Arcane, the League of Legends spin-off series, is reportedly returning for its second season in late 2024. As per content creator LeagueOfLeaks, the window was revealed during the Video V Vision Conference held by Riot Games’ parent company Tencent with a Q4 2024 date, marking a debut sometime between October to December next year. Fans of the franchise, however, have been speculating that it’s likely to drop in early November, so it matches with season 1’s release and aligns with the 15th anniversary of the uber-popular MOBA game. The first chapter was widely regarded for its steampunk aesthetic and emotional storytelling, even leading to an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 2022.
Season 2 was greenlit in November 2021, right around the time when Arcane’s final batch of episodes finished airing on Netflix. Since then, Riot Games, which now serves double duty as a game developer and production company, has been silent on its development, simply claiming that they don’t plan on rushing it. “I just watched the third episode of Season 2 before my flight to China, so we’re making progress on it,” Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent said in an interview, mentioning two main reasons for the long wait. “One, you want the quality, you just don’t wanna rush, and so that takes time. So that’s the good reason.”
The second reason is that the team never expected Arcane season 1 to be a success. Had they predicted it somehow, work on season 2 would have likely begun way in advance. It’s also worth noting that Riot largely served in a supervisor position on the show, and it was created by French animation studio Fortiche, whose biggest projects include some League of Legends collaborations.
Serving as a prequel to the LoL, Arcane is set in the posh, utopian city of Piltower and the oppressed underground of Zaun, who are constantly battling over new inventions that threaten revolution. The former city is known for its magic-honing hextech research, while the poor Zaunites create a new drug that transforms humans into monsters. Amidst all political drama, we’re also treated to the origin story of orphaned sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell), who get separated for years in the brewing tension between the regions. The sisters soon find themselves at opposing ends of the war through a dense storyline that touches upon the aspect of duality — be it the lead characters’ morals, or the cities in conflict.
In a Reddit AMA session, Arcane co-creators Christian Linke and Alex Yee confirmed that the second season will incorporate flashbacks, while adding that they want to explore other regions in the larger League of Legends universe. It’s unclear what those flashbacks will include, though I really hope we get to see the parental side of Silco the Zaunite drug lord, who raised Powder into the impulsive and manic Jinx. As per Gizmodo, Riot also planned on revealing scripts for the first season, but held back due to some plot threads that could be deemed as spoilers for the next chapter. It took six years to develop the first season of Arcane, so there are bound to be several rewrites and ideas floating around in those pages that need to be cleared out.