‘Arcane’ Season 2: A Masterful Reflection on Loss

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of progress, it was the age of poverty, it was the “era of magic,” it was the era of violence — in short, season two of “Arcane” was released on Netflix on Nov. 23, garnering massive amounts of attention within the first week of release and topping Netflix’s most popular charts in over 60 countries.

Season two of “Arcane,” an adult animated steampunk TV series, powerfully captures the same conflicts between different social classes, horrors of revolution, and destructive power of vengeance that Charles Dickens captures in “A Tale of Two Cities.” The show depicts the tumultuous relationship between two fictional cities during a time of industrialization and technological innovation.

Season one of “Arcane” was critically acclaimed for almost every element of production. While most of these elements have retained their excellence from the first season, and a few have slipped, there are but two areas that have seen improvement: the animation and the character arc of Caitlyn Kiramman.

In the world of “Arcane” — based on the “League of Legends” video game — the wealthy city of Piltover has developed Hextech, a magical technology that can create “magnificent commodities” available on a mass scale. However, manufacturing this technology produces deadly fogs in Zaun, the Undercity run by gangs and plagued by disease, violence, and poverty. “Arcane” tells the story of these two cities and the way that their fates intertwine, provoking the viewer to wonder: Is Zaun the dark underside of Piltover’s progress? Or is Piltover only a mask for Zaun, a thin veneer of civility over the brutality and horror that people are capable of inflicting on each other?

The animation in “Arcane” fluctuates between two and three dimensions, drawn and computer-generated, just as the world blends magic and fantasy with the painfully realistic themes of oppression, economic disparity, and governmental failure. Production of the first “Arcane” season took six years due to the immense technical undertaking of the animation style, but “Arcane” season two is even more experimental. The season has several “music videos” where a character — usually Caitlyn Kiramman, an aristocratic young woman who joins Piltover’s police force — falls into a reverie accompanied by music, where, in these scenes, the art style changes significantly, and visions of the past or future plans occupy the screen.

In the first episode, as the opening chords of Freya Ridings’s “I Can’t Hear it Now” begin to play, an image of Councilwoman Cassandra Kiramman, Caitlyn’s mother, abruptly appears on screen. She is lying in a gold-embellished coffin, her head cradled by purple flowers. Beginning at the edges of the screen, the animation turns shaky and decomposes into a gray and black haze. The following shots resemble a pencil sketch, with objects blurred, the tips of people’s fingertips fraying, and the material of the screen seemingly crinkling like old paper. Each shot, however, features a single person or object that is perfectly defined and brilliantly colorful. Most often it is Caitlyn herself or Vi, her lover, and once it is a young girl with a red ribbon on her hat and carrying a pink orchid, representing the citizens of Piltover who have lost their leader.

Every detail is intentional, from the subtle glances between characters to the shot of a raindrop on a close-up of a hand. The variety of art styles, pushed to ever more experimental lengths in the series of music videos, reminds us that “Arcane” is art.

The scenes in the first episode meander through the aftermath of an attack — not the tightly controlled pace that “Arcane” viewers are used to, but a realistic depiction of loss and its immediate fallout. Viewers witness Caitlyn move through the stages of grief, which deepen from shock and sadness to anger and eventually madness. The first episode foreshadows this descent with sharp “camera” movement, focusing on Caitlyn’s canines as she spits out, “Animals!” — referring to residents of the Undercity. When Caitlyn uses the Kiramman Key to access decades worth of secrets, light from the mirror reflects on her, tracing sketches and schematics over her face that she will later use to unleash toxic gas on Zaun. The song “Heavy is the Crown” by Linkin Park permeates the scene, reminding viewers that Caitlyn has a birthright to live up to, and that the oppression that the people of the Undercity face is largely due to the Kirammen family’s leadership.

Season two of “Arcane” is an excellent ending to the series. Building on earlier themes of technological costs and warring sects of society, at its heart, season two is about loss and the things people do in its wake. From the scene where Jinx lets go of Silco’s body, watching him disappear into the shifting underwater darkness, to the palpable pain of Caitlyn’s assumption of her mother’s legislative and political role, season two masterfully illustrates the ways in which various characters struggle with loss and the never-ending process of grieving.

—Staff writer Laura B. Martens can be reached at laura.martens@thecrimson.com.