#but they've been ripping the teeth from it's lore every chance they get to make it more marketable

[bells-of-black-sunday]

Fair warning, I'm about to bitch and whine about A.rcane below, because I have finally watched all of it even though I basically knew everything about it:

Tl;dr: A.rcane works best as it's own universe separate from L.eague and should be treated that way. Kind of like how the m.arvel movies are a part of m.arvel cannon, but are their own timeline. I personally think R.iot is showing how money hungry they are again by trying to force A.rcane to be this big reboot of L.eague's cannon, because even within it's own universe it makes no sense and works best as a fun fantasy narrative that you don't think too hard about.

Honestly, the second season is so much worse than the first and I imagine once the hype wears off people are going to come to that conclusion as well. The pacing was so bad to the point that the story became near impossible to follow at times, a lot of character motivations utterly fell apart towards the end especially. Going to go through it by what I had issues with:

A.mbessa who honestly became kind of an idiot and only served as a plot device to get V.iktor from point A to point B. Yeah she wanted weapons, but my god you have to treat her like an actual child to act like she wouldn't know that V.iktor was just going to rapture everyone.

E.cho was severely under utilized all season until literally the final 3 eps and I'm honestly pissed we'll never get to see any of the mjaor plotlines he's involved in in l.eague that are honestly very fleshed out and extremely heartbreaking.

N.oxus had all it's teeth removed as a faction, they only brought out one big boy once and literally 0 N.oxian mages or anything and kept acting like N.oxus is about honor hen that's directly a D.emacian thing. N.oxus is the dark shadow that fights with tooth and claw using every advantage they can get, but are utterly toothless. They don't even try to kill C.ait when A.mbessa knows her grip on her is slipping they just let it happen.

The B.lack R.ose absolutely did not need to be there, M.el's arc makes literally no god damn sense. Why the fuck do they care about her? Oh guess shes some powerful mage I guess, but why are they so concerned about her. The B.lack R.ose is supposed to be a secret society, why would they just randomly invite this girl they've never met, but knew existed? Beats me. Also beats me as to why M.el would let L.eblanc kill her mother if she didn't want her to actually die, but go off I guess M.el. I'm just happy she got some actual characterization this season.

Where the fuck is R.enata? She was teased in the A.rcane L.eague event after season 1. Where the fuck is she? That's why I do not buy the "uwu we had season 2s script cemented after the first", because they literally made V.iktor Jesus which basically took the place of what they hinted at for her. It's so disappointing, I would've killed for R.enata "any competition means a new target" G.lasc and A.mbessa to do a homoerotic dance of manipulation for your own gain.

S.inged is fun, but again underutilized.

H.eimer got vaporized and no one gave a fuck and was also severely underutilized becoming the S.ky of the season to just show up and die. That was his only purpose. No character arc, just "well I failed 1 student, let me vaporize myself for this one." which would've had more impact if they let it breathe, but they didn't.

C.ait's arc was insanely rushed, they did not give her grief any room to breathe and cement her motivations. It's happy go lucky one day and then become a f.acist d.ictator the next, which I understand the motivation, I understand what they were doing, but my god was it rushed. Which as again, due to the insane pacing issues this season.

and my biggest unpopular opinion: I honestly hate what they did to W.arwick as a character. I was expecting them to at least keep his horror elements, but nah he had all his teeth removed too. He showed up to cry about his family and then got killed. I wanted him to sit there and have this real internal struggle about why he knows V.i and J.inx, have an actual internal battle between wanting to kill them, but knowing it'd hurt him and not knowing why. Not being able to remember why. And I know V.iktor fucking zaps his memories later, but that doesn't change my disappointment. I also hate his design. Sorry, it's like bootleg U.niversal monster. He doesn't look like a werewolf, he looks more like a cat.

This season is really missing that, it feels so much more toned down than the first. The first had themes of: d.omestic terrorism, a.bleism, f.acism, grief, fighting o.pression, men being victims of grooming, having to deal with responsibility you don't want, etc. etc. This season had uhh... d.omestic terrorism that was solved in 15 mins, f.acism that was solved in 2 episodes, and g.rief plots that were never given the room to breathe like they should have. Even J.inx's is so rushed, she surrenders herself, gets locked up and is out to go fight N.oxus in 15 mins. It also does not open as strong as the first season.

And to top it all off, I don't even get the d.ivorce arc I wanted. They're gay as hell, but man... I wanted the kicking and screaming. I wanted them yelling at each other and throwing things. I wanted them to fucking hate each other and then slowly rekindle things. And that's never happening now, because I guess they became one with the universe? I don't know, I did not care for the ending all that much.

I do enjoy it as it's own narrative, I enjoy it as like a dumb m.arvel movie. A fun little, it's own timeline of events and they're basically separate characters, but if that is the new L.eague cannon? I honestly hate it.