What Happened At The End Of Arcane?

The Netflix show Arcane has finally come to an end, and with it, the stories of Piltover and Zaun. While there are plenty of tales left to tell in Runeterra, the one about Vi and Jinx is over, and with it, several stories have ended or just begun to surface.

The two seasons of Arcane didn’t just cover the lives of two sisters, but also the woes of two cities, the invention of Hextech, and the might of nations like Noxus. The ending covered more plots than anyone expected, so if a few things flew over your head, we are here to explain it all.

Spoilers For The Show Below!

The Story Of Arcane

Arcane follows the stories of several characters, but it can be roughly divided into three parts: the conflict between Piltover and Zaun, the creation of Hextech, and the turbulent influence of Noxus.

At first, these stories seem to be loosely connected, until they converge in an ending that resolves them all.

Piltover And Zaun

Piltover is known as the City of Progress, where technological marvels are created every day. Zaun works as the slums of that city, filled with warring gangs and substance abuse, with people barely managing to make a day-to-day living.

The show follows the lives of two sisters, Vi and Powder, as they grow up in the streets of Zaun. After many hardships, the sisters split up, with the strong and blunt Vi joining up with Caitlyn (an enforcer from Piltover), while the clever but disturbed Powder becomes Jinx, the right-hand woman of the gangster Silco.

After many back and forths between the sisters, Jinx ends blowing up the center of government of Piltover, killing Caitlyn’s mother in the process. There seemed to be no going back after that, until a common issue brings them back together: their father, Vander, ends up transformed into a werewolf (Warwick in League of Legends).

This mirrors the conflict between Piltover and Zaun, where neither city can see eye to eye due to their prejudices, and the painful memories of past aggressions. At the end of the story, they join forces to deal with a common enemy, made up of Noxians and Hextech robots.

The Creation Of Hextech

Among the many scientists of Piltover, few match the combined power of Jayce and Viktor.

Jayce is an idealist obsessed with the arcane, a magical force that only a gifted few can control, while Viktor is a physically weak man that wants to use science to overcome his shortcomings.

Jayce had a meeting with a mage when he was young, and that mage gifted him a rune. Said rune became the basis of his theory to control the arcane, but only when he joined forces with Viktor did they manage to break the code, creating Hextech, a way for everyone to channel the arcane.

After prolonged use, however, Hextech becomes volatile and hazardous to human health. Jayce’s mentor, Heimerdinger, advises him to destroy the Hextech research, but just when he is about to announce his decision, both him and Viktor end up caught in Jinx’s attack against Piltover.

Jayce uses a Hextech core to heal Viktor, turning the scientist into something closer to a machine than a man.

Viktor no longer wants to destroy Hextech, but to use it to evolve humanity to new heights, while Jayce ends up trapped in a possible future where Piltover is destroyed by this forced evolution.

The Noxian Invasion

At first, the influence of the nation of Noxus is subtle, with Warlord Ambessa Medarda arriving at Piltover to see her daughter, Mel. Mel Medarda manages a lot of wealth in Piltover, and is the one founding the research on Hextech, but she has never had a close relationship with her mother.

Ambessa, in reality, is looking for a weapon to take back to Noxus, since there is some civil unrest there due to the Black Rose, a shadowy organization that pulls the political strings of the nation. Ambessa ends up finding her weapon in Hextech, rallying Viktor to her side and planning on taking Piltover by force, combining the forces of her army with Viktor’s evolved humans.

The Ending Of Arcane

The many plot threads of Arcane join together for the final battle, with some resolutions being far simpler than others.

We haven’t mentioned everything that happens in the show, like
the story of Echo
, since it has little relevance to the ending beyond bringing
a time-altered Hextech core
to the battle.

Vi, Jinx, And The Cities

Both Vi and Jinx, just like the cities of Piltover and Zaun, leave their differences behind to fight the Noxians and the Hextech robots/evolved humans. Their werewolf father, Vander, has been ‘evolved’ as well, hence why they have to fight him.

Their ending is simple: the good guys win, but through many sacrifices. Jinx dies protecting Vi, bringing their story to a close with a final act of love.

Caitlyn and Vi end up together, forming a new government that includes people from Zaun so they can work together in the future.

Viktor And Jayce

The most complicated ending to understand is that of Jayce and Viktor, since it seems to bring up time travel and multiverses seemingly out of nowhere. The easiest way to explain it is by going through the events chronologically, although time isn’t exactly a line in Arcane.

When Jayce was a child, he was saved from a blizzard by a mage; that mage was a grown-up Viktor, who came from an alternate future where he already had a life with Jayce and ended up touched by the arcane.

Viktor visited this point in time often, always gifting the young Jayce a different rune, so his research could go one way or the other.

The Jayce we follow then meets with Viktor and creates Hextech, but once the Hextech core gets unstable, it transports Jayce to an alternate timeline.

This isn’t the future of the current timeline, but a different universe altogether, whose Jayce received a different rune when he was a child.

When Heimerdinger and Echo travel to their own separate universe, they seem to do so by inhabiting their timeline-doubles. It isn’t known why Jayce travels in a different way.

With knowledge of this future (the one where Piltover is destroyed), Jayce becomes obsessed with stopping Viktor, who in turn becomes obsessed with forced evolution.

Their fight seems to be going the same way it did in the alternate future Jayce saw, until Echo disrupts Viktor’s forced evolution with his own Hextech core.

This makes Viktor witness this alternate future through the eyes of Jayce, as well as seeing his alternate self (the original Viktor that gave Jayce the rune), which makes him snap out of his obsession. He tries to use Jayce’s rune to undo what he has done, with Jayce himself offering to help.

The two scientists end up disappearing into a strange blip, seemingly leaving this reality and stopping the forced evolution. It isn’t clear where they went, but they seem to have ascended to a higher state of being, either as a single entity, or as two separate ones.

It’s possible that the old Viktor is, in fact, that combination formed from Viktor and Jayce.

The Future Of Noxus

Parallel to the whole Hextech story is the invasion of Noxus, or at least of the Noxian forces led by Ambessa Medarda.

The might of her army seems overall unchallenged by the efforts of Piltover and Zaun, with the Warlord having a final confrontation against her daughter Mel and Caitlyn.

This final confrontation sees the Noxian forces not interfere, likely due to respect of the duel taking place (although it’s two against one), and Ambessa constantly has the upper hand either way. Mel tries to use her newfound magical abilities against her mother, but Ambessa has runic protection against such tricks.

Caitlyn manages to take the protection off, letting Mel trap Ambessa in a Black Rose interdimensional prison. Mel uses this chance to strike against the Black Rose representative, but Ambessa dies in the confrontation.

While a bit confusing, it seems that Mel was only pretending to be working with the Black Rose, using them to bring her mother down. Mel’s own magic isn’t all that aggressive, after all, focusing more on shields and on dispelling magical effects done by other people.

The series ends with Mel leaving with the Noxian forces, who now follow her seemingly due to her inheriting the title of Warlord.

There are also images of a raven exploring the Hextech corpses and then flying with the Noxian ships, clearly hinting at a future involving Swain from League of Legends.