During the first season of Netflix’s Arcane, audiences were gradually introduced to a number of League of Legends characters like Jinx, Vi, Cait, and Ekko. But while those characters were the show’s primary cast, there were nudges that other members of the popular MOBA’s roster could appear in the future and have their personal stories integrated into the show’s larger plot.
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On Friday, Netflix released a cryptic teaser for the show’s upcoming second season described only as “a nightmarish augmentation.” While brief, it ends on a big creature strung up as it’s being injected with blood, breathing heavily as it comes to life. That creature appears to be Warwick, a werewolf who previously held the title of “the Uncaged Wrath of Zaun.” In the official lore, he was forced into his current form by a series of experiments and kept alive with machinery that pumps stimulants into his bloodstream.
Longtime League players have predicted Warwick’s eventual appearance in Arcane for a while, and there’s also been a longr unning fan theory that the person who eventually becomes Warwick would be Vi and Jinx’s surrogate father, Vander. Back in the show’s third episode, it looked like he’d died while fighting Silco and his drug-fueled goons. But before that, he ingested a street drug called Shimmer that’s shown to help people heal or recover from injuries that may otherwise be fatal—and Silco has a doctor in his pocket named Singed who’s seen in this preview and been known to use Shimmer on his research subjects.
This past October, Riot Games confirmed Arcane was now officially part of the mainline League canon. Even with some remaining contradictions, one can imagine the change was done specifically reasons like this—since Silco’s dead, Vi and Jinx will need another dark parental figure in their lives. Why not twist the knife and make things even more tragic by having the sisters fight their dad?
Arcane will return for season two this November on Netflix.
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