Rewrites aren’t uncommon in the television world, especially when it comes to a show with as many moving parts as Arcane, but one of the series’ lead writers says they’ve been sitting on some of the show’s final scenes, mostly unchanged, for six whole years.
In an interview with Gamesradar+, Arcane writer and producer Amanda Overton explains that the production team behind the Netflix animated series “are really big fans of efficient storytelling” and “only like to say or show things once, we really like to show things rather than say them if we can.” That laser focus also meant that the Arcane team knew roughly where it was headed years ago.
“We wrote the end scenes, versions of them, six years ago,” Overton says. “And that Vi-Jinx scene, the very last scene between them, is nearly the same as when we wrote it six years ago. We always kind of knew where we were going. And we knew the kind of moments that were important to us to show, and I think that’s the joy of Arcane – it’s really the kind of story that can expand the more you watch it, because it’s so densely layered, there is so much in there.”
“And the more you engage with the fans, the more you see,” she continues. “There’s things that I see every time I watch that the artists put in. It’s the kind of story that expands the more you engage with it, and for us, we just think that’s the kind of storytelling we want to do – something that people want to think more about, want to spend more time with after it’s over.”
Overton’s comments come after fans have heatedly speculated that Arcane’s second and final season was rushed out – claims showrunner Christian Linke responded to in a 500-word social media response. “It would have been great to have more time to work on this second season, or extra time to add to the episodes, but we didn’t have it,” Linke said, before noting the team had been “EXTREMELY lucky to get these absolutely insane budgets from Riot to produce Arcane. We all feel incredibly lucky. NOBODY ELSE gets these types of budgets. Please don’t forget that.”