#there's no value in him being confronted with the deterioration of piltover and zaun's relationship

[mollysunder]

I ran into this post again after watching s2 and I'm kind of impressed how s2 sidestepped any meaningful exploration in the implications of Heimerdinger and Viktor's relationship. Instead the show applies this larger pattern where they have characters sort of address any conflict they may have had through a proxy. With Heimerdinger, his failures with Zaun and Viktor are sort of handwaved through his relationship with Ekko and the Firelights. Once Heimerdinger begins to aid Ekko and the Firelights that's essentially the end of his character arc, thus is his change and nothing else needs to be addressed.

In fact, outside of Heimerdinger's ignorance the show vindicated him about pretty much everything else. He was right about the hexcore. He was right that inherent corruptive nature of magic. And I'm not even trying to uncharitable, but the show said he was right to let Viktor die. There's no way around it. Viktor shouldn't have tried to "fix" himself, he should have just died and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

I don't think we've ever thoroughly unpacked how messed up the way Heimerdinger "comforted" Viktor. The only thing that Heimerdinger could really say is that the "brightest stars burn the fastest", but that's not what's going on here.

Viktor's dying from an unnatural cause!!! He's been poisoned by gas from the mines Piltover excavated in Zaun. This isn't a tragedy caused by random chance, Viktor's condition was done to him by Piltover, by Heimerdinger!

Heimerdinger is essentially comforting his own victim, and he tells Viktor that his death is just the way things are, as if there's no responsible parties involved except fate itself. I wonder if Viktor thought about this himself while Heimerdinger was talking to him. What a truly genuinely awful moment for him to sit through.