#they might have him do something out of character in btsv to make people like him less?

[fiepige]

I know it's irrational but still!

[rappaccini]

arcane ii act 3 thoughts

... well that went splat

7.

well at least we know where ekko went. the monkey's paw finger curls.

so he was literally in the spiderverse. jfc.

ekko's journey to an alternate dimension was cool. but was it necessary. the way he and heimer construct the z-drive was clever, but could we have done it in another way. did we need to spend all this time in a fanfic when the rest of the story's so rushed. maybe this could've worked if arcane had 3-4 seasons instead of 2 but not at this point.

the way i was waiting for some revelation that ekko was tripping like mel was and it just. didn't come. nope, magical au where it was all okay.

think i dislike timebomb now actually. the chemistry and the general concept of them as a couple are cute but the way the execution of this ship totally cannibalized ekko as a character pisses me off. like how the hell is 'i wish i could have kissed jinx' his main plotline when silco's death, the power vacuum, the zaun-piltover war, the death of his tree and his followers ditching him for jinx was all Right There. but no, we need to angst over how he wishes he could have gotten a girlfriend, and that would have Fixed Everything about his life.

(why is this ship gwiles flavored to me. like I Know people are gonna compare them as a bm/ww swirl ship where the girl wears a dress and leather jacket in one scene, and wow you’re right! ekko and gwen both have their much more interesting arcs totally consumed in the second installment by a romance that's based on fleeting feelings from a long time ago focused on someone who fundamentally isn't that person anymore! and just like jinx, gwen fundamentally wouldn’t give a fuck about him!)

(why does this sequence feel like something btsv might pull, but in a more malegazey way.)

.... i don't even really believe jinx likes him back. like i've only ever gotten the indication that it's onesided. this whole alternate universe feels like a fantasy.

"you want me to change?" yes. literally. he does.

at least 'pretend like it's the first time' makes the kiss less creepy.

(... does alt powder even realize that he's from an alternate dimension. like did he even tell her. she's helping him get home so clearly she knows something.)

... like. again. if we had more time, diving into ekko's emotional crutch of a crush on her-- if he had a few episodes to actually interact with her and have those feelings fuck things up-- and giving him time to unpack and surrender it could have been cool! especially if he had to be conflicted about jinx accidentally taking the savior of zaun role he'd spent years working towards! but not at the cost of all the other more important things about him!

anyway it's funny that jayce is in a survival horror game while all that's happening.

heimerdinger playing that yeehaw ass song as jayce is dragging his hammer through hell? idk the dissonance between those things was funny. that harmonica was JAMMING.

anyway fwiw i like the z drive being built. i just really dislike that we had to take a whole narrative detour to do it.

def getting the vibe that vander and silco fuck in the Good Timeline. no yuri, so yaoi instead. ah, balance.

heimer dying there was fine. no notes.c

mel going through the Horrors. looks cool! if we had any indication that this was where her story was going in s1, or an additional season to get there, it would make more sense. an empath who can sense others' magic. okay. could we have gotten any foreshadowing of this.

same with ambessa's beef with the sorcerers. thanks. could you have set this up. no? then maybe you should have picked a different plot.

mel needing the plot bluntly explained to her is such a step down from how arcane used to impart its exposition. wish she could have figured it out on her own.

8.

so mel coming back doesn't lead to any political implications. did we forget she's a politician first.

the way mama bear ambessa didn't lift a finger to locate her missing daughter. guess that didn't matter either.

cait and jinx burying their hate of each other so fast was so disappointing. i get that jinx getting vi back fixed that for her, but man the promise of lesbian sex really made cait drop her love of her mom just like that.

the glorious evolution storyline's the only one that feels like we're actually seeing what was intended but it being so accelerated to hijack what should've been a Season Of War is still disappointing.

jinx being at absolute rock bottom in that cell with her hair unraveled. cool image. hate that isha is the cause of this and not jinx running out of crashout steam after silco died and she got sucked into being jinx of arc. love that this is when silco finds her. think it's kinda funny that he's saying ~just forgive~ see thats how you know he's just a fucking hallucination.

the way vi trying to hug jinx could have felt so impactful if they didn't already make up an act ago.

the way the viktorbot invasion causing piltover and zaun to get into a get along shirt could have been neat. if we got to see. piltover and zaun. actually duke it out.

jayce's whole speech feels so empty. ok babe. you were in the shadow realm for years but you sure know what's going on here.

'let's just get along' being the answer with piltover honestly expecting the people they've been gassing to want to help, and zaun Being The Bigger Person for putting aside civilization-wide generational trauma. i expected it but i still hate it.

caitvi fucking in jinx's jail cell. oh yeah they're never gonna beat the allegations that this is a throuple.

the fumbling! love that detail. i'm so annoyed about the arc of their romance but i can turn my brain off for a second.

biggest animated show in the world had its main couple be lesbians who eat pussy on screen. no excuses for anyone else. looking at you spiderverse gwen better ditch miles for a woman.

see this is why i have issues with arcane using pop songs. vi's eating cait out and the lyrics randomly mention america. they don't have a concept of what america is. i hate that this distracted me.

The Rose. man could this season have been stronger if they just didn't use this brand new ultimate villain bc there was no time to develop it. they could've just teased it and made the mages the main villains of the next arcane series.

ambessa using viktor's bots... idk man given how much she hates magic and praises equality on the battlefield this just feels incoherent

sky finally free of being viktor's magical conscience. thank god.

no ekko in ep 8. well him being the best character in the show is guaranteed look what happens when he isn't around.

9.

hate the ep 9 Montage. "~jinx is suicidal~'' thanks we get it! the way this could have been so much more impactful if we just sat with the character without a fucking vocaloid telling us what we already know.

ekko stopping jinx mid-suicide? k that was cool. mostly i'm grateful to him for turning off the damn music.

skipping ekko returning to zaun and seeing all the crazy shit that's gone down so he can have a moment with jinx? yeah sounds about fucking right.

not even him processing that she's still alive after the bridge fight. ok.

extremely funny that she keeps trying to kill herself. bro she just isn't into you. i wish this energy for gwen and miles. kill yourself in front of him repeatedly to change the trajectory of his life.

skipping straight to the noxian invasion. man did this need more episodes. they're playing this emotional music and i'm just like. sloooow. down.

know what would have been so much more fucking interesting than zaun Being The Bigger Person? zaun deciding to sit out the invasion or help the invaders. guess not.

maddie being a traitor works. she had that vibe right from the start and i know the caitvis are popping bottles over it. the way she's about to become The most hated character.

the way mel standing up against ambessa means nothing because she isn't using the political maneuvering we spent a whole season watching her use and is in fact using the type of force she was so against by letting cait beat her ass and relying on magic instead of diplomacy. the way mel essentially became what her mother wanted her to be, while declaring that she definitely isn't.

well jinx's gwenom hood looks neat. and her making her lair into an airship was at least set up.

but my god. could we fucking. see. ekko talk her down and convince her to live. could we see her and ekko bury the hatchet and agree to work together. could we fucking see ekko learn what the hell happened while he was gone. could we fucking see him co-lead the firelights with jinx. could we see them recruit sevika. could we fucking see that instead of skipping to the aftermath? like is he even participating in the climax as the leader of the firelights, or as jinx's boyfriend.

the way jinx showing up for vi doesn't mean as much as it could because they're already on good terms.

the airship fight with warwick was at least cool.

so was the zero g fight.

jayce vs viktor and ekko getting to spam his z drive-- especially using the instability of going past the four-second rule to essentially turn it into a grenade-- work great. at least some things paid off.

yeah sorry mel but jayce is gay as hell how else do you explain this scene with viktor.

so no one's gonna talk about isha dying. ok. that kid truly was just a plot device to make jinx happy, then sad. she could've been a puppy.

not that the dialogue in this act wasn't flowery and overwritten.

jinx dying/'dying'... well i knew she was suicidal and that with everyone coming for her, it just wasn't gonna end well. still don't like the vibe of the 'rediscover your love for life! then die!' ending esp after she gets talked off the ledge.

lol I guess she really doesn’t give a fuck about ekko. sure she’ll use him to save her sister, after that ?✌️

even if she didn't die, she still dipped without saying goodbye. she does. not. care. about him.

i do like that jinx making the decision to let go of vi after being unable to let go of anything all series long is what closes off her arc. just wish we hadn't already skipped to the reconciliation in ii.

oh my god turn off the jukebox though

and the message decay from ‘inequality will yield a cycle of pain and destruction’ to ‘wanna break the cycle? Kill yourself!’ Is… oh that’s bad

is it slightly implied that she lives? Yes. is she symbolically dead? Yes.

so the last thing we see of ekko is him mourning jinx. so he literally just is jinx's boyfriend in the end. okay. oh my god bro you have to move on

so nothing about the firelight tree dying? okay.

sevika getting one line the whole act doesn't sit well with me.

or zaun getting One Seat on the council. yeah that'll fuckin work out.

cait's new eyepatch is Great. even hotter. at least we can end on a high note.

i knew s2 wouldn't be as good simply bc it was being produced under a much tighter timeframe with far more expectations from the studio and the fandom, but jeez. i didn't think it would be Bad.

yeah uh. overall:

pretty to look at.

the central conflict of jinx vs vi mirroring zaun vs piltover getting a slapdash rushed conclusion so we can move on to the Bigger Enemy was awful. so many of their interactions in act iii felt emptier because the emotional payoff could've been so much stronger if they hadn't kissed and made up.

the noxian invasion immediately being hijacked by viktor's magic felt like even more of that. could have been cool! why are we skipping past it! this feels like season 3 cannibalized season 2.

like seriously. it felt like s2 was going to be cait-as-big-bad with enforcer vi, accidental joan of arc jinx rising to the top of the zaunite power vacuum with sevika's help, viktor slowly amassing his cult and the zaun-piltover civil war taking center stage with the end revelation that ambessa rigged the whole thing.

and a third season would have explored noxus vs piltover-zaun, with viktor's glorious evolution and the black rose shit taking center stage there.

but we got this instead because riot wanted to wrap this shit up.

jinx's isha detour totally derailed her. the sevika-jinx vs ambessa-cait parallels vanished. i guess nobody still knows she killed silco and that did nothing to enhance her myth to the zaunites. her death/‘death’ made sense but the messaging of ‘just kill yourself to break the cycle’ is so ugly

vi's arc fell apart right as cait's did. vi quit being an enforcer way too quickly and her pitfighter alcoholic arc also resolved too fast.

warwick. i really don't know. i think he's a good catalyst to force the sisters back together but i really don't think the execution works.

cait's arc went up in smoke after act i. from gassing poor people for sport to hanging out with them like it's nothing. girl i think you skipped some steps. congrats on the sex though.

ambessa could have been a great antagonist but even she had her lunch eaten by viktor. i still have no clue what went down with her and the rose.

sevika became an extra after one act. no continuity with her being zaun's kingmaker who finds herself backing jinx in the power vacuum as the hostilities explode. becoming the chair for zaun? she would not do that and she would be terrible at it.

viktor's arc, again, feels like it actually paid off. would have loved to see him slowly sink into madness after his cult spirals out of control but at least we got where it feels like we would have headed.

jayce having to grapple with the cost of trying to bring magic to the real world through watching his friend get warped by it was a great idea. wish he wasn't off in another dimension for 90% of the time.

mel... i don't even fucking know. at this point i'm like. she should have just died in the explosion, because suddenly becoming mel palpatine and unlocking all the powers of the universe totally undoes what made mel as a character special and effective. and no one even felt her absence.

heimerdinger was certainly there.

ekko... oh my god. what a waste. he had the MOST interesting shit to respond to in s2 and none of it was used. he got the z drive but at the cost of being the leader of the firelights watching his sanctuary die, navigating the zaunite power vacuum, having his faction abandon him for the daughter of his enemy, watching his philosophy be thrown out the window for war, having to weigh his anger about jinx's involvement in silco's operation AND how she's basically stealing his thunder but doing it in a way he'd hate with his lingering feelings for her fucking up his judgment. nope! we're gonna bench him for 90% of the show. he'll get one good action scene, but by god are we gonna make the most important thing about him his crush on jinx! jesus christ.

uh yeah season 1 was a 9 or 10 out of 10, season 2's a 6 if i'm being generous and that's just bc it was pretty to look at.

(yeah this feels like how btsv is gonna go. rushed because the prev installment was a huge hit, faced with impossible expectations from a fandom that's hallucinated that atsv was Perfect for years and that the writers were Geniuses incapable of misstepping or not being able to handle studio fuckery or unsurmountable pressure, doomed to fall on its face. pretty to look at, but bloated with old ideas it doesn't have time to explore, somehow still cramming in new ideas it has even less time to get into, hijacking a major character for ship fuel, and trying to tie up loose ends in a way that just cannot satisfy.)

[basim-ibnishaq]

I’m seeing a lot of discourse about Miguel being out of character compared to his comic self. I kinda disagree because I think Miguel is going through a character regression. In the comics, Miguel started off (in Xina’s words) “an arrogant pompous jerk” who relied on an authoritarian system (Alchemax) to achieve stability, something he never had in his past. In a way, Miguel retreads similar ground in ATSV where he comes off as an antagonistic force (a jerk :P) who relies on an authoritarian system (the Spider Society) to maintain stability for the Spiderverse after being traumatized by the destabilization of his alternate dimension. I think the creative team is implicitly tying this aspect of Miguel’s origins into his film arc while placing it in a new context to better fit the Spiderverse trilogy and introduce new audiences to his story.

I think the reason why Miguel is retreading this aspect in the film is because he’s trying to hide his true comics origins. Despite Miguel’s first intro showing a near replica of his first comic issue (creating the assumption that he’s going to tell his comic origins like the other Spiderpeople thus far), he instead states that he’s the leader of the Spider Society (essentially making up his own origin story where he’s framed as the “ultimate” Spiderman). One reason why he might be hiding his true origins is that it might delegitimize his position as head of the Spider Society, since the majority of Spiderpeople get bit by a spider. Another reason could be that he views his origins and the implications of his transformation being too traumatic to disclose (something Miguel in the comics does as he hides the abuse he faces from Conchata). With both of these reasons, Miguel uses his high position at the Spider Society to create a fresh start where he’d only be seen as Spiderman. This way he doesn’t have to deal with the trauma of his past nor the lack of closure he has regarding his relationships with Gabriel and Xina (considering the ending of the 90’s comics).

However, Miguel ignoring his true past ends up becoming his folly in ATSV. While becoming Spiderman was the catalyst for Miguel’s growth in the comics, Spiderman becomes the facilitator for his regression in the film as he delves into the responsibility and guilt aspect of this persona. By trying to shed his civilian self and donning his Spidey persona full time, he forgets the true essence of Spiderman (which is to always try to save people) and the progress he made in the comics as he’s now boiled down to his fatal flaws: rage, guilt, and self-hatred. Plus, since the Spiderverse films are “a meta-commentary on art while still being art,” Miguel not mentioning his backstory and him constantly going in and out of different dimensions could be a comment on how modern iterations of his comics don’t take place in his home (dimension) of 2099 or feature his full cast.

I feel like Miguel’s true self would emerge once his real comic origins and story are revealed in BTSV, which includes the loss of his interpersonal relationships in his home dimension. By being truthful to himself and others, Miguel would be able to merge his Miguel and Spiderman persona together instead of viewing them two separate entities (something he struggled with in the comics). This could even lead to reconciliation between him and the Spider Squad as the other Spiderpeople (ie. Peter B, Gwen, Miles) experienced the same issue in the trilogy. Overall, I think BTSV will truly do Miguel justice by allowing his backstory to be told, affirming him as both Miguel and Spiderman, and by going back to his home dimension to show that his issues can be fixed ( hopefully seeing Gabriel and Xina). Hopefully after BTSV, it will inspire creatives to continue/reboot Miguel’s story from the 90’s and have it be set in 2099 with his full cast in the future.

(I’m sorry this is so long! It’s just SV Miguel isn’t really popular in the sm2099 comic fandom rn, but I can’t help but draw this connection and believe this is Miguel’s direction in the trilogy. Hopefully, you can share your thoughts on this, but I really just need to get this idea out there, privately. Thank you for reading all of this though!)

hey! this is an interesting read and i'm glad you shared it with me, i can see what you're saying and agree with elements of it but personally (and this is purely my opinion) i'm not sure i'm seeing all of it the same way as you

firstly, i do think it's a bit too harsh to describe the spider society as authoritarian - there are thousands of spideys in the society who all belive in miguel and what he's set out to do, he's not forced them to be there and demanded they do everything he says, and in the movie we only see a couple of events out who knows how many they've dealt with overall - and we can gather from the reactions of others that this is the first time miguel's reacted like this. miguel is their leader but he's not an authoritarian leader, he doesn't demand absolutely obedience in fact we know from dialogue that he's discussed how to handle miles with a few of them at least and he tries to explain everything to miles to give him all the information about what's going on, he doesn't just lock him up straight away and refuse to divulge any information, so he leads them yes but being a leader doesn't make you authoritarian, if he was not one of those spider characters would have joined him because they wouldn't trust him?

i'm also not sure he's ever tried to frame himself as the ultimate spiderman, he says he leads an elite strike force which is true? miguel is a man who can be very self assured yes but this is normally in the context of his work, not acting like he actually believes he's the greatest man to ever walk the planet and i don't think he'd ever do that as spiderman either - to have him act like he's the ultimate spiderman is so ooc for how miguel faces being spiderman, he thinks he has to do this because of what happened to him and he still doesn't think doing so makes him a good person let alone better than everyone else who is also has a spiderperson - i don't think he's even framing leading the spider society as his origin i think he just considers that to be all anyone needs to know about him because his origin is so traumatic to him that it's too personal for him to be sharing with gwen (and therefore the audience) right off the bat. he's painfully open about the elements of himself that are relevant for people in the society to know, namely him going to the other universe and its subsequent destruction, and therfore why he believes the things he does about canon events etc. i do agree with you that he's probably keeping his origin completely to himself because it's traumatic, because this way he can be viewed as the person he chooses to be not what other people in his past have made him to be.

honestly i don't think miguel has forgotten the essence of being spiderman and trying to save everyone, he has every reason to believe that letting canon events play out will save more people in the long run by preventing the destruction of entire universes, he is trying to save people, that's his entire goal with the spider society - to preserve the multiverse and prevent complete destruction and the loss of billions and billions of lives - whether the canon theory is 100% accurate we don't know yet but i don't think it's fair or accurate to suggest that miguel isn't trying to save people because he so clearly is, he's just doing it by letting events play out as its projected they're meant to instead of miles' approach which is to believe he can, in his words "do both" when it comes to saving the many or the individual, neither of them are bad or stupid for doing it their particular way - they're both unlimately trying do to the right thing

i absolutely agree that sharing more of who is is outside of spiderman would help reduce that separation he has between spiderman and miguel o'hara, because the spider society is a huge support system for people who understand each other and i think it would help miguel greatly to be open with even just a few of the other spider characters, but like you said we also know that his personal identity and how he sees himself is something he really struggles with in the comics

i do hope btsv does him justice and shows us more of the miguel characteristics from the comics, i like the idea of us getting a solo movie/series that's much more grounded in the 90's run so we actually get to see more of miguel outside the spider society (and the spider society is set in his home dimension but i get the gist of what you're saying)

thank you again for sending this though, it's interesting to see other people's interpretations!