‘Arcane’ Season 1 Ending, Explained

Warning: This article contains major Arcane spoilers.

Arcane had a lot of ground to cover in its first season; the League of Legends adaptation tackles its champions’ intense backstories in the show’s first act, and in the latter two acts is tasked with fully fleshing out the present, which is brimming with character drama and tension between two opposing cities, one oppressed and one prosperous.

Despite its dense storytelling, Arcane delivers and then some: The video game-based show is more than successful in not only presenting its source material’s complicated premise in an engaging way—mostly due to its multi-faceted, intriguing characters—but also sets the groundwork for a promising second season.

There is a lot of League of Legends lore covered in the Arcane‘s first season, and some questions are left unanswered, to be explored later on. Read on to find out exactly what happened in season 1 and for its ending, explained.

WHAT IS ARCANE ABOUT? ARCANE‘S STORYLINE:

The show begins by introducing us to the city of Zaun, the seedy underbelly of the more wealthy, prosperous overcity of Piltover. We see two stories unfold above and below ground, and the choices of each group lead to their eventual clash.

In the first act, we see what sets the dispute between the two cities into motion. Arcane follows a group of Zaunite teenagers, including protective and street-smart Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and her tinkering, accident-prone sister Powder, both orphans who have been taken under the wing of Vander, who once was responsible for starting an unsuccessful uprising to unite Piltover and Zaun.

Years later, alongside their two foster brothers, the siblings catch wind of a promising target to steal from in Piltover: a science lab with a number of pricey and odd pieces of equipment. (We later find out that the lab belongs to scientist Jayce, who is on the cusp of using technology to control magic.) Among the gadgets, Powder finds some glowing blue crystals. When someone tries to enter the lab and the group needs to escape, Powder drops a crystal, and its unstable magical energy leads to an explosion, destroying the building and setting the city’s Enforcers on them. In their attempt to get away, they are attacked by another street rat named Deckard, and Powder loses their loot; still, she manages to keep one of the crystals.

Despite getting back to the undercity, the fallout follows; the Enforcers need someone to take the fall and invade Zaun to find the culprits. Vander, who has a deal with the Enforcers to keep the peace, refuses to give up his foster kids. Vander finds out that the person who planted the seed of their heist and sent Deckard after them was Silco, a villainous gang leader—and Vander’s once fellow revolutionary, whom Vander betrayed—who’s been brewing a substance called Shimmer that turns people into monsters.

At the same time in Piltover, Jayce is in some serious trouble because of his illegal experiments. The Council, Piltover’s governing body, is less than happy, and when Jayce pleads his case, he reveals his ambitions to control magic. While this catches the interest of his eventual allies, Councillor Mel Medarda and fellow scientist Viktor, Councillor Heimerdinger, the centuries-old founder of Piltover, warns against the dangers of magic. However, Jayce evades a dire sentence, and continues his work in secret, with the help of Mel and Viktor.

Meanwhile, Vi is planning to turn herself in to protect her family, but Vander takes her place. However, as he’s being taken away by Enforcers, Silco attacks and kidnaps Vander. Vi and her brothers go after him, leaving Powder behind because she tends to “jinx” their missions. The group finds themselves in a desperate situation, with Deckard, now a Shimmer monster, on the verge of killing them and Vander. Powder, however, finds the group, and uses her crystal as a bomb to save them. However, the blast ends up killing her brothers and seriously injuring Vi and Vander.

Vander, in order to save Vi from the still-kicking Shimmer monster, sacrifices himself. Vi makes it out, and finds a regretful, panicking Powder, who accidentally killed her family. Vi, devastated, walks away from her sister. Thinking she’s been abandoned, Powder is approached by Silco, thus beginning their father-daughter-like relationship. Vi, despite wanting to turn back and save Powder from Silco, is taken by an Enforcer to a prison in Piltover.

These events set the next two acts of the show into motion, which take place years later. Powder, now named Jinx, has descended into madness and does Silco’s bidding, who still strives for Zaun’s independence. Vi, after being jailed ever since that catastrophic night, enters an alliance with an Enforcer named Caitlyn to find and destroy Silco, whose been ravaging Zaun with Shimmer (Vi also has a secret plans of her own to rescue her sister). Jayce’s Hextech, now fully functioning and furthering Piltover’s wealth, finds its way into Jinx’s hands, who uses it to attack the Overcity. Thus, Jayce, who gains more power as a new Councillor, has to deal with the repercussions of his weaponized technology. Over the course of nine episodes, the long-standing tensions between the oppressed Zaun and utopian Piltover boil over.

IS THERE A PLOT TWIST IN ARCANE? ARCANE ENDING EXPLAINED:

After Vi and Jayce’s mission to take out Silco’s supply of Shimmer went wrong, Jayce decides to end his crusade after accidentally killing a child, seeing the damage that war with Hextech can do. As a last resort, he ends up meeting with Silco to broker a truce, intending to convince the Council to give Zaun its independence and access to a Hexgate, a portal which allows for global trade. In return, Silco would stop producing Shimmer, return the Gemstone that Jinx stole, and turn Jinx, who at this point has attacked the overcity numerous times, over to Piltover.

Meanwhile, Viktor, having harnessed magic and the Hexcore to fix his decaying body (a process that ended up killing his assistant, Sky). Viktor now has Sky’s journal, which has ideas for a new project: what exactly that is still up to question, but it’s big enough that Viktor doesn’t tell Jayce about it. However, Viktor, unable to do it himself, makes Jayce promise to destroy the Hexcore.

Still in the overcity, Mel’s mother, who banished her daughter from Noxus to Piltover years ago, is trying to get her hands on weaponized Hextech to protect her family from a group bent on ruining them. “Let the war unfold,” her mother says of Piltover, adding that afterward Mel can return to her side.

Back in Zaun, Silco’s undercity allies have decided that he’s no longer up to the task of running things, and subsequently are killed by his right hand, Sevika, who before seemed to be doubting Silco’s abilities herself. However, she proves her loyalty. On the other side of Zaun, Heimerdinger and Ekko join forces with a common goal to help save the undercity. In future episodes, we will likely see them combining their minds for technology to achieve their aims.

On her single-person crusade, Vi, armed with her Hextech gauntlets, goes after Sevika and manages severely beat her up. Silco is her next stop, but before she can get there, Jinx knocks her out. She brings both her sister and Silco to a makeshift “dinner party,” both of them restrained at the table. After Silco saved her life with Shimmer, Jinx, now even more paranoid than before thanks to the drug, thinks she overhears Silco saying he will give her up to Piltover.

Jinx also brings in Caitlyn, whom she kidnapped earlier, and the Hexgem she stole. Then, Jinx shows Vi two chairs, one with “Jinx” written on it, the other, “Powder.” “Where should I sit?” she muses to Vi. “That’s your choice, really.” Jinx orders Vi to kill Caitlyn so that she can become Powder again; Vi pleads for Caitlyn’s life, instead urging Jinx to run away with her. Silco tries to convince Jinx that he won’t give her up, and that it’s the two of them against the world, including Vi.

As Vi tires to remind her who she is, the Shimmer in Jinx’s system clouds her mind, and amid the chaos, she kills Silco in a blind rage. She instantly regrets it, though. “I never would’ve given you to them,” he says. Jinx realizes she can’t come back from this, and uses the Hexgem to power one of her missile weapons.

Just as the Council is approving Jayce’s proposal for peace, Jinx fires her gun toward the “sky” of the undercity, aimed toward the council building where the meeting is taking place. The episode ends right as the missile breaks through the the glass window.

It is the ultimate cliffhanger: the lives of the Council are in the balance, and this undoubtedly will put a wrench in any plans for resolving the conflict between Zaun and Piltover. Not to mention the new power vacuum that now exists in Zaun, with Silco gone, and the potential globalization of Hextech, hinted at by the introduction of Mel’s mother. We’ll just have to wait for season two, which was quickly given the go-ahead at Netflix, for all of our questions to be answered.

Where to watch Arcane