The Big Picture

Arcane
Season 2 will have 20 new original songs, according to co-creator Christian Linke.
The series’ detailed animation style was a major factor in the long wait for Season 2.
Plans for more
League of Legends
series are in the works following the success of
Arcane
.

After three years, Arcane has finally made its long-awaited return. The animated Netflix series, based on the popular video game League of Legends, follows the story of sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell), who find themselves fighting for opposing forces. After the death of their adoptive father, Jinx is taken in by the dangerous crimelord Silco (Jason Spisak), who views her as his protégé. Season 2 picks up immediately after the shocking cliffhanger ending to Season 1, where Jinx launches a terrorist attack on the wealthy city of Piltover.

The series has garnered acclaim from fans and critics alike, with a lot of praise aimed squarely at the series’ animation style, which brilliantly combines both 3D and 2D animation to great effect. With the second and final season finally here, I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with the series’ co-creator Christian Linke. We discussed making the show accessible to both fans of the games and those unfamiliar with it, whether there will be more League of Legends series after Arcane, and plenty more.

You can read our full conversation below.

How ‘Arcane’s Story Resonates Both ‘League of Legends’ Players and Newbies
“It’s a story of siblings, you know?”

COLLIDER: Prior to the first season of Arcane , I had never even played League of Legends . One of my closest friends plays this game religiously and he kept harassing me to watch the show. When I finally sat down and watched it I was completely blown away. How do you make this show so approachable for both diehard fans of the games and also people who, like me, weren’t as familiar with the world?

CHRISTIAN LINKE: Great question, and one that we were always very scared of, to be honest with you, because it’s very easy to make something where it feels like people will look into the house through the windows from the outside, you know? Honestly, I think if you ask universal character questions that are relatable, and I think for us, it’s a story of siblings, you know? I don’t know if you have siblings…?

I have a sister.

LINKE: So you know the drill. You know the drill, just like I do. It’s not always easy. I think that’s the heart of it. It’s a story of revolutionary technology and wonders and arcane magic, but the heart of it is, can these sisters figure it out? Can these two brothers in science not lose their dream as it seems to further and further slip through their fingers as the rest of the world tries to take hold of it? There are these very universal questions that we try to really land on the character level, and I think then people will understand and will care. That’s what we really set out to do from the beginning.

‘Arcane’ Season 2 Features Over 20 New Original Songs
Image via Netflix

I believe you had a background in music previously. How did you come aboard the series? I know you made music for the game itself, but what brought you on to create the show?

LINKE: I wish I had a clear answer for that myself. I worked on music, and then I grew into these animated music videos for the company that always worked really well. At some point, the question was, “Hey, that’s all we do with the storytelling and diving into the world of our characters is these three or four-minute pieces. Can we make something more substantial?” We didn’t know how long it was going to be, but we knew that the partnership between Rakesh, the animation studio, and myself felt really good and felt like, “That’s something to invest in.” The project grew very naturally from there.

The first instinct was that I would, you know, Alex [Yee] and I, the other creator of Arcane, would hire people to be the writers for this. Probably, it became clear at some point that we needed to figure it out ourselves because people just didn’t come from the angle of, like, “Hey, can they really grab the players that love the game and play it for someone like you’re a friend?” They know every nuance of every character, and so you can’t fake that. You need to be authentic on that level.

Going back to the music thing, I think one of the things that really stuck out to me in that first season was the music, especially the theme song, the anime. Will there be more original music in this new season as well?

LINKE: Yes. In Season 1, because the relationship between Fortiche, the animation studio, and myself started making music videos, we just were like, “Yo, let’s just have a moment where the music takes the center screen.” There’s a little music video in every episode in Season 1, and so we had, I think, like 10 songs or so in Season 1. In Season 2, we’re gonna have over 20, and they’re all original, which I’m very proud of and I care about very much. Look, I think it’s cool that there are all these big franchises that send Led Zeppelin another check. That’s awesome. But there are so many musicians who struggle to have a career. Let’s make original music, you know? So, that’s really important to me. We have a massive soundtrack for Season 2. I’m very excited about it. I really hope you’ll like it, too. It’s a big part of our DNA; that’s the way we started working together.

There Are Plans for More ‘League of Legends’ Shows After ‘Arcane’
Image via Netflix

That makes me very excited. Since this is the final season of Arcane , have you guys ever thought about doing another show set in League? Has that been a discussion?

LINKE: Yeah, we’re currently developing a bunch of follow-up projects. Really, Arcane was always considered the first step, kind of like the trial by fire. You need to figure out, “Can we do this? Do we have the chops? Do we have the characters? Do we have the storytelling?” So, now we’re working on the follow-up projects and it’s it’s really fun to start to look at some of the other characters and regions of our world.

Was it always planned as two seasons all along?

LINKE: I would say we always had the story in mind. You have to get into it, to write it, to really see, “Okay, how long is it going to be exactly? How many episodes exactly?” But we always had the arcs for the characters in mind, and that’s really what tied it down. So, it felt pretty organic that it would be two seasons.

Why Did ‘Arcane’ Season 2 Take So Long?
“There are 24 frames every second, and every frame is hand-animated”

I was talking to one of my co-workers who’s not as familiar with the show, but I was showing her the animation, and she was like, “Wow, that looks intensive for a show where the episodes are 45 minutes long. Some people are like, “It’s been so long since the first season.” Is that the big thing there?

LINKE: That is it. To give you a point of reference, one animator can produce up to, like, four seconds of animation per week. If you make many hours of content per season, that’ll take a while. It’s really the hard part about it. There are 24 frames every second, and every frame is hand-animated. That’s why it takes so long and why no one’s ever really done this. It’s a massive effort, with hundreds of people working one season.

Another interesting thing about this show is that Netflix usually releases all their shows at once, but you’re releasing this season weekly, and the first season was released weekly. When this was first announced, my roommate was like, “I really hope they do that again.” Was that something you had to negotiate?

LINKE: That was something we had to negotiate, and it was not easy to come by. I think we just like that because we have the game that goes out with it, and we’re gonna have game content go out with every chunk. It’s gonna be three episodes again per release, like three acts, if you will. So, I think it makes sense for us that it doesn’t just come out, but the story unfolds, and so does the story and the content in our games. I think that’s really, really fun for people who just have this month of an awesome, all-encompassing experience of new characters, new content, new maps, new music, new stories. That was always the dream. It’s like that symbiosis between Arcane and our games. That’s what drove the decision to release it in three chunks.

Wow. So, since League has such a massive fan base, I’m sure adapting the lore of it was pretty challenging, but was it more challenging to make this first season or was this second season just as like difficult?

LINKE: I would say the hope was that the second season would be easier because you’re like, “We’ve done it before,” but COVID came around and punched us all in the gut when we started Season 2. That was very, very hard that we couldn’t meet up in person anymore. We also took some really, really big swings in Season 2 that made it also not easier. So, the hope was Season 2 would be easier, but it wasn’t. Obviously, there are a lot more things to figure out in Season 1, even just as an organization, as a studio, the animation studio Fortiche to grow from, like, 15 people to, like, 300. So, you have new questions you never thought you’d have to deal with, like, “What is the rent in Paris going to be like for a bigger studio? Should they get computers from Dell or HP?” You never ask these questions before. When you realize, you thought you just signed up for his project, but you also are signing up to really grow as a team, and so there was definitely a lot of that growing to do on the first one, more so than the second.

The first two acts of Arcane Season 2 are now available to stream on Netflix. Act 3 premieres on November 23.

Set in Utopian Piltover and the oppressed underground of Zaun, the story follows the origins of two iconic League Of Legends champions and the power that will tear them apart.Release Date November 6, 2021 Seasons 1 Writers Christian Linke , Alex Yee Franchise(s) League of Legends Directors Pascal Charrue , Arnaud Delord Showrunner Christian Linke , Alex Yee Expand

Watch on Netflix