Arcane fans have noticed a heart-wrenching detail about Powder and Ekko’s “choppy” dance scene in season 2 – and well, we’ll never be the same again.
Episode 7, titled ‘Pretend Like It’s the First Time’, catches up with Ekko (Reed Shannon), Jayce (Kevin Alejandro), and Heimerdinger (Mick Wingert) after their bizarre experience in the Hex Vault. Turns out, the Anomaly spat them all out into parallel universes; Jayce ends up in some post-apocalyptic wasteland while Ekko and Heimerdinger end up in one that’s actually kind of nice…
With Hextech never having been invented, Mylo, Claggor, Benzo, and Vander are still alive and Powder hasn’t been corrupted by conflict, Silco, and shimmer. Vi, it’s revealed though, was killed when they tried to rob Jayce’s apartment. In an effort to return to their timeline, Ekko and Heimerdinger team up with an unknowing Powder (Ella Purnell) to create a wild rune and invent a time reversal device, which Heimerdinger “upgrades” while Ekko and Powder go off to enjoy a party.
At the get-together, the pair let their hair down on the dancefloor, in a stunning sequence set to Stromae’s ‘Ma Meilleure Ennemie”. The animation is deliberately jerky, a stylistic choice that viewers claimed was “because it’s supposed to be from Ekko’s memories, and people tend to remember things in snapshots.”
“Don’t touch me I’m crying again,” said one fan, later pointing out an even more emotional interpretation of the visuals: “As if it’s sad enough that the choppy animation is to mimic Ekko’s memories, but this is apparently rendered in 4fps to represent the 4 seconds of Ekko’s timeloop limit? THE [ARCANE] ART DIRECTION TEAM DESERVES ALL THE ACCOLADES!!!”
“This 4fps scene is a reference to the 4 sec time reversion but it also feels a lot like Ekko’s desperate wish to stop time – ‘do you ever wish you could just stay in one moment?’ and ties back to his promise to never forget it, even when the memories become frames,” tweeted another.
“The interesting thing about the Ekko and Powder dance is if you slow it down and zoom in a bit you can see the Arcane fandom on their knees crying,” said a third.
Ekko dips out of the celebration and sees Heimerdinger putting the finishing touches on the aforementioned device. The professor hurries “the lad” into the machine and sets it up, initially making out they were both going to travel in it. Ekko gets a shock, though, when Heimerdinger nips out of the device, plugs in a power cable, and vanishes, as Ekko is sent back to his own timeline.
Arcane is streaming now on Netflix. For a more in-depth look at how it all wrapped up, check out our breakdown of the Arcane season 2 ending, or scroll through our picks of the best Netflix shows for some further viewing inspiration.