Netflix ‘Arcane’ Season 2 Review - My Crazy Sister

The second season of Arcane begins from where the first season ended. Powder/Jinx (Ella Purnell) fires a rocket launcher at the Piltover Council just when they all agree to grant independence to Zaun. As Season 2, Episode 1 opens, we watch the council members struggling to rescue themselves from the explosion. Many of them die, though Viktor is brought back to life through the Hexcore. Jayce (Kevin Alejandro) cannot accept his best friend's death. His first reaction after seeing Viktor's body is to put it near the rune matrix with Hextech crystals. When Viktor returns to the mortal world, his body looks different. He starts talking like a saint who has achieved wisdom. Look at him when he notices a sick thief and remarks that there is so much suffering in the world. What he does next comes across as an action of a person who wants to remove pain from the world. At this point, it's still quite premature to ascertain where his journey will ultimately lead him. In the meantime, I can't help but wish that all the episodes had been released simultaneously on Netflix. Having them all available at once would have enhanced the viewing experience, allowing for a deeper understanding of the characters and their development.

The creators aim to keep their show "alive" for weeks by releasing a limited number of episodes at a time. They want the audience to discuss the cliffhangers and what could happen in the future. All that's fine, but the series must give you something worth talking about, right? Most of the new shows lack substance, so they only end up being forgettable even when they are released every week (take Agatha All Along and The Rings of Power, for instance). Arcane has ambition, all right. It looks gorgeous - the animation allows the creators to render certain scenes extra dramatic. There were moments when I almost forgot that I was seeing an animated series. The facial expressions convey so many emotions so fluidly that your mind often thinks you are seeing a live-action series. Add to this the weighty drama, the gray areas that make it a bit difficult to label anyone downright evil, and you have a story that keeps you hooked throughout its runtime. You experience a sensory overload when all these intense emotions find their way into delightfully explosive action sequences.

Arcane is not original in terms of its story. Yet, it works because it knows how to hit the rousing beats. Take the scene from Season 1 where Caitlyn (Katie Leung), inside a prison, meets an adult Vi (Hailee Steinfeld). Other delights in Season 2 include "a funny-looking rat" and a robotic arm with a casino machine-like feature and a speaker. There is always something pleasing in front of your eyes. However, I think the show's release strategy (three episodes for three weeks) is stupid. For all their visual delights, the first three episodes of Arcane Season 2 are a giant, colorful blur that quickly begins to evaporate from your memory. It doesn't give us enough substance to hold on to for the next two or three days, let alone a week. The show uses cliffhangers to assure itself that the audience will return to it next week. If the creators had been wildly imaginative and daring, they wouldn't have relied on such a cheap tactic. They want to create a cinematic experience, but they follow the template of a TV serial. The first three episodes of Arcane Season 2 come into the realm of competent filmmaking. They are not intriguing enough to spark a long discussion. If you force yourself, then, after a while, you will end up repeating the same points. And given there are a lot of things available online, who would want to remain stuck on something that's basically incomplete?

Final Score- [6.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times