After three weeks of episode drops, Arcane: League of Legends ended with a bang. From start to finish, the show seeks to bring the tale of Piltover and Zaun to new and old fans alike with incredible animation and a unique flair that makes Arcane a great video game adaption without having o know about the game itself. While many of the characters seen in League of Legends already have their own histories and stories, Arcane seeks to flesh them out. As a result, the show ends up answering lingering questions fans have been wondering about for years.
Riot Games has given fans side stories and tons of lore information through updates to League of Legends and its champions, once even seeing a complete retooling of the world that makes up Runeterra to create more consistency. Across these updates, there have been many holes and gaps to fill in with theories, and Arcane provides context for some of them. Spoilers for Arcane: League of Legends ahead.
The Origins of Hextech and Shimmer
Many League of Legends fans should be familiar with the concepts of Hextech and Shimmer. Hextech has been a recurring theme for many champions, being the power source for magical weaponry. Alongside that, Shimmer is a drug used to amplify the user's abilities, but at the cost of them having to suffer intense side effects. While these two concepts have been in League for years, and have been associated with several champions, there's been hardly any backstory to speak of.
Arcane takes these concepts and gives fans a further look into how they work by making them staples of the plot - including going into how they were made. League of Legends champions Jayce and Viktor are shown to be the creators of Hextech, and a Zaun champion known as Singed created Shimmer. While the information presented in Arcane finally expands on these two pieces of League of Legends lore, it may debatably only apply to the world seen in the episodic series, as it changes a fair bit about the game's established lore - namely Jayce and Viktor's relationship.
Jinx's "Chemically Altered" Condition
As one of the major stars of Arcane: League of Legends, Jinx gets a fair bit of focus. Despite being one of League's most well-known characters, Jinx has always had a few holes in her lore and backstory. One part of Jinx's lore that has gone unexplained has been a fan theory that Jinx is a Shimmer addict. One of her in-game voice lines deals with her calling herself "chemically altered," and the series has never gone into detail about what that means until now.
In Arcane: League of Legends Act 3, Jinx is nearly killed in a battle against Ekko, and she was rushed to Singed by her adoptive father. Singed gives Jinx what appears to be an operation similar to a blood transfusion, specifically injecting Shimmer into her veins. The procedure saves Jinx's life, but also leaves lasting effects on her, thus giving her the "chemically altered" status she's spoken about, as well as her striking purple eyes.
League of Legends' Vi and Jinx Are Sisters
Arcane answers further questions of just what happened to Jinx beyond how she got her eye color and strength. One of the biggest plot points in the show deals with the story of yet another champion, Vi, and her sister Powder. The first few episodes deal with them trying to survive in Zaun as children, but a bomb Powder creates leads the sisters to part ways. When Vi reunites with Powder, she's grown up to be Jinx. Not only does this give Jinx a name before she became the gun-loving terror many fans already knew, but it finally confirms a fan theory that's been around since Jinx was first added to League of Legends.
When Jinx was teased, she left graffiti all over the official champion web pages for Vi and Caitlyn, making fun of them and their abilities. A few voice lines between the three implied they all knew each other without specifying how, and two lines teased that Vi and Jinx could have been sisters without saying they were. Riot Games seems to know just how long fans have been waiting for their sibling bond to be confirmed, as part of its RiotX Arcane event saw two stories added to the Legends of Runeterra card game featuring Jinx and Vi. It shows the two talking about being sisters candidly, sharing that close relationship in a proper League of Legends game.
Arcane has definitely filled more empty spaces in League of Legends' history with more fun tidbits for fans to catch. However, where it has answered questions, it also serves to raise new ones as fans analyze and speculate with what the show has given them. The nine episodes have left themselves open to interpretation, which invites viewers to take what they will.
That works in League of Legends' favor, as Arcane has added to given lore and changed it up in various ways. While it's questionable if these events apply to the world of the games, things like Vi and Jinx's new Legends of Runeterra stories definitely confirm some of it. Exactly what has made it in is up to fans for now, which invites them to ask questions and come up with theories all over again.
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