#the hexcore

[mistresscitrusslice]

You make a good point about the inherently Hextech clashing with the inherently Hexcore Viktor.

What do you mean when you by Mel’s “gold brace”? If you’re talking about the gold body jewelry, she does still have it in season 2, just not in the opening song. Everyone kinda got their outfits stripped down to pajamas in the opening.

Mel's protection should have saved Viktor too, and she's trying to figure out why it didn't

S2 ep1 shows a circle of protected stone where Mel and Jayce were during the explosion. My theory is that Mel's magic armor activated and saved them both. It seems like it casts a sphere of protection around wherever Mel is.

The center of this circle is not Mel's seat - it's Jayce's. She ran to Jayce to save him.

No other Councilors were in range of Mel's protection, so they all got hurt or killed.

But Viktor was, Jayce's words, "right next to" him. He was easily within Mel's circle of protection.

1) Viktor tried to run and mistakenly left the circle of protection. But are we meant to believe that Viktor, close to dying already and using a crutch, would have outrun Mel?

2) Viktor's augmented body clashes with Mel's

Why does Mel try to touch Viktor in episode 1? It seems like a throwaway moment, but not even Jayce touches him in this scene. So why Mel?

She's curious. And possibly, feeling responsible. She's wondering why her protection didn't work.

Is this Hexcore brand of the Arcane trying to reach out to Mel? Or trying to defend itself from her?

Mel was trying to protect both Jayce and Viktor, which is reflected in how she holds Jayce as well as Viktor's cane when she promises to protect Hextech:

But if, for example, Mel's magic is Solari in origin, and Viktor's is from the Void - or the Arcane equivalent of similar opposing forces - then it's possible that their magic rejects or hurts one another. So Mel's circle of protection either rejected Viktor, or was what hurt Viktor, and not the explosion.

[samibamitami]

I have a little theory about “sky”

I don't know if this counts as spoilers but here's your warning anyway

Don't think it's actually sky that we keep seeing alongside Viktor. She didn't have much importance before so it would be weird to suddenly bring so much attention to her, and how she's apparently able to go in people's minds alongside Viktor no problem, even appearing in that weird space mindscape as a weird mirage in the background.

So my guess is that this is actually the arcane itself using Sky's image as a way to interact with Viktor,, a way to guide him, a way too more easily manipulate him, to keep a close eye on him.

So that's my little theory, I don't really have a lot of evidence to back this up, it's more so speculation, but let me know your thoughts on my little mini theory

[myessenceconsistsofdeadmemes]

The father (the hexcore), the son (Viktor), and the holy ghost (Sky)

[lazui-l]

The hex core and Viktor toxic yuri. Viktor does she hit you

[mistresscitrusslice]

Should’ve had Jayce play his ukulele/lute/generic string instrument to calm the Hexcore down

The Hexcore is like a pet. Like Viktor said, it learns. It is not inherently evil. Feed it shimmer and blood and you will get a beast. Feed it, idk, poro snacks and good vibes or something and you will get a cute örb.

[arowyn-m]

Jayce/Viktor/Hexcore situation in S2

Okay I've seen a lot of S2 theories circulating so I just wanted to get my two cents out there before we get any new information beyond the most recent teaser!

Lots of this is speculation loosely based on lore and possible foreshadowing. I'm not 100% convinced any of this is going to happen, but I do think some parts of it are more likely than not. Here's the gist of what I think will happen over the course of the 3 acts. (Buckle up because this is a long post)

ACT I:

Act I opens with the council attack. Everyone is dead except for Jayce, Mel, Viktor and maybe one other lucky but irrelevant councilor (probably Shoola if Mel’s armor protection has this radius)

Shoola is the closest councilor on Mel’s right.

In the German version of the trailer, Ambessa says “Half of your council is dead.” There are 7 councilors. At least 3 would have to survive for the council to be considered “half” annihilated. Although it could be a statement Ambessa’s trying to make, implying that just Jayce and Mel make up at least half of the council’s power. Either way—Jayce, Mel and Viktor survive, if barely.

Jayce makes it out with largely superficial injuries. Though they make it out alive, Mel and Viktor are badly injured in the explosion. Mel is expected to recover, but Viktor is not. Both are in a coma or at least bedridden at the beginning of the season. Despite the good news for her daughter, Ambessa is furious about her daughter’s injuries.

Jayce somehow finds out about the extent of Viktor’s Hexcore experimentation, either by finding his research notes or by seeing his modifications and putting two and two together.

Jayce uses the Hexcore to save his friend. Viktor wakes up not relieved or grateful like Jayce expects, but outraged.

Viktor sees Jayce’s decision as a blatant betrayal of his promise to destroy the Hexcore, and so decides the device would be better off in his care than in the clutches of someone he now sees as faithless. He returns to the Undercity, presumably for good.

Jayce stays topside and begins building Hextech weapons (like Caitlyn’s acceleration gate rifle we saw in the teaser) in earnest.

I’ve seen some speculation that this hooded figure is Jinx, but I really can’t see her skulking around the Undercity in a cloak. We know we get Jinx in a hood at some point in the series (due to reports from the Annecy event) but this cloak in particular doesn’t seem her style—and we see Viktor in a similar-looking cloak later in the teaser. This, paired with the convincing theories that Viktor and Jinx will at very least interact in S2 leads me to think that this is just Viktor standing in the aftermath of some Jinx shenanigans.

Later in the act is when we get hooded Viktor. He uses the Hexcore to heal some of the addicts living near the fissures, unintentionally rallying them to his cause. I think Huck is the person Viktor is healing or changing here ->

The character on the bottom middle seems to have a similar build. This may lead to Huck being the cult leader for the Gloriously Evolved.

I think it’s likely that this ^ shot is from the same scene where Viktor’s using magic in the sump. The primary lighting is a different color, but the Hexcore has given off both purple and blue light before. Heimer also looks like he’s in a dark environment where he wants to be hidden, so it wouldn’t make sense for this to take place in Piltover or in Ekko’s oasis. He’s somewhere in Zaun.

We see some foreshadowing to the Hexcore corrupting Viktor. Heimerdinger expresses worry about the whole thing and once again proposes the Hexcore be destroyed. This time, Viktor outright refuses.

ACT II:

Here’s where things get a little muddy and speculative. Arcane is obsessed with parallels, so it’s likely that the writers are going to try to replicate the same structure S1 had. Here we’ll have another timeskip mirroring the one in S1–about 6-10 years in duration. This would but Jaycr and Viktor into their late 30s/early 40s (closer to their in-game ages)

Both characters will have realized a design closely resembling their in-game counterparts. Viktor and Jayce are now full-on enemies, but how they got to that point will only be told through subtextual clues and maybe a flashback.

Either during this Act or within the timejump preceding, Viktor builds Blitzcrank.

I looked at Blitz’s wiki to find out why exactly Viktor built them, and it turns out they were built not as a weapon or shield, but as a means of disposing of hazardous waste. I wonder if one of Viktor’s main motivations in S2 will be making Zaun more habitable as well as healing its citizens.

Despite Viktor’s good intentions, the Hexcore will have corrupted/connected itself to him to some extent. Whether for good or ill (probably ill), it’ll become apparent that Viktor and the Hexcore are irreparably connected.

ACT III:

This is where the theory gets controversial. I’ve seen a lot of people predicting that Riot won’t choose to kill any champion characters in Arcane because it puts an end to their lore and makes them unmarketable. I wholeheartedly disagree, and here’s why: Arcane and subsequent stories based on League are going to be primarily about the champions. There are more than 140 champs in LoL. If Riot plans to make shows or movies about even half of these champions, the plot armor for each will become increasingly obvious. I don’t think Riot is going to shy away from killing champions, especially not when they’ve made it clear they don’t have a problem with showing drastic time jumps. Immense amounts of lore can happen (and have happened) within timeskips, especially ones that are 6+ years long.

Knowing that Arcane ends with season 2, it’s likely that all the main characters’ arcs will be wrapped up by the end of the season. Christian Linke mentioned that Riot and Fortiche have plans for other League-related projects, but I don’t see the characters of Arcane becoming involved enough in another show to complete a personal arc or resolve a major plot point from THIS show. The most I can see is cameos, honestly. I hope I’m wrong because I love these characters…but yeah.

So with those points in mind…I think Viktor dies at the very end of this season. Viktor has always been on a path of carrying out experiments farther than he should and creating things much too strong or volatile for him to handle safely. Jinx is on a similar trajectory, but she at least has some form of self-preservation, which is something Viktor has grown to lack. At some point, his luck will run out and his technology will be the end of him.

Towards the end of the series, Jayce and Viktor will have their final showdown, and Jayce will destroy the Hexcore. Because Viktor and the device are so interconnected to one another, destroying the Hexcore will kill him. Viktor dies to a fault in his technology, and Jayce keeps his promise in the end.

[bringthekaos]

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. I don't think the hexcore is evil. I don't even think it's related to the void.

"It killed sky" does it even had enough consciousness to know what "murder" is? The hexgore felt a source of energy, and it used it. Maybe not even that. Is implied the reason why Viktor's body was able to hold on was the shimmer, Sky didn't have that, and it got shocked by evil magic.

When Viktoe triesnto destroy the hexcore, it backs down, almost as if it were afraid. It attacks Viktor as retaliation, or because it was scared?

Oh, I don’t think it’s evil either, but I do think it’s sentient. And as such, it has a sense of self preservation—it also seems to have some degree of emotional response, as it lashed out and “punished” Viktor after he “threatened” to destroy it. But like you said, that could just be fear/self-preservation at work, no actual vindictiveness.

And Sky’s death wasn’t a malicious act either. In all of his other experiments, Viktor was using Shimmer, and it “fed” off of the regenerative properties of that. But in the Sky death scene, we were shown that Viktor had run out of Shimmer, and was opting to go through with his next experiment anyway. I think we’re meant to understand that without the Shimmer, it had to consume massive amounts of energy from somewhere in order to execute the runes that Viktor told it to. It chose Sky, and had she not been there… I’m pretty sure it would have been Viktor getting swept off the floor.

So in that regard, the Hexcore was doing as it was instructed by the runes Viktor carved on himself, but it had insufficient “fuel” to complete the function. I’m not sure what led it to choose Sky over Viktor, given that he was closer and already physically touching it. That’s where I’m kind of headcanoning that it behaves a bit like a parasite—it does its best to keep its host alive because it needs the host. Which would explain why it went for Sky instead of Viktor. And I’m using parasite in the most literal of ways—a life form that derives what it needs from another life form. And I don’t even know that it actually needs anything… it just requires certain amounts of energy in order to do what its host is asking it to do.

The only reason I tend to speak of the Hexcore like it’s… idk, bad (for lack of a better word) is this scene:

But I think it’s meant to be ambiguous, whether the Hexcore is actually fucking with his mind here, or if his mind was fucked to begin with, in the aftermath of his diagnosis, and what we’re seeing here is a manifestation of his desperation/temptation. So really what I mean is it’s bad for him.

Either way, I think we’re gunna find out the hard way what the truth really is 🥴

[binghe-malewife-goals]

Something about cosmic horror sentient malevolent disembodied beings, you know

[mistresscitrusslice]

This is so funny. Like Jinx doing her utmost to break up Caitvi

If "Hexcore is controlling Viktor" turns out to be confirmed then oh my Viktor, the Hexcore is homophobic af for breaking up JayVik.

[bioluminesced]

so about those teasers

[mistresscitrusslice]

In some positive news, it is now exponentially easier to fuck the Hexcore

[jm-chrome]

You forget whose money made you what you are, Viktor.

[mistresscitrusslice]

Was it fully selfish tho??? Viktor said he wanted the Hexcore destroyed but, like Heimerdinger, doesn’t tell him why. For the majority of the time they’ve known each other, Jayce has known that Viktor wanted to stay alive. He doesn’t know what drove Viktor to suicide or to want the Hexcore gone. All he knows is that Viktor (usually) wants to live. Yes, it’s partly selfish and misguided, but what did he have to guide him??? And while I still wouldn’t call it “selfless” because he’s not risking himself, he’s still trying to save Viktor’s life out of genuine care for him and the memory that for like 99.99% of the time he’s known him, he has clawed for every scrap of life he could get. Jayce truly believed that this is what Viktor would want. The building is crumbling around them and his partner is fading fast. He doesn’t have time to make a long-thought-out decision. It’s a hastily calculated risk.

I went and rewatched viktors rebirth scene and this is soooo fucking heavily laced with bodily autonomy metaphors. Jayce making that decision for viktor, corrupting him into this unfeeling un-human thing out of misplaced and selfish love. Literally putting his feelings and selfish need for viktor like, because hes so reliant on him. For his own mental health that he goes against viktors wishes and destroys his body and jayce doesnt even think about that. Its all for himself. He hardly even acknowledges what he's done to him. Just, the "you're alive and that's what matters" attitude. Viktor has no agency and when he realizes that thats when he walks away. oh god.

The latter parts of season one were already drawing attention to how their dynamic has shifted to viktor being used more than being an equal with jayce. And viktor puts up with it because without jayce he can't operate as a researcher/scientist with as much impunity. Jayce feels possessive of him, like he has ownership over him.

And Jayce yelling "i never asked for this" at viktor. Like!!!!AHHH. The manipulation is CRAZY. It's sooo fucked (in a toxic yaoi way) He isn't even self aware hes doing it. god. Saying that at the guy you just forced into being a void abomination out of selfishness is crazy. And then when viktors finally free the first thing he does is give that guys body his back after it was destroyed by shimmer....

[mmm-eta]

aww a scientist and his abusive inhuman magical thing ❤️

[interdimensionalbugs]

creation

[aanthonyvb]

damned if you do, damned if you don’t