arcane spends the first season highlighting how brutal and unforgiving the piltover occupation of zaun is its objectively and cartoonishly evil there are almost no redeeming qualties for it but it all shifts when jinx does the piltover equivalent of 9/11 and the messaging shifts from brutal occupation and conflict to the characters not being able to cope with trauma so they now commit facism
jinx and zaun are constantly shunned by the show while caitlyn and piltover are so quick to be forgiven
but in the end its okay because they find a common enemy and obviously the biggest enemy is collectivisim
the show is so hilariously amercian and lib it is not even funny
caitlyn gets to win the girl but jinx gets so guilty that she tries killing herself multiple times and ends up faking her own death and escaping her only family
i am genuinely so fucking pissed
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Love this show to death but if I think too long about the both-sides politics I start to go crazy.
Bizarre that when some of the Zaunites agree to fight alongside the topsiders to stop the techbro-dystopian/feudal-warlord alliance that’s trying to bring about the apocalypse the Zaunites wear the uniform of the Enforcers, the local cops/occupying army that has killed and terrorized the Zaunites for- What? Centuries? At least decades. I could accept them fighting together to stave off a worse enemy, but as depicted I thought it was more than a little distasteful.
It’s just weird how often the show seems to expect viewers to have sympathy for Piltover’s position when it’s shown over and over that they are depriving the Zaunites of all dignity. It’s at least implied that the generation before Vi and Jinx were born as a slave caste in mines underneath Piltover and narrowly won the precarious freedoms we see them with at the start of the show. Though I’m not entirely clear on the lore there.
It’s even reinforced in Episode 7 of Season 2 that in a world where Hextech never exists and also Heimerdinger gives even a little bit of a shit about the people of the Undercity that the entire situation is much much better, though nowhere near parity. But I’m supposed to feel bad that Jinx blew the council to hell?
Yeah season 1 setup some cool shit and then season 2 was TURBOCOPS SAVE THE DAY. Also suddenly the oligarchy out of nowhere convinces all the people’s factions that they need to work together, and then throws the people right into the meat grinder and gives them cop uniforms. Wow, we did it!
I was surprised at how good the first season was and subsequently surprised at how shit the second one was
I really like this essay on this phenom in media:
https://redsails.org/the-swerve/
Why do stories that may start out so promising and suggestive seem to always turn to crap towards the very end? Because any consistent working-out of problems tends towards communism.
The most funny thing in the ending is when they show that Sevika has a seat at the city council.
1 Zaun vote vs 4-5 Piltover vote and they show that the actions of the council is decided based on the majority of the votes.
Good job Sevika I’m sure you will make a difference for the working class
It’s barely even acknowledged that caitlyn does anything wrong because using repression to protect existing power structures is an understandable mistake, but using a fraction of that violence to upset those power structures like Jinx does is unforgivable.
Death to piltover
It drives me nuts that the plot of the new season sucks as much as it does, because it’s also one of the best looking shows I’ve seen in a while. The battle scenes are genuinely pure cocaine and I want them injected straight into my veins. I - unfortunately - had a great time watching it.
But the plotline, the ending especially, isn’t just lib. It’s straight up fash. Two seasons of a revolutionary civil war of an oppressed population against their elite get resolved by… uniting against a common external enemy? That’s the plot arc of fascist Italy in the '20s. Or Weimar Germany.
It was all over the place, without the steady escalating tempo of the original. Even the fight scenes were clipped and visually abbreviated - switching to these dramatic vinettes in a bunch of the Warwick and Vi combat scenes.
S2 had some interesting and clever movements… but yeah. It was 2-3 seasons crammed into one, and it showed.
I don’t even not like the “Perfection isn’t something you attain, it’s something you pursue” moral at the end of the show. But season 1 felt so dialectical. You had these historical moments building on themselves to a stunning climax.
Season 2 was handed this dramatic historical pivot, kinda-sorta looked like it was going to grapple with the fundamentals appeals and consequences of fascism, but then stumbled back down into “Everything gets solved when the Special People duke it out”.
The fundamental plight of Zaun, the cost of pollution and the failure of equitable distribution, is lost in the race to fight Evil Foreigners and Fifth Columnist Traitors. A real squandered opportunity.
