A number of fans felt that Arcane season 2, particularly the last act, felt quite rushed, and showrunner Christian Linke has offered his thoughts on the complaints.
Look, Arcane is a very pretty show to look at, but I think you’d be kidding yourself a bit if you didn’t think the story felt a bit all over the place in the second (and final) season. There were way too many plotlines going on, that really needed at minimum an extra season to build towards. Now, in an interview with GamesRadar, showrunner Christian Linke has responded to fan complaints over the pacing. “When people watch season 1, there’s an aspect to the pacing… season 2 is a bit different in that regard,” Linke said.
“I respect that people express that [opinion]. You’re right – the vast majority of the audience seems to be happy. But there are people who say, ‘It’s rushed. What’s going on?'” As GamesRadar notes, a big part of the appeal for many fans of the first season was the various characters’ relationships and how they unfolded over the course of the season, but in this one a lot of it kind of sped over just to get to the end. Linke admits that the team “did approach season 2 a little bit differently in how we structured the episodes because we wanted, as creatives, to take these bets [and] take these swings.
“It seems like for most people that works really well. There’s some people who specifically wanted to see the continuation of season one in that regard and are disappointed. I’m not happy that they feel that way, but I respect that.” There’s also the issue of having even more characters from that specific League of Legends universe that didn’t even make it in, so as much as there were complaints about their being too much going on, Linke also recognised that some wanted even more.
“There are people who say it’s too rushed, too much going on. There’s also the flip side. I see like, ‘Where’s Camille? She’s part of Piltover. Where’s Blitzcrank? Where’s Twitch? Why didn’t you include them?’ On one side, you have people saying it’s too much. On the other, you have people saying we didn’t do enough and we did our best… It’s hard. We’re doing our best to include the right amount of story.”
As mentioned, I really do think Arcane needed at least another season, but you can see why it didn’t when you see how much both seasons cost. Plus, it sounds like there’s plenty more on the way from Riot on the multimedia front anyway, so I guess they needed to wrap this one up any which way.
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