#that aren't directly tied to the pacing and skipped plot beats

[jupitermelichios]

the creators haven't said anything about it afaik, but having now finished arcane s2, i'm absolutely certain they had planned for 3 more seasons, and got told pretty late into pre-production that it was only going to be 1.

you can even see pretty clearly where the season breaks would be - s2 would end with the vander/warwick reveal, s3 would end with the attack on victor's commune, and s4 would be the robot apocalypse stuff. (alternatively it might have been 2 seasons, in which case you could break it at either warwick or the commune, depending on how much time they were planning to spend on the multiverse stuff)

you wouldn't even need to add all that much completely new content to make it work, there's so much stuff that's fudged or skipped over for time, and multiple montage sequences that could be entire episodes by themselves. (in the case of martial law being implemented in xorn, multiple entire episodes). there's also moments and characters that feel like they should be entire episodes or major storylines that just aren't - vander's flashbacks really feel to me like they were once an entire episode. likewise, i cannot believe there was never a plan for an episode focussing entirely on isha, she has the weird quality of being super important and yet a total stranger to the audience at the same time. I can't believe we weren't supposed to get to know her properly.

my biggest evidence for this theory is the black rose stuff, which just screams 'multi season subplot that got condensed into a couple of episodes'. it has '30 volume manga gets 90 minute movie adaptation' energy. there's no set up for it, which i assume was going to be a season long arc that got cut entirely, then mel is captured and escapes in the course of 2 scenes, which again feels like it was probably a season long, or at least multi-episode, arc being condensed. that shot of mel walking out of the prison now with magic? you cannot tell me that wasn't at one point a season finale moment. then we never actually get a satisfying answer for how ambessa is involved or how mel's brother died, which is compounded by the fact that we really have no idea how magic works in this world or what being a mage actually means in any meaningful sense, all of which could have been very easily solved if we'd had a season, or at least a bunch of episodes, in which mel figures out how to navigate now being magic and learns to use her powers.

there's also so many instances of the show assuming we remember everything from s1 despite the multiyear gap between seasons in ways that are frankly just bad writing, but which make total sense if you assume they're desperately trying to find anything to cut or condense for time. is not reminding the audience of jayce's magic bracelet backstory before it becomes plot-relevant bad writing? yes. is it one of the first things i'd cut if i was condensing this severely? also yes.

like i said, i don't know if that's what happened. but as much as i hate good shows getting screwed over by networks, i kind of hope it is, if only because i don't want to believe these writers are capable of making those mistakes without outside interferance.