Arcane’s Conclusion: A New Beginning in League of Legends Universe
As the final episode of Arcane aired, fans bid farewell to Vi, Jinx, Caitlyn, Jayce, and Viktor’s stories, but this is not the end.
According to Riot Games, Fortiche, and Netflix, the conclusion of the show does not signal its cancellation; rather, it marks the completion of this particular narrative. However, it paves the way for more animated collaborations between Riot Games and Fortiche within the League of Legends universe. While there is no official announcement of a new show yet, numerous projects are currently in progress.
Arcane showrunner and co-creator, Christian Linke, revealed that there are discussions about potential projects in the League of Legends world that could serve as the foundation for a new animated series.
“We have over 160 champions in our game. There’s tons of them where I’m like, I want to know their story,” Linke expressed in an interview with Polygon. “Now is the time, luckily, that we also can start thinking about that and dream big. So we have a slate of different projects we’re exploring, nothing’s in production yet, but we’re really building stories of all these different tonalities and they should be very different. They should not feel just like, OK, they should be their own style, their own tone. So that’s the next step for us.”
For Linke, the prospect of a new show goes beyond delving into a different aspect of League lore; it also involves exploring a diverse tone compared to that of Arcane.
“We haven’t done enough yet for the whimsical tone of League; Arcane is pretty dark,” Linke noted. “But there’s a lot of fun characters. There’s the Lulus, the Teemos, the Amumus, the Poppies, the Tristans. What do we do for those?
“And I think I would definitely want to take things [in a new show] into the extremes, like the different genres. What are we going to do in horror? What are we going to do in more abstract, more artistic things? That’s the real power of animation. You’re not grounded by what reality is. So we should take advantage of that.”
While the timeline for Riot and Fortiche’s exploration of new genres and settings remains uncertain, one thing is clear – it won’t be a quick process. Arcane famously took nearly ten years to come to fruition, and although the wait for a new show is expected to be shorter, it’s likely to be a few years before Netflix revisits Runeterra.