“what in god’s name happens in Arcane season 2”: a (very slapdash) primer

[surveillingscion]

Arcane is told achronologically, jumps point of view frequently, and does not offer conveniences like “[# days later]” to help piece its timeframe together. Music montages cover broad swaths of time, and the official wiki combines lore from League of Legends with information exclusive to the show.

Thus: an extremely hasty attempt at summarizing what goes down—specifically, of things that might be ICly publically-available.

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baseline TL;DR

• Nearly everything takes place in twin cities Piltover and Zaun: the rich topside and the gritty undercity, respectively.
• Zaun is not (yet?) a politically-distinct entity from Piltover. The undercity is “ruled” by a handful of gangs and their leaders, the most influential of which (for most of Season 1) is the drug lord Silco.
• Piltover is normally governed by an oligarchial Council. It has been neglecting the hell out of the undercity since long, long before the S1 storyline kicks off.
• On a bridge connecting the two, a failed revolutionary uprising within the past ~decade spurred an under-the-table deal between the Sherrif and the undercity’s frontman, keeping a tenuous peace. The first part of S1 sees this fall apart, and Silco claims power in its place.
• I imagine that Piltover is deeply uninterested in letting the world know of its underground problems—but they’re obvious to anyone who lives on either side of the divide. Mobility between halves seems to be nigh-nonexistent. As collectives, all animosity is mutual.

Hextech is a thing and on the global rise, as exposited in early tags. Things are looking pretty good for Piltover! Until they very abruptly don’t.

In the S1 finale, Silco dies, and the Council building is bombed. Things rapidly go to shit in both places.

immediate aftermath

• The bombing kills 3 of 6 Council members, including Cassandra Kiramman (Caitlyn’s mother). Coincidentally, the leader of an adjacent nation, Noxus, has stationed herself in Piltover. The involvement of Ambessa Medarda, mother of surviving councilwoman Mel, is Important Information That Will Help Us Later.
• A statue of the 3 fallen is put up in [some central public location], and a public memorial is held. This is interrupted by a terrorist attack, courtesy one of Silco’s ex-affiliates, complete with hulking Shimmer-fueled suited-up man-monsters. It’s kind of a mess! No named casualties, if only for storytelling brevity, but people very much did get killed—on both sides, undercity and topside, public figures and private citizens.

shortly thereafter

• Caitlyn leads a strike team into Zaun, with three stated goals: “Locate Jinx, dismantle Shimmer, and neutralize any agents still loyal to Silco.” You know how the undercity is hazy and smogged-over at the best of times? There are vents keeping it breathable. The Kiramman legacy is behind these vents. To “clear the streets,” Caitlyn turns them off. Have a montage.
  • The toxic smog is called the Gray. It appears green. Funky storytelling choice.
• It’s unclear whether the Piltover public knows about this whole endeavor, but Zaun sure does! Without Silco as kingpin, the remaining gangs descend into violence against each other. We don’t see a ton of the general underground public, but we get more orphaned kids, and Jinx goes M.I.A. Have another montage. (Relevant bit ends about halfway through, when focus shifts to a specific stray child.)
• Eventually, Caitlyn and Vi find Jinx. (Other members of the strike team are sent back for this reunion; the only witnesses of the fight are the people involved. For all intel-gathering purposes, it’s a big question mark. However:) It fails. Jinx is neither captured nor killed. In the end, Gray spews right back up to Piltover, and Caitlyn returns alone.
  • Elsewhere, due to Reasons™, two remaining Councillors (actual savvy politician Mel Medarda, and hextech frontman Jayce Talis) disappear into literal thin air. No one knows what the fuck happened to either of them.
• In front of a huge crowd of both Piltovan elites and Noxian soldiers, the General calls for martial law, with Caitlyn at the forefront. As this was a very public scene (at least among Piltover’s guilds), here’s a clip; it cuts out a few shots but is more or less comprehensive. Yes, it takes Caitlyn a hot minute of nationalistic chest-thumping to finally step up.

And Then There’s a Timeskip

How long? Good question! The next scene we get is this montage. Between that and the rest of the season, here’s what I got:

• In the absence of any particular gang or other leader, a non-small portion of the undercity rallies around Jinx, who’s become a symbol of freedom. (The actual person remains completely absent.) Her image is everywhere anyway, between murals, wanted posters, and people dressing like her as a signal of “Jinxer” affiliation.
• This is driving Caitlyn quietly batshit. Noxian occupation continues, with the General closeby, as does police brutality—both to counter protests and at border stops. Violent interrogations? Detainment just for hair dye? You got ’em, boss! The new Kiramman crest is a common sight, and there’s at least one propaganda poster in the undercity.
• Far as I can tell, the vampire cape is worn for all public appearances. I say “far as I can tell” because we don’t actually see Caitlyn doing administrative leaderly busywork, in either public or private—but she does offhandedly mention a meeting with the mason’s guild, and context suggests it’s not a big deal. (They’re not thrilled about Noxian occupation, but like, what else is new.)
• As for Shimmer, it canonically doesn’t reappear much [if at all…?] after the defeat of the gang who seized it—which, at this point, was some time ago. There are still vast encampments of people whose lives were ravaged by it (and/or the spike of violence in general).
  • Later, this coalesces into a cult. Don’t… don’t worry about it. That doesn’t have to happen in this timeline.

okay but what’s up with that General and now the whole monster jail thing

• General: All signs point to Ambessa manipulating Caitlyn within an inch of her life. This is extremely not known. Ambessa’s aim is to use Piltover as a pawn in her own warmongering prospects, though the threat isn’t immediate.
  • I’ve already played the “yeah there’s some red people here for some reason” card, but the whole ulterior motive here can definitely be downplayed. To meld better with PtN lore, I’m thinking Noxus is still an independent-but-Piltover-affiliated nation, albeit not on the canon scale of an empire. Piltover was founded as a refuge from warfare and magic Mania, regardless.
• the whole monster jail thing: A (canonically-slightly-later) plotline that I’m pulling in early for drama, for sport. To incentivize these stubborn homosexuals to, if not work together, maaaybe keep in touch? at least a little bit??? TL;DR: The scientist who created Shimmer also made a man into a raging violent wolfbeast! The scientist got imprisoned, and the wolfbeast followed.
   The scientist, formerly known as Corin Reveck, seems content to work wherever he can just. do his unethical little heads-in-jars mortality experiment thing. (You may remember him from S1; he introduced Viktor, the guy with the terminal illness, to a vial of not-dying.) Canonically, Ambessa strikes a deal with him, and it all ties back to the cult shit. For our purposes? Who knows!
  • The plot gets tight around this point, so I’m not 100% sure how much the public knows about this dude and his experiments. I suspect basically nothing, seeing as he spends 90% of his screentime experimenting in a cave or wherever. Caitlyn is able to trace his identity through her family’s archives, which is framed as a Significant Reveal.
• Neither of these people, btw, have a damn thing to do with Jinx. She’s been fucking off elsewhere with a kid and a bug. Complete non-entity, far as anyone knows anywhere.

is piltover good?

• no <3

did you have a conclusion for any of this? Is that why these questions are being shoehorned in at the end?

• respectively: 1) Not really!; and 2) Yes!

is caitlyn kiramman a girlfailure?

• i ask myself this every single day.