'Arcane': Our Predictions For The Second Season

Like millions of people, I spent every weekend of November glued to the screen watching story after story of wealthy urbanites exploiting an underclass they don’t respect or understand. But when I wasn’t watching the news, I enjoyed Netlfix’s Arcane. 

Riot’s first TV show is a wild success and a brand new direction for a company that usually waits for someone else to make something and then copies it. Riot’s series is so original, in fact, that once it was confirmed for an inevitable second season, everyone started wondering what the heck would be in it. We’ve accrued some of the best, coolest, and most reasonable predictions for our second season in Piltover and Zaun.

One of the best characters in Arcane is Vander - a passionate revolutionary, humble bartender, protective figure, and responsible father - who steals the show for the first of Arcane’s three installments. That makes it all the sadder that he’s dead- completely, definitely dead with no coming back. For sure. Probably.

But League of Legends lore fans think that Vander is a familiar face- and that season 2 will see the doting father of Vi and Powder return as the bloodthirsty beast, Warwick. Warwick’s meager lore was updated in 2017 to include that he used to be “a gangster who put down his blade and took up a new name to live a better life,” but “he could never escape the sins of his past.” 

Sounds a lot like our guy, and throughout the show, Vander is called the “Hound of the Underground” and a “lap dog”- canine foreshadowing of his beastly future.

In League Lore, Warwick is brought to his current state by Singed- a character we expect to see a lot more of in season 2. If you don’t have subtitles on, you may have missed that the scientist who invented Shimmer is the Mad Chemist from Summoner’s Rift. Now that Silco is out of the picture, the Undercity seems torn between two visions for its future- Ekko’s utopian Firelight society and Singed’s ruthless exploitation to advance his research. 

Personally, I think Singed and Ekko will take center stage in the struggle for Zaun, with Ekko having the added benefit of Heimerdinger’s support -- who may be one of the few surviving members of the Piltover Council. Meanwhile, in Piltover, we can expect more from Vi and Cupcaitlin. For one, Vi will almost certainly become an enforcer herself in season 2, likely after Caitlin is promoted into the open Sheriff’s role that Marcus left.

The nepotism chain of Jayce promoting Caitlin, and Caitlin conscripting Vi seems like a solid opening episode plot to give the core cast a bit more room to run than they had early in season one. No one’s going to be telling Caitlin to stop working so hard anymore, I suspect.

Finally, the wider world seems to be knocking on the door at the end of season one with the heavy-handed aggression of Ambessa Medarda- the matriarch of the Medarda family who pressured Jayce into building Hextech weapons. 

Who is Noxus at war with? What does Ambessa want, since she’s definitely not in town out of the goodness of her heart? Maybe next season, we’ll see an invasion of Noxians taking baths that make Jayce VERY uncomfortable.

Top Image: Netflix