunately, many just aren't themselves, primely Jinx.
The Show doesn't spend enough time in this reality for us to fully explore the Trade-off, but it makes it very clear that there is one.
Hextech did lead to a lot of bad but it also did a lot of good, and this reality has a lot of good, but it is stuck, in some sense, too comfortable, why would anyone want it to change? This is perfect!
And so creatives like powder silence themselves, thinking their Ideas too dangerous for the rest of the world.
But like Ekko says
Ekko witnessed what could have been, realized that it was worth fighting for but in so doing, fell in love with what is.
That is why he is the one who saved Jinx, even though keep in mind, until now, he hated her, and everything she stood for.
I wish I could talk more about this alternate reality, but the show doesn't spend much time there, really what it serves as is to give us an anti to what Jayce is going through, where as he sees what will be if he fails, Ekko and Heimerdinger see what could have been if none of this happened.
Both come to the same conclusion, that what is, is worth fighting for.
Apart from all of that it serves as an opportunity for Ekko to finally come to peace with his inner conflict, and have a reason to want to save Jinx from a certain death.
And it seems in some round about way, this series has a lot of untapped potential because it tried to be too efficient.
Only give what is necessary and allow the viewer to infer a lot.
And while yes, a conclusion is much stronger when the viewer arrives at it themselves, I mean if you want to see the dangers of overexplaining, look at the ending of Wanda-Vision.
But this show sometimes goes to the other extreme where it sometimes explains too little, and so many might feel its rushed or too fast paced, and what not, and here is the thing, only one of those things is true.
Yes, the show is rushed, but that is not the fault of the pace, pace is you know, speed, something feels rushed when it feels that the time it took is less than the time it required, and while yes, time depends on speed, it also depends on, distance, or the path you took to get there.
You see there is this really good video that I saw that once again I have hyperlinked here, in it the Arguement is made that the pacing isn't the issue, the issue is what is shown or not shown in that pace, like for example that time when Jinx finds Vi in a wrestling ring, and argues how adding one or two scenes of Jinx just looking at Vi from a distance would have fixed the issue, and I tend to agree with him, I do not want to rehash all his arguments here so I urge you to go watch him, and give him some support, even though it doesn't seem he needs it, not from me at least.
But I guess there are bigger problems that a show can have than there being, less of it.
So what now, is that all there is? Well, no, remember I was going to talk about a character whose only goal is fixing the past?
Well so there we have Ambessa Medarda, one could easily dismiss her as just a warmonger who exists only to create conflict, but well, she is more than that.
Ambessa is someone obsessed with control, one of the very first scenes that we see of her, is Mel reminiscing about her childhood trauma that was inflicted on her by her mother, when she killed a princess, simply because she was a symbol of the past.
As if the symbol was more important than her as a person, To Ambessa, the past describes with a hundred percent certainty what the future will be.
Therefore symbols are unchanging and everything will always lead to war and they only way she can counter it, is by being unnecessarily controlling and maintaining her control via creating a perfect Army, is it any wonder then that she is so blinded by her need for control that Viktor ends up manipulating her for his own ends.
Not Just Viktor, even Singed does the same.
She is like a horse with side-blinders, and while it makes her very focused and dangerous like a charging horse, but just like that, it blinds her to anything that comes from the sides, and more importantly to the rider controlling her from behind.
Because While Ambessa unequivocally is an evil character who manipulates everyone for her own gain, like placing Caitlyn Kiernan as a dictator to solve a conflict she escalated, placing Maddie as a spy under Caitlyn, using her to manipulate Vi to become an enforcer, reality is, she is more often than not, the one manipulated by everyone else.
The Black Rose, Singed, Viktor even Caitlyn.
In the end The Black rose gets Mel, Singed gets his daughter back, Viktor Gets his machine Utopia, Caitlyn breaks free of her control and uses her leadership position for a better tomorrow, and Ambessa just dies, a needless death.
These Ideas, being stuck in the present, past or future, aren't all black and white.
For example,
Viktor fights for a better future, but only because of the wounds his past has given him, and he acts in the present to do so.
Jinx and Ekko are staunchly in the Present, but only because their past taught them so, and they both work today so their future can be more bearable, even if they don't admit it, or think of it conciously.
Ambessa is stuck trying to not repeat the past, but she does it for a better future for her daughter....
At least that's what I think SHE is doing
Right, here is a confusion I had okay, When Mel says I see you deceiver, I originally thought that Ambessa was always trapped by the Black Rose and everything that we thought Ambessa was doing was actually done by "the Deceiver" possessing Ambessa's body and all of this was some epic manipulation to control Mel, who is truly the powerful one.
And in order to explain why a red rose attacked Ambessa, maybe that was the instance she was first captured, or maybe "the deceiver" is a rogue, who knows.
Regardless, when the long trapped spirit of Ambessa came back, she was too weak and died.
This is what I thought, but it appears more people seem to think that Ambessa was always Ambessa and Mel just randomly kills Black Rose, just because, and Ambessa dies just because.
And... I don't know which one I believe more, see that is the problem, not enough explanation, but Black Rose definitely didn't seem afraid for her life, it definitely seems to be more like Ambessa was cleansed of the Rose's influence in some way and the stress killed her.
So, was Ambessa Ambessa? Or just a Rogue Black Rose, or was she influenced by Black Rose, or was she completely conscious and Mel just realized that the Black Rose is no better?
I guess we will never know
But who is Black Rose, what... don't matter new thing coming up.
Vi is the Dirt under Caitlyn's nails, Oh and they had Sex, that scene was pretty good actually, and Jinx is dead, just like Vander.
I don't know, there seems to be a lot of loose threads.
Like Maybe Jinx isn't dead.... I mean, we never get tired of those theories do we?
And speaking of Jinx, while she told Vi that she was gonna go kill herself, why did the big sister decide to... make love... like, this was such an easy fix, just give her a reason to believe that Jinx is already gone, or safe or something, well actually already dead is better, cause the entire point of that scene is, Vi doesn't give a shit anymore.
And that would have made Jinx's return that much more Grand
So maybe there will be a season 3 maybe there wont, currently it seems that never was the plan, in which case, I guess this is a good place to leave things, but this can certainly be continued, I guess that was the goal.
And if this is continued, I hope that the people behind this learn their lesson and break the cycle, of trying to be too perfect, and just continue making a good show, because while I definitely do not want everything to be over explained, I also don't want ambiguity, or maybe some of it is good, who knows, for now all we can do is enjoy what we have.
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