What Is ‘Arcane,’ Netflix’s Biggest Show?

Video game adaptations are in vogue right now. While interpretations like Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) and The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) have dominated the box office, longform series like HBO’s The Last of Us (2023) and Amazon’s Fallout (2024) have taken the Emmys by storm, catching mainstream audiences up to the kinds of immersive, mature storytelling game have delivered for years. And there’s no sign of slowing down, with movies like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 looking to perform even better than its predecessors, and dozens of more adaptations in the pipeline across TV and film, including big names like God of War, Until Dawn, and Alan Wake.

But amid the video game adaptation arms race, one player has been quietly producing some of the best series in the game: Netflix. While others are going big on live action releases and family-friendly cinematic universes, Netflix has been more subtly catering to a more hardcore crowd with its lineup of animated shows that pull from source material that casual audiences may not know intimately.

Shows like Castlevania (2017) and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) aren’t just deep cuts on their respective franchise’s lore, remixed just enough to welcome newcomers, but they’re explicitly R-rated to boot.

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And while their many projects tend to vary in quality, there’s one that stands apart: the League of Legends adaptation, Arcane. The first season of Arcane, announced back in 2019 and airing in late 2021, is one of the most beloved adaptations in gaming history, doing justice to fans and newcomers alike by building upon the universe in which Riot Games‘ multiplayer game takes place, expanding on the personal stories of a few familiar characters.

Created by showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee in collaboration with Riot Games and French animation studio Fortiche, Arcane has been celebrated for its gripping story and dreamlike visuals, and true to its roots — being based on one of the biggest games on the planet — it’s also the expensive animated series ever produced. 

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Season Two of Arcane began airing on November 9, divided into three acts of three episodes each launching throughout the month. Despite the show’s buzz, it’s been confirmed that the second season will also be its last, making the whole affair short but sweet. Ahead of the finale, here’s everything you need to know about the show, from how it adapts the source material to how you can dive deeper into the lore after watching all episodes.

What is Arcane?

Arcane is an adult drama that leans into an aesthetic that marries science fantasy and steampunk. The story revolves around an emerging conflict between the stoic utopian city of Piltover and the oppressed underworld of Zaun. After losing their parents at the hands of Piltover enforcers, sisters Vi, voiced by Hailee Steinfeld (Hawkeye, Bumblebee) and Jinx, played by Ella Purnell (Fallout, Yellowjackets), are taken in by Vander, the leader of a central bar in Zaun who’s considered one of the most influential figures in the undercity streets.

As sisters grow older, a tip from an acquaintance leads the pair, alongside adopted brothers Mylo and Claggor to Piltover, where a mysterious penthouse is said to hold several valuable objects to sell in the blackmarket. Things go wrong, as the theft of some strange crystals leads to the explosion of the penthouse. Chaos rises further thanks to Silco, another prominent figure of the undercity who’s been working on a substance called Shimmer, a mutagen meant to turn people into weapons against Piltover. 

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The first season consists of nine episodes, and introduces a sprawling cast of characters pulled from the game, including Vi, Jinx, Caitlyn, Ekko, and many others. They’re at the heart of multiple conflicts, from the invention of magic-infused machinery with Hextech and its consequences to the increasing presence of Shimmer affecting those close to them.

Arcane season two picks up right where the first one left off, with Jinx becoming a resistance figure and Vi reevaluating her past choices in the face of an ever bigger conflict between Zaun and Piltover. 

The second season has a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to tie up its narrative threads as the second half of the finite duology. So far, the six current episodes have expanded on the main characters’ backstories, delving into flashbacks that provide context to some of their actions and fleshing out their personalities, as well as testing their resolve with both personal and external threats.

What is Arcane based on?

Arcane is based on Runeterra, the fictional world in which League of Legends takes place. League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), a subgenre of strategy games in which two teams compete against each other to overtake and destroy the enemy base. Part of League’s charm is its ever-expanding roster of colorful champions — now counting over 160 champions — each with its own abilities and unique play styles that must work together in tandem to win each match.

Vi, Jinx, Caitlyn Kiramman, Ekko, Jayce Talis, Viktor, Heimerdinger, and Singed are all existing characters in League. Riot released Ambessa Medarda in the game to line up with the second season, one of the prominent characters in the new episodes, to further increase the transmedia fusion. This list isn’t definitive; other characters present in the show are tied to spoilers. But it serves as an overview of how the show draws from the game — in conjunction with lore details about locations, gadgets, technologies, and more.

Since the release of the first season, the League of Legends community has been wondering where exactly the events and depictions of Arcane lie in regard to the game’s canon. For a while, the show drew from existing material and ran with it, telling its own story more than serving as a 1:1 replication of events of the game. It took liberties to tell more fledged stories of the characters and their homes. 

Initially, the stories depicted in Arcane felt inspired by League but not canonical, but that changed in 2023, when Riot confirmed the show as part of the game’s official lore. Being cemented as part of the narrative presented its own issues with continuity and inconsistencies between previous stories and events, which Riot has been slowly retconning over time in both League and the collectible card game Legends of Runeterra.

Despite being one of the most visually stunning and well produced adaptations ever, and garnering a massive following of gamers and non-gamers alike, the series isn’t without its controversies. Riot has faced multiple issues — a 2018 report by Kotaku detailed a culture of sexism at the game studio, followed by a lawsuit that was finalized in 2023, resulting in a payout to around 1,600 women. The studio responded with a third-party investigation, which was reviewed by Riot’s own Board of Directors in March 2021. In May 2024, Riot called it an “opportunistic lawsuit” that “negatively impacted Riot and our teams.”

The show’s popularity has, to a degree, masked some of the tumultuousness behind the scenes of the actual game. Additionally, in January 2024, Riot announced the layoff of 530 employees, followed by a second wave in October. While Arcane wasn’t directly affected, its success has become a shiny distraction for Riot to capture people’s attention, while the reality of the game’s ongoing development and company culture has been uglier.

Is Arcane a good adaptation?

The first season of Arcane arrived with a bang, and was the first streaming series to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 2022, as well as an Annie Award for Best General Audience Animated Television Broadcast Production. In 2021, it was Netflix’s #1 TV show across 52 countries across the globe.

But such success comes with a high cost. A report from Variety detailed a $250 million budget for the production of the 18 total episodes. Follow-up comments from Riot co-founder and chief product officer Marc Merrill and Arcane showrunner Christian Linke provided more insight about the figure, detailing that “character animation alone makes up about 80% of the budget” and that while it’s not a true reflection of the show’s budget due to associated costs such as marketing, it is a “reflection of the amount of effort that was put into this,” respectively. 

Arcane isn’t meant to replicate the world of League of Legends to a painstaking degree, but rather adapt and expand some of its stories and characters. Lore purists might have a hard time watching the show, but if you’re open to the idea of a different interpretation (or, better yet, don’t have any existing knowledge), Arcane is an excellent introduction to Runeterra’s tales that is unafraid of taking liberties to stand on its own.

The animation work, reminiscent of the Spider-Verse films, is vibrant and brimming with personality. Despite being rooted in a fantasy setting, there’s a high degree of physical and emotional realism masked behind the bright animation. A standout of this is the queer relationship between Vi and Caitlyn, which has become a popular ship in the fandom. Their relationship adds a layer of humanity that few other game adaptations have managed, while also critiquing season one for refusing to wholeheartedly commit to the existence of LGBTQIA+ characters in the show. Fortunately for the shippers, this relationship is explored further in the second season.

For anyone looking to dive deeper into the lore of Runeterra, there are a few options. First off there’s, well, League of Legends. The collaboration with the show has been even stronger for the second season, including related missions, new skins based on new character outfits in the story, a mini-game starring Jinx, a different map for one of the MOBA’s modes, and more. That being said, League can be quite the time-sink, and the player base has one of the most toxic communities in online games. Unless you have adamant patience and a friend group willing to tag along, League can be a difficult beast to tame.

Thankfully, that’s not all there is. Legends of Runeterra expands on the universe as a digital collectible card game inspired by Magic: The Gathering, and is also running a limited-time event featuring locations and characters from the show. Other games include Ruined King (2021), Hextech Mayhem (2021), Song of Nunu (2023), Convergence (2023), The Mageseeker (2023), and Bandle Tale (2024). 

Then, there’s 2XKO, a 2v2 fighting game inspired by Marvel vs. Capcom, scheduled to arrive in 2025. For fans of the series, that game will let players battle as Jinx and Ekko in more direct, dynamic ways than even League. Lastly, there are also a variety of books available like the official companion book League of Legends: Realms of Runeterra, released to commemorate the game’s tenth anniversary back in 2019.

Although writer Christian Linke confirmed that Arcane season 2 would be the last, there is an upside, with the showrunner calling Arcane “just the beginning” of the team’s “larger storytelling journey and partnership” with Fortiche. Regardless of what’s next, one thing is clear: Arcane ranks among the best video game adaptations ever, and stands out amid the current avalanche of releases as a perfect example of how to expand on the world of video games while driving people back to the source.