Arcane’s War Has A Deeper Meaning Than You Realized

Careful! This article contains spoilers for Arcane.

Just below the surface, Arcane is all about family, and about how someone’s truest family is the one they choose, rather than the one they’re born with. With a new and different style of animation, Fortiche Studios and Riot Games’ Arcane tells a skillfully woven story with the strongest themes running through it at every level. While the plot shows a burgeoning conflict brewing between two sister cities, so too each character’s story reveals their own troubled relationship with their close family.

Set in the League of Legends universe, Arcane explores the tension between two vastly different cities. The topside city of Piltover is utopian, a lofty home to aristocrats and academics, while the undercity of Zaun is home to rogues and underhanded dealings in the thick and toxic air. While the council of Piltover technically governs both, the real rulers of Zaun are the crime lords and villains of Arcane. Time and prejudice have split the people of Zaun and Piltover far apart in ideals, despite once being founded as a single city for mutual protection. Like estranged family members, the leaders on both sides now work behind the scenes to hold an uneasy truce, and a similar unease is carried by each character with their own family.

The central theme of Arcane can be summed up with the often misunderstood saying, “blood is thicker than water.” The expression is usually taken to mean that one should value family over friends, but the full saying is, “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” which carries the opposite meaning. In essence, the family someone chooses is more important to them than the family into which they were born — a theme which underpins all of Arcane. Characters share deep familial bonds with others to whom they have no direct relation, while often having difficult relationships with their actual blood relatives. Over and over, characters choose their found family over their biological family. Jinx chooses her adopted father, Silco, over her sister Vi. The councilor Mel defaces a painting of her homeland as she chooses her found family in Piltover over allegiance to her mother. Each time, it’s shown that their chosen family are the ones who give them the strength to keep going.

How Arcane Is About Siblings

Arcane’s core story is about the sisters, Jinx and Vi, exploring sibling relationships and what causes them to break down. The opening act shows how standing together benefits them both. Jinx (known as Powder when she was still a child) gains courage from Vi, while Vi is inspired to protect Powder from harm. At every turn, it’s only when Powder finds herself alone that bad things happen to her. Most heartbreakingly, it’s when Powder believes that Vi has abandoned her for good that she finds herself on a path towards villainy, owning the name Jinx that was derogatorily bestowed upon her.

Over the course of Arcane, the problems faced by Vi and Jinx mirror the story of Zaun and Piltover. They start off inseparable, keeping each other close for protection, but through a series of worsening misunderstandings, they end up independent of each other. Though they may both try to reconcile their differences as the story progresses, they’re forced to face one uncomfortable fact—they no longer understand each other. By the end, they’ve grown so far apart that it’s Vi’s attempt at reconciliation that drives the final wedge between them.

While Vi and Jinx are the main focus, a similar pattern is echoed elsewhere through the story, most notably between two of the most powerful figures in Zaun: Vander and Silco. The full backstory between the characters is never divulged, but they considered each other to be brothers once; until, once again, their conflicting ideas passed the tipping point. For his entire time in the first season of Arcane, Vander never forgives himself for betraying Silco, but the two end up as arch-enemies because of it. Again, one sibling failed another and they both paid the price for it.

What Parents Will Do To Protect Their Children

The theme of parenthood is also scattered throughout Arcane and, more often than not, adoptive parents are given greater weight than biological ones. The story’s prologue sees Vi and Powder, lost and orphaned, being adopted by Vander. In a single scene, this sets a rule which Arcane never strays from. A parental figure will drop everything to care for their children. Vander sees the two girls, stops fighting, and immediately carries them both to safety.

The other main father figure in Arcane is Silco, the crime lord who adopts Powder after she’s separated from Vi. Growing up and becoming Jinx, she becomes completely devoted to him and, while their relationship is clearly a toxic one, he genuinely does care for her too. Echoing Vander’s earlier actions, when Jinx is injured, Silco’s sole priority becomes saving her life — though he does so by terrible means.

This underscores the real purpose behind the theme of parenthood in Arcane. Parents will go to great and sometimes terrible lengths to protect their children. That those lengths may have monstrous consequences becomes quite literal when Vander uses the serum, Shimmer, becoming a monster to ensure that Vi gets to safety. Protecting his family is his strongest motivation, and the most important lesson he teaches Vi.

Conflicts Between Parents And Children in Arcane

An important facet of the theme of parenthood is what happens when parents and children have conflicting ideals in the universe of Arcane. Some parental figures, like Silco, are shown to be open to change, and this is one of the reasons Jinx cares for him. Others, meanwhile, are far more rigid, such as the parents of Caitlyn in Piltover, whose staunch attitudes actively hold her back. Rigidity and resistance to change always has negative consequences for the parents of Arcane. The stubbornness of Caitlyn’s parents is what causes her to disobey them. Mel was banished by her own mother after refusing to condone her unyielding attitude. As authority figures, the parents make decisions which determine the future, causing tension if their vision doesn’t match with their children’s.

All of this feeds back into the central plot at a key moment with the scientist, Heimerdinger. A small furry creature called a yordle, Heimerdinger is over 300 years old and was one of those responsible for founding the city of Piltover. As a member of the council, he holds authority to guide the city’s future. But his resistance to the changing world around him, while well-intentioned, ends up as his undoing. The scientist Jayce, formerly his own mentee, addresses him as “the true father of Piltover,” before voting to have him removed from the council, catalyzing the events of the story’s climax.

The theme of family is woven tightly into Arcane, with the core message that your family are who you choose them to be, and that in times of need, they can be your greatest source of strength. With its thematic coherence drawing strong praise from critics, Fortiche Studios have outdone themselves with the strong writing in Arcane, and season 2 will certainly contain plenty more to look forward to.

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