 So like everyone who has a Netflix subscription, I have been obsessed with arcane for the last few weeks. I watched it once, felt like my life was meaningless because I would never be able to create anything that beautiful, and then watched it a second time. And usually when I consume something twice in a row that's enough to get it out of my system, and yet arcane has stuck with me. And there are many reasons for this, but I think the main one is because of the way arcane masters tragedy. Now if you haven't seen the show yet, please go watch arcane now because this video is not spoiler free. It will give details about who lives and who dies, so consider yourself warned. Arcane is a series that takes place in the world of League of Legends following two of the destinations on the map. The advanced utopian city of Piltover, and the repressed poor city of Zorn, or under city. The relationship between these two is that they are theoretically the same city ruled by the same government, however one side is incredibly privileged, and the other one is suffering for their progress. With the people being very poor, there is a lot of crime, there is a lot of pollution, which comes from the progress of the Piltover side. In each of these cities we have different characters we follow who end up tangling with each other as the unrest rises. Now as I said, I think one of the things arcane does really well is tragedy, and there are multiple tragic characters in this story. The ones I'm going to focus on are Jinx slash powder, Vi, Vanda, Silco and Jace. So let's start with Jinx or powder. In the first episode we meet a group of kids from the under city who are planning a heist in Piltover. They want to steal some materials and make some money. The children are Vi. Vi is the leader of the group, the strategist, the muscle. We have Milo and Klager. Milo is the lockpicker. Klager is the demolitions expert, and then we have powder who's the youngest of the group, only about 10 years old, and she is the misfit. She is Vi's younger sister, and they all live like siblings. They've all been sort of adopted by the de facto leader of the under city. Powder is in a very difficult position with this group because she is so much younger and smaller. She often isn't ready for the missions they go on. She can't really fight against larger opponents, and she's also called a bit of a jinx. Things tend to go wrong when she goes with them. At the beginning of the series they plan a heist in Piltover. They're going to steal some goods from a wealthy family's apartment, and powder actually finds these little sparkling gems and doesn't know what they are. She drops one as they're making their escape, and it explodes causing the wall of the building to blow out, and the enforcers to almost catch them. They run from the enforcers, they make it back to the under city, they tangle with a street gang. Powder is given the backpack with all of the goods they stole, and tries to escape with it, but ends up throwing it into the river so she can escape from her pursuer. So they're on this heist together. She is the one who unwittingly messes it up with the explosion. She loses their reward as well, and we hear a lot of criticism after this, which implies that this is typical. Every time powder goes along something goes wrong. So she's this little girl in a group of kids who are much older than her, who desperately wants to prove herself. She's also afraid of being alone, she's afraid they're going to abandon her if she doesn't prove herself soon, and Vi is the only one who believes in her. So this is the setup we have for this group of friends. Now this turns into a tragedy when their foster father, Vanda, gets taken in by Silco who is sort of a criminal underlord at this stage in the story, and they have history, which I will get into later when I talk about them. So Vanda gets taken, and Vi wants to go and save him, and she tells the powder that she can't go along for this mission, she's too young, she's not ready. And powder feels this incredibly deeply. After the older kids go off on their mission, we come back to powder, and she is sobbing and snotty and messy on her bed, and just distraught at having been left behind. She throws her things in anger and sees the gemstones that she stole from the highest react, and they spark. And she realizes that's what caused the explosion at the previous heist. And she realizes, oh maybe I can help this time, because powder has always tried to make these bombs which never work. It's another one of the reasons why she has this reputation for things going wrong, because even when she tries to help she can't. So now she has this really powerful fuel to use in a bomb, and she thinks she can help her older siblings get their father back. So she follows them to where Vanda is being held, where the older siblings are having a confrontation with the goons who are trying to stop them from saving him. So she sets up her bomb, this little clockwork monkey toy, puts the gemstones in it, prays that it'll work, winds the cog, and sets it walking towards where Vi is fighting this mutated goon. It walks, it walks, it claps its symbols back and forth over one of the gemstones, and then everything explodes. And powder gets flung back from the wall where she was waiting. And as she falls back, this serene smile comes on her face, because she realizes she's done it, she's helped. What she doesn't know though is that inside the warehouse where these explosions are happening, everything's falling apart. So her family, Vi, her foster siblings, her foster father, they were almost out, they were almost free, they knocked a hole through the wall, but now because of her explosion, the walls caving in, Klager gets crushed, Milo gets a rod through his shoulder, then also gets crushed, Vi gets stuck under a plank of metal, and Vanda ends up having to fight this mutated goon to survive, and almost dies in the process. He ends up taking shimmer, which is this performance enhancing addictive drug, so he can fight back and hold off death for a little bit, he saves Vi, they make it out, and he dies on the street with Vi looking over his body. Then powder comes out from around the corner, smiling and excited because her invention worked, she helped. And this is the tragedy, because she thought she helped, she thought she finally did something right, only to realise that she killed her family. And this takes us to Vi as a tragic character, because as part of this same story, she has her own tragic conclusion. So Vi, as I mentioned, was the leader of the gang. She's always been the leader, and it's her job to keep the family together and to be a role model. She is treated as Vanda's oldest daughter, and he tries to impart wisdom on her so that she can grow into a good leader as she grows up. When he is lying on the street dying, the last thing he says to her is to take care of powder. Now Vi has just been through an incredibly traumatic event, she's witnessed her whole family die in front of her, and not knowing why. Then powder shows up, coming around the corner, proud that she helped, and Vi is horrified, she can't believe that powder is the one who did this, powder is the one who killed their father, killed their brothers, and she lashes out, she takes powder and punches this much younger child, and powder is crying and begging her not to be mad, begging her not to leave her, and it's only when Vi sees powder's blood on her hand that she realises what she has done, and she has to leave. And I don't think it's anger that makes her take herself away, it's that she is the leader, she is responsible even though she's young, and she knows she is grieving and hurting, and she can't be what she needs to be to powder at that moment, she needs to grieve or else she's going to take it off on powder so she gets out of there to protect powder as well as herself. So Vi leaves, she doesn't go far, just a bit further down the street, collapses in an archway to grieve, and then she sees Silco, the villain, the person who stole their father, approach powder, and she stands up, she wants to go back to save powder from this villain, but the moment she stands up and starts stepping towards them, and enforcer catches her, he chloroforms her, she goes unconscious, and she is imprisoned for years. So in the same instance, you have the tragedy of powder who thought she was doing the right thing, she thought she was going to help, she unwittingly killed her family and then was abandoned by her sister, and the worst thing that could have possibly happened to her being abandoned, being alone, being a failure happened. But it's also a tragedy for Vi because her father's dying wish was for her to take care of powder, and after she had a moment to grieve, I think she would have done that, and that chance was taken away from her. So obviously this is tragic, but why is it tragic? And I don't think it's because something bad happened, because bad things happen in most stories, it's what creates drama. But I think it's three things. First is that the bad thing was a result of a good intention. Both powder and Vi wanted to do the right thing, powder wanted to help her sibling, she wanted to save Vanda, Vi wanted to protect her sister, she wanted to take herself away from her sister when she was in a volatile, destructive state. The second thing is that there are also these glimpses of hope that keep you on the edge of your seat where you think things might be okay. So when Vanda, Vi, Klager, and Milo are all trapped in this room, it looks like they're going to get out. Like Klager has broken a hole into the wall for them to escape. Milo has freed Vanda from the manacles that had him attached to the chair. Vi managed to pull the door shut before the guy she was fighting broke through. And yes, his banging at the door, we know he's going to break through soon, but there was a hole in the wall, they could have gotten out. And then there was this explosion that destroyed everything. The next thing is that there's no good that came out of this bad thing. It didn't serve a greater cause or purpose. I think often in fiction we see bad things happen, and it's either someone thinks the ends justify the means. So even if from the audience perspective they shouldn't be doing the bad thing they're doing, it's not a tragedy from the character's perspective because they're doing it with a goal in mind. The other approach is if bad things happen, but then you have your happily ever after. So the suffering and the sacrifice was worth it. In this case, there was no good to come out of these bad things. They didn't serve a greater cause. They weren't a sacrifice for the greater good. It was just destructive and painful for no reason. And finally, there is no coming back from this. There is no way this situation can be salvaged. There's no hope of redemption. And I think this is something that a lot of creators struggle with. We struggle to go that far because we love our characters. We want them to be happy. We don't want to hurt them too much. So it's really ballsy for Arcane to do this where there is no way powder can ever come back from this. She is never going to unkill her family. Similarly, when Vi gets taken away in that moment, there is no way she can save her sister from Silcoe. When she wakes up in a prison cell and can't get out, there is nothing she can do to erase that. And maybe, maybe a fight can get taken and she and Powder were able to walk away from the event. Yes, obviously there's still pain and still grief, but they would have been together. There would have been some hope that they could have helped heal each other, but there was no hope. And the thing about Arcane is, first, this is just the first three episodes. This is Act One, three acts, so there's much more tragedy to come. But the second thing is that these aren't the only tragic characters. The reason why I feel Arcane has mastered tragedies is because there are so many tragic characters. But what's interesting though is that where the story ends for each character determines whether or not it's a tragedy for that specific character or not. So next, let's look at the two father figures in this story, Vanda and Silcoe. You can argue that for them, their stories don't end in tragedy because they both end up dying for their children, which means there is meaning to their sacrifice. The tragedy then is for the characters who live on who ultimately see that the deaths were meaningless. So Vanda used to be a fighter for the independence of Zorn or the undercity, and he gave up on that dream when he took in Vi, Powder and his other kids. And we see this back and forth in his life in the first couple of episodes where he is the unofficial leader of the undercity. He keeps things in line. He even works with the enforcers from Piltover, so the enforcers from the more privileged part of this world, to help keep things in balance because he now knows what the cost of war is, and he cares about the cost because he has children who he could lose. So in the first two episodes, we see him time and time again protecting his children and choosing his children over the city of Zorn. He lies to enforcers, he doesn't stand up to the enforcers when they undermine his authority, and we can see this is starting to cost his reputation in front of his people. But ultimately, he has decided that some things are more important than fighting for his city's freedom and independence, and for him, it's his children. So his tragedy starts when there is this heist at the beginning of the first episode where the four kids break into a Piltover apartment and start stealing all of these things, including the gemstones the power ends up using for her mom. Now the enforcers know that the children were involved in this, but Vander won't hand them over, he keeps hiding them. And because they stole from such an important family member's home, so it was actually a member of the governing council who owned the apartment where they stole the goods, the enforcers can't let this go. The council doesn't want to let this go. So Vi ends up deciding to turn herself in to bring it into the current problem. Now remember Vi is the leader of the group and Vander has instilled this moral code in her which is that it's as the leader it is her job to take care of the others. So as the leader she decides to turn herself in so that the others can go free. But Vi is his daughter, he can't bear the thought of her being turned in, so when he discovers her plan he goes after her, locks her in a room so that when the enforcers come to the meeting point he is waiting there for them and he turns himself in in their place, choosing his children over leading the under city again. This is where the tragedy starts, so the enforcers are taking him away and they end up getting killed. He is taken away by Silco, the villain, and so what it means is this sacrifice was for nothing. He was sacrificing his city, Zaun, or his children. What has happened now is that Zaun has lost his leadership and his children might not be protected either because he's been taken away. So we know that the children go after him to save him, we have these glimpses of hope where it looks like they're going to get away and then powder's bomb goes off and the bomb destroys everything. Vanter is nearly killed in a fight and he gives himself enough shimmer to be able to protect and save Vi. He fights, gets Vi out of the warehouse where he's been trapped and he dies with his last words being to protect powder. So from Vanter's perspective we could argue that his story is not so tragic. Yes he died but he died after having saved one of his kids with the instruction to protect the other one, so this is an example of a bad thing happening but in service of a greater good. It becomes a tragedy in the moments after when Vi empowered to realize what has happened and Vi unwittingly abandoned her sister. So Vanter's sacrifice ultimately didn't protect the undercity because it falls to Silco, it didn't protect his kids, two of them are dead, one is imprisoned and one goes to Silco and there is no coming back from it. He is dead and his daughters are trapped. Following this arc there is a timeskip and when we catch up with them we see that Vi has been physically locked up for years while powder is in a mental prison and has never been able to get over the trauma of that day. Now let's look at Silco who's the villain of the story. Now he originally fought by Vanter's side to liberate the undercity and Vanter betrayed him after deciding that the cost of revolution was too high. We don't get into the full details of this but the impression we're given is that Silco would stop at nothing for independence which Vanter couldn't do anymore now that he had a family to protect. So Silco hates Vanter for working with the enforcers to keep the current system in place and he still wants to rise up against Piltover. For a lot of the story things are going in Silco's favor, maybe not smoothly but they're going his way, so at the end of act one he defeats Vanter and becomes the new leader of the undercity and his main challenge from this point is actually how he manages Jinx, formerly powder, who has turned into chaos incarnate due to the combination of being incredibly traumatized from the previous events as well as not really having any discipline or structure from the look of it but being given weapons and bombs to play with. So like when she was a child she often does more harm than good now but there's no one reigning her in and he doesn't reign her in because he loves her like a daughter. Things change when Vi gets out of prison and Jinx learns that she is alive. Before now Silco had told her that Vi was dead and now Jinx doesn't know who to trust and her inner self is fragmented between powder who she was before everything went wrong in act one and she killed her family and Jinx, who she became after Silco took her in. Vi represents the past and an opportunity to return to being powder while Silco represents who she is now. Now what's interesting is while Jinx is conflicted, Silco isn't. He still prioritizes Jinx over everything, he even gets the opportunity to achieve his dream of making Zorn independent but only if he hands her over which he refuses to do. So like Vanda, he ultimately ends up choosing his child over his dream. On Jinx's side the conflict culminates in the final confrontation of the show where Jinx sets up a tea party with Silco, Vi, and Caitlyn all tied to their chairs. She has a gun and is clearly unhinged and it isn't clear who will survive like it is the tensest tea party I've ever seen. Caitlyn manages to escape from her chair and get a weapon and Jinx lowers her gun to the table. Then Silco picks it up and aims it at Vi. Jinx then gets Caitlyn's weapon and shoots Silco instinctively to protect her sister. This then mirrors the earlier scene where she accidentally killed her family with her bomb. In this scene she acted on instinct and only realizes the consequences of her actions after it's too late. She kneels before Silco in tears wanting to undo what she's done. In this moment Silco seems to be at peace. He tells Jinx that she's perfect, he loved her as she was, chaotic and flawed with so much potential and you could make the argument that this love was twofold. On one hand it's the love of a father for a daughter and on the other she represents Zorn, chaotic and flawed but with so much potential and even though he sacrificed his dream of Zorn's independence for her, the dream lives on through her embodied by her. So on one hand Silco is a tragic character because he died not having achieved the dream he'd wanted for so long. On the other though he dies at peace. His vision now lives on in his daughter. The tragedy here is for Jinx who once again acted out this time isn't quite the same as the first incident years ago because she wasn't trying to help and she didn't think she'd saved everyone. She also hadn't intended to kill, she acted on instinct and only discovered the consequences of her actions too late. So it's a tragedy for her, she shot her father and it doesn't matter how much regret she feels because nothing can be done to change it. The final tragic figure I wanted to cover is Jace who might have the most classic arc of any of the characters because he rises too close to the sun before falling. When we first meet Jace he is a student who wants to find a way to combine magic and science to make the world better. In act one he has a breakthrough discovery and after the time skipped to act two we see him as the golden child due to how his technology has helped the world. He's even given a seat on the governing council of Piltover and a chance to make a difference. As he comes to power he gains a deeper understanding of the struggles of and threat of the undercity and alternates between wanting to fight them and wanting to grant them independence. Initially he wants to fight them to both get revenge and stamp out their will after Jinx carried out attacks on Piltover and this culminates with him going with Vi to destroy Silco Shimmer factory. It's only when he's there that he sees the true cost of violence because the factory is staffed by children and he accidentally kills one of them. So for the first time he understands what the cost of a war might be on both sides and this is something that most people from Piltover will never understand because they're not the ones doing the dirty work, they don't go to the undercity, they don't see the conditions that the people live in, they just get to enjoy their privilege. So this leaves Jace to consider a peace deal. First he offers to grant Zorn its independence but only in exchange for Jinx because Jinx has caused a lot of damage and injured a lot of people. When Silco refuses the council vote to grant the undercity independence anyway, recognizing that they have treated the undercity too badly for too long for any peaceful cooperation to work. As they are voting on this though, voting on what both Silco and Vanda always wanted, Jinx has fired a missile at the council after Silco's death. She and Silco didn't know the council meeting would be voting on giving Zorn its independence and by taking this action she is probably triggering an outright war between the two factions. It could be something she realizes later, once again when it's too late to turn back. It's also a tragedy for Jace though because the moment he decided to move ahead with a peaceful path, the moment he convinced the council to vote with him, it is a moment too late. And there are countless moments like this in Arcane and I think what makes it so affecting, what makes it so heartbreaking is that it is so real because in real life you don't always get second chances. There are things that you do, there are mistakes that you make, there are choices you make and there is no coming back from them and sometimes you don't see the damage until after the deed has already been done and there's no going back. So those are some initial rambling thoughts on Arcane. I hope you enjoyed this video, it is my first attempt to do an essay like this, so if you liked it please give me a thumbs up and let me know if I should do more content like this and I will see you next time, bye.