Iconic League of Legends Champions come to life in Netflix’s Arcane. Viewers get to see the turmoil between Piltover and Zaun unfold and watch the genesis of prominent champions like Caitlyn and Vi as they slowly become similar to the versions of themselves known in League over time. Arcane has been praised for its emotional weight, which is regularly highlighted through music.
Game Rant recently spoke with Arcane season 2 executive music producer Alexander Seaver, a prominent composer in both seasons of the show, about the songs on the Netflix show that highlight prominent storytelling moments and the importance of season 2’s large track number.
Arcane’s Second Season Brought About Big Changes
When reflecting back on the success of Arcane‘s first season, Seaver mentioned that getting artists to work on the show was a challenge in and of itself since the TV show didn’t properly exist yet. It was hard to explain the idea of taking the artists’ songs and working with them to put them into an, at the time, unknown animation. Ultimately, of course, the show and music would go on to be considered a classic in the making by critics.
With that success behind them, Seaver mentioned that the exact opposite of season 1’s struggle arose. Several artists asked if there was anything they could do for season 2 and said they’d be completely down to be a part of Fortiche’s project. As great as this was when it came to allowing the musical segments of Arcane to thrive between seasons after its use of musical storytelling was highly praised, it was a matter of making sure these moments stuck out for storytelling value rather than including more music for the sake of it. As Seaver explained to Game Rant,
There are a couple of changes. The first thing I want to point out—I’m so curious to see what people think when they see the show because we have twice as many songs this time—is that we wanted to make sure that the genesis of how we created these was exactly the same as season 1, which is about supporting the storytelling. We don’t have flashy music moments to be like, “Check out this song that we’re going to promote.” Every bit of music is in there because it supports the storytelling, and it’s what our team, like Christian and Fortiche, want.
Many of the songs in Arcane are written to match animations and help tell the story on-screen through music rather than have the show be produced the other way around. This meant Seaver and the other musicians working on the hit show looked at how the story unfolded, even in a rough form, and took that for inspiration behind the tracks they’d create down to even the beats per minute.
It’s important to remember that many of the songs in Arcane exist for the characters and their perspectives, even as season 2 has its soundtrack stuffed to the brim. For Seaver, season 2 led to many opportunities for him to explore Caitlyn, where season 1 kept him inside Jinx’s head for the most part. These songs and their presence in the animation are so important that Seaver admits to even making last-minute changes before the season’s release. It’s an intricate, but worthwhile process that requires an understanding team, and that’s exactly what Arcane has in its corner according to Seaver.
There’s like a million ways that this could not work, and for whatever reason, it does. I think it really is the people. It’s just the team, like the spirit is out of this world. Everybody’s in service of the same thing and everybody really respects each other too, so it’s like feedback flows in such a positive way. I just can’t say enough about how great that family is that’s working on it.
Between his many projects at Riot Games such as “Legends Never Die” and “Phoenix,” Arcane sits as such a special project to Seaver. In fact, he avoided watching the final animation that he didn’t supervise himself, instead preferring to see how the story unfolds just as he did for season 1. Arcane has won many hearts through its music and characters, both internally within the project and out, and it’s Seaver’s hope that fans enjoy the rest of the musical journey as it releases throughout the month.
- Release Date
- November 6, 2021
- Cast
- Hailee Steinfeld , Ella Purnell , Kevin Alejandro , Katie Leung , jason spisak , Toks Olagundoye , Harry Lloyd , JB Blanc , Reed Shannon , Mick Wingert
- Seasons
- 2
- Franchise(s)
- League of Legends