After whetting fans’ appetites with a teaser back in January, there’s a full-length trailer for the second season of Arcane. The animated Netflix show explores the backstories behind some of the many champions in Riot Games’ League of Legends.
Sisters Vi and Jinx remain at the show’s core. Their conflict acts as a foil for the cities of Piltover and Zaun, which are now locked in a deadly conflict following the closing events of season one. Vi is now part of the effort to capture her sibling and destroy the dangerous substance Shimmer. Fans of the MOBA will recognize champions such as Caitlyn and Ekko returning from Arcane‘s first season, while it appears Singed and Warwick will make their show debut when the new season drops this November. Check it out for yourself:
This new season sets up plenty of stunning visuals and compelling drama, but the second batch of episodes will also be the last for Arcane. This show “is just the beginning of our larger storytelling journey and partnership with the wonderful animation studio that is Fortiche,” Arcane co-creator Christian Linke said in a League of Legends dev update. “From the very beginning, since we started working on this project, we had a very specific ending in mind, which means the story of Arcane wraps up with this second season. Arcane is just the first of many stories that we want to tell in Runeterra,” he added.
With a clear end point in view, at least the show will get a proper ending instead of an unsatisfactory cliffhanger. The ongoing creative partnership is also a nice silver lining for fans. Considering League of Legends now has more than 160 champions in-game and in-the-works, that’s a whole lot of story fodder to explore.
Arcane won acclaim both from people who had no prior experience with the MOBA, as well as impressing much of League of Legends’ existing international fan base when it debuted on Netflix in November 2021. The show was rewarded with four Emmys in 2022. It was the first show from a streaming network to be honored with the award for outstanding animated program.