How Arcane Beautifully Represented (Then Fumbled) Its Diverse Women

Under the creative direction of Fortiche and Riot Games, the first season of League of Legends’ Arcane premiered in 2021 to thunderous applause and critical success for the complexity of its story, the vibrant animation styles, and the nuance of its characters. The heart and soul of this story centers around two sisters, Jinx and Vi, and compassionately fleshes out their often messy and complex bond. But beyond these sisters, Arcane uniquely decided to make intersectionality and diversity of experience the centerpiece of the show’s storytelling instead of neglecting that richness or reducing it to a footnote.

As a queer, BIPOC child of the 90s who has also definitively navigated neurodivergent waters, a younger me could not conceive of watching a show like Arcane. I’ve found that it’s easy to find examples of media in which I can see a sliver of myself in a character, but not enough to feel seen and heard, and not enough to where others could begin to understand me in a way that I want to be.

Good representation matters. Research has shown that the more you are exposed to different identities and people who are different from you, the more likely you are to identify with them and see them as human. This is the core of Arcane’s first season, which introduces the audience to disabled characters, LGBTQIA+ characters, BIPOC characters, characters of different ethnicities and economic classes. Through these lenses, the viewer can explore how all of these identities interact in the overarching conflict between Arcane’s setting in the cities of Zaun and Piltover, and how and why characters make choices with respect to their circumstances and identities.

In the fictional world of Runeterra, where Arcane’s Zaun and Piltover are set, we are also given glimpses into a world where social norms and constructs that are seemingly at odds in our world can coexist. For example, Vi is a loving big sister who is motivated by care and compassion for her family and all of Zaun – traditionally “feminine” assignations – but she addresses conflicts in very physical ways with her fighting skills and gauntlets, or in a “masculine manner.” These two aspects do not cancel each other out; Vi exists in a space where she can be nurturing and physically tough without being reduced to a stereotype or caricature. Vi is also queer, and her expression of this aspect of her identity is also treated with the nuance that it deserves as she navigates through incredibly complex situations, including a queer relationship with someone of a different class, worldview, and status of privilege.

Vi’s sister, Jinx, is also complexly portrayed. In the main League of Legends game, Jinx is more or less a manic pixie dream girl – giving “sexy” and “unhinged” ala Harley Quinn without much substance but a lot of sexualization. Arcane took on the challenge of what was a bad trope in the main canon and gave Jinx a full backstory, and it is now lauded as one of the most empathetic perceptions of trauma and mental illness in recent animation. Jinx is humanized by the show, which depicts her good days and bad days. She is a genius innovator who can be pretty upbeat and bubbly, but she also struggles with abandonment issues, paranoia, and hallucinations. She is not any less or more for her struggles, but the viewer gets to simply explore her reality with careful consideration.

And these are just the main characters! We also have Sevika, the one-armed second-in-command to Silco, the arguably most powerful Chembaron in Zaun, who is just as pragmatic and nuanced as her employer is. Caitlyn, the Enforcer from one of the most prominent families in Piltover, comes from an ultra-wealthy and privileged background but cares enough about other people to begin moving beyond those lenses to understand Zaunites and their plight.

And rounding out the main cast, we have two of my personal favorites: Mel Medarda, a whip-smart, empathetic, and beautiful councilwoman who is ambitious to make a name for herself without being narratively punished for being a beautiful black woman in a position of power, and her mother, Ambessa Medarda, an absolutely enthralling war general whose physicality and demeanor owns every space she is in, yet embodies motherhood in the fierce way she incorporates family. Mel and Ambessa represent another complex familial dynamic on the show as the mother-daughter duo navigates massive differences in how they interact with the world, which shapes a lot of their conflicts.

All of these characters are compelling in their own unique ways, which is why it was a disappointment to see how season two fumbled the absolutely amazing groundwork laid out in the first season. To be very clear, I think a key reason for this may lie in the massive downsizing Riot did in January 2024 with 530 employees (or 11% of all global staff), leaving the Arcane side in a precarious situation as only three writers were rumored to have carried the burden of the script through the ending of the show. This is something that became clearer as season two unraveled in three parts that left more loose ends and out-of-character choices that completely stomped on the painstakingly laid groundwork of the first season.

Without going into too many spoilers, the emphasis on Vi’s relationship with Caitlyn absolutely destroyed who she was as a character and left a bad taste in the mouth as she narratively excused a dictator for oppressing her people (and the fact that Caitlyn can choose to use her wealth and privilege in this manner and then discard it when it suits her also embodies some bad ideas about the privileges of oppressors). Then, the choice of sex scene that attempted to be an exploration of sexuality and autonomy fell along the lines of fanservice instead.

Additionally, the bittersweet dynamic between Vi and Jinx – the initial focal points of the show – fell flat at the end in a way that left both arcs feeling unfinished and far more into the trope-y territory that was so masterfully avoided in the first season. Mel Medarda got a cool power upgrade along with traumatic knowledge about her own origins and her place in her mother’s life, but neither was addressed in a meaningful way that let us know how she was dealing with those changes. While this made for stunning visuals and flashy battle sequences, it was absolutely at the cost of her richness as a character.

Arcane, as a representative piece of media, still very much matters. The groundbreaking strides of the first season present a plethora of amazing characters who feel like real people – who have perspectives, feelings, and experiences that are unique even within themselves but still so human to resonate with many viewers far beyond the world of Runeterra. Season one showed us that there is a place for us, that people like us belong in the world, and that our existence on its own gives us the validity to move within it. Season two may have thrown a lot of that out, but if you felt something joyful in your experience by engaging with this work as I did, then you shouldn’t have to give that joy up even as we acknowledge the issues that persist.