Arcane co-creator and showrunner Christian Linke has issued a lengthy statement on Season 2 after some fans criticized it for not feeling complete.
The response also comes after Linke said that in “Arcane Afterglow” the Jayce/Viktor ending feels unresolved to him and they were not given the time they need to flesh out that story more.
I’ve said that Arcane could’ve had a third season, and I feel that the third season could’ve focused on the Jayce/Viktor story arc.
Anyway, as the fans started running wild with Linke’s comments, he shared the following statement on Reddit to clear things up.
“Some theories here a bit too far out there.
“No, we didn’t ask Fortiche to produce a 1h30 final episode. It’s quite the opposite, our scripts are always shorter than what Fortiche ends up proposing in the story board phase. We wanna let them get inspired and roam free, so we can then reel it in while also allowing for the magical moments to find themselves.
“It’s a tight creative collaboration, not some sort of ‘alright vendor company, do your work, achieve the impossible, but do it quickly!’ — I consider many of the people at Fortiche to be some of my closest friends. I find it disappointing that people suggest these things.
“No, we didn’t get ‘corporate greed’ pressure or anything.
“However, yes, there are always constraints, both in budget and time. That’s part of our job as creatives, to work within those constraints. Constraints are NORMAL, and they were always generous, and I always had final say on anything creative. But they do exist. They also existed during Season 1.
“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. For a number of reasons. Budget being one.
“We have 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.
“Time being the other constraint. There’s a release window that a massive amount of people work towards, not just at Fortiche, but also at Riot on different games, at Netflix, brand partners.
“Even key talent that works on the show that, simply put, is getting tired cranking away at this incredibly long season and project over multiple years. Don’t forget that at the end of the day, this is just a collective of human beings, of people.
“I would assume that there is no other TV show that has taken as long as Arcane to produce two seasons, without any pauses. Arcane is unrivaled in sheer scope of high fidelity animation. I don’t wanna use any of these things as an excuse, but, yeah… this work demands a lot on a human level.
“Our Season 2 is amazing. We have made you feel more than you’ve ever felt when watching animated characters.
“It’s not perfect. You don’t take these types of hefty swings and expect that everything wraps up perfectly with a neat bow tie. It grows and evolves in its own way, and it becomes what it becomes.
“Has any TV series ever successfully stuck the landing with this many main characters, time travel, supernatural abilities, technological inventions, fantasy world stakes, high concepts, complex relationships and global expectations? I actually don’t know. Would be quite curious to know if folks can think of any, so I can study them.”
I do get why some fans are upset, at the same time the creative team did manage to tell a great story. I also understand why they could’ve expanded on certain elements of the story. In the end, though. They got to tell the story they wanted to tell.
What did you think about how Arcane ended?
