Arcane Finale Bingo & Predictions

Here is the bingo; scroll down if you’d like to read more of what I’m anticipating!

Given the…precarious situation S2E6 “The Message Hidden Within the Pattern” leaves off on, I wanted to take a stab in the dark and speculate on who is least likely to live to the end. Here are my rules.

1. You make it to the credits of Episode 9, you lived. Cark it before that and you’re out.

2. We have to see them die. I’m not falling for any fakeouts. Ekko goes down in S1E7 twice and both times he’s revealed to still be alive!  

3. If any resurrection shenanigans do occur, that doesn’t invalidate a prediction that the character died - they still crossed the important threshold of their body no longer functioning. If I had predicted Vander would die before Season One released, I would’ve been right regardless of his later return to life. (By my count, of the major cast, only Vander, Silco, and arguably Jinx depending on your interpretation of S1E8 have died so far.)

4. I’m only talking about the main cast, plus a couple of supporting characters who I think we can agree by common sense deserve to be in a life-or-death prediction. 

5. To keep this simple, I’m gonna rip off fire hazard indicators to classify the danger each character faces of dying in one of five categories - low, moderate, high, very high or extreme.

Those are my ground rules; let’s get into it!

Ambessa: Very High

Jinx hasn’t killed a single soul so far this season, and we’re still waiting for clarity on which of Jayce or Viktor has done the wrong thing here. That leaves us with Ambessa as our only out-and-out, unambiguous villain, with the entire season’s politics structured around her conspiracy to Piltover into a Noxian 

laboratory-protectorate. And villains tend to die violent deaths. It's catharsis for the good guys, it's the consequence of their faults, and it concludes the conflict. 

Arcane wasn't afraid to kill Silco despite his enormous significance to Jinx, to a political actor, and to the entire backstory. Given all of this, I expect Caitlyn or somebody else - perhaps even on her own side - to kill her. The only bit of nuance stopping me from putting her at Extreme is that her own side cuts both ways: she has a live dynamic with Mel, even if last season’s ending could serve as a conclusion to that arc, and with the Black Rose. Ambessa is a powerhouse who we haven’t yet seen at her peak, and might still have weapons from Hextech or Singed up her sleeve - her survival would be no contrivance. Perhaps she’s just locked up, or escapes Piltover, to play an important role in a future Noxus spinoff. 

Caitlyn: Low

I would be surprised if Caitlyn dies. She screwed up for most of this season but her turn back to the light has been smooth so far. Piltover’s elites have suffered a lot of deaths already and she’s still standing as a fairly cautious, reasonable character unlikely to go down to Ambessa or Jinx in a red rage. Besides, the audience would be all cut up at that. She slots neatly into a postwar context both in a happy personal commitment with Vi, and on a political level leading Piltover.

Ekko: Moderate

As I noted earlier, Ekko has escaped death a couple of times. On the one hand, maybe that makes another escape unbelievable; on the other, we know he’s good at it. I personally believe in him as one of the two most determined characters in the show, along with Vi. The trouble is that he’s been dumped in a situation screaming danger signals - he's vanished, Jayce is in a mentally and physically messy state, put the pieces together and maybe whatever magical realm swallowed them up was highly dangerous and hard to escape. The final thing I will note that allows me to keep him down at Moderate is, while I don’t want to talk about it too much and potentially spoil twists that may or may not be coming, I don’t know but I like the theorising, Ekko may hold the key to walking their world back from the cusp of disaster.

Heimerdinger: Very High

He’s the comic relief who hasn’t really done anything for some time. You might argue that protects him: why kill somebody when their death would feel so discordant to the audience? But I’d argue he’s inhabitating that dangerous mentor zone. He has imparted all the wisdom that he can and now reaches a point where Jayce’s point of view is synchronising with his own. There’s not much value to continuing to put him in scenes unless his character undergoes a radical shift (I’m thinking Doctor Robotnik from the Sonic movies). Killing him off could double down on a serious tone for the final episodes, and prove the catalyst for the arcs of Ekko and especially Jayce - what else could convince him the Arcane is so dangerous? Besides, it’s not like he can defend himself.

Isha: Extreme

What do you want me to say? She radiates sacrificial lamb, a highly sympathetic character introduced to get the audience attached so we are gutted when they die and therefore understand the characters’ extreme reactions. (Reminds me of a certain other character in a recent very good TV show, iykyk.) All I can postulate is that they chose to set an expectation that she’s cooked before the week break: last we saw, she’s firing a superweapon right next to her face at a giant raging beast after charging into the middle of a fierce battle with god knows what magic emanating from Viktor all around, a situation so dangerous Vi held Jinx back from getting involved. 

Perhaps the choice to set that expectation is in order to make the subversion all the more satisfying? If Isha does live, I see her likely role as being adopted by Vi after Jinx dies: a second chance to raise Powder without the mistakes of the past. (On the flip side, mayhaps Jinx returns to being Powder and Isha takes up the Jinx moniker?) On a personal level, I also really like “save the children” themes generally and am interested in how they’ve manifested in Arcane so far, and she’d certainly epitomise that.

Jayce: High

I really can’t assess him well at this point - we just don’t know enough. What we do know is he has survived what appears to be a perilous situation, and he’s come back more determined than ever, and he’s still hanging onto a very powerful weapon. There are all kinds of ways he could go down, from however his confrontation with Viktor’s faction plays out to going so rogue that Piltover itself decides to put him down (Caitlyn?), but maybe he’ll be vindicated as the hero of this story and scrape through. We just don’t know yet.

Jinx: Very High

Jinx’s rehabilitation so far this season has been really interesting! But, like, she’s also a ruthless terrorist. It’s hard to let such characters get happy endings in the eyes of the audience in a way that feels thematically satisfying, though, in fairness, the creative team could argue she’s only killed oppressors so far. But it’s harder still to believe that Piltover can let her run free, and we’ve had nowhere foreshadowed as a safe place for her to go. A happy ending for her is foreseeable, one where the family can come all together in the end or even just do a better job of surviving Vander’s second death, but let’s be real that a character who we’ve mostly seen be self-destructive and callous about danger, and no longer has the one ally who brought her back last season after she committed attempted murder-suicide, is up against the odds.

Mel: Low

You would shock me if she died. It simply wouldn’t be satisfying - she’s a cool, interesting character who hasn’t gotten to do a ton yet in her own right, rather than simply as an influence on Jayce. We need to uncover the mystery of her protection, and what she knows. And she’s perfectly positioned to set up a spinoff series going in depth on Noxus and the Black Rose. Yes, she hasn’t got other powers, she’s in the clutches of the enemy, but we’ve also established her enemies cannot afford to kill her yet - and Ambessa’s still out there, willing to go to great lengths to protect her family. All in all, I’d say the home stretch should be a blue milk run for her, safety-wise.

Vander: Extreme

I really don’t want to say this, because I loved Vander in Season One, Act One, but if anybody is dead meat walking, it’s Vander. You know how we established Isha is in danger earlier because she’s firing a superweapon? That weapon is about to go right through Vander’s jaw and burn into his brain. Short of any absolute chicanery we could speculate on - did Viktor stop time at the end of E6? Can Singed or Viktor perform medicine to save him? Is something weirder yet gonna happen? - he’s dead. And it makes sense: it forces Vi and Jinx to go through the loss a second time at a time when they’re ready to go through very different reactions, and, importantly, Vander doesn’t have a potential future ahead right now: what does the dead mentor-dad figure go do in story terms? My final thought is that I do have an itch looking at him that you might get some sort of weird body separation: Vander back to himself again, and the beast that is left. But that’s just a theory…

Vi: Low

Vi is safe. While you can make a reasonable argument that Jinx is the main character of Season 1 - she’s more interesting, complex, and makes the most momentous decisions from start to finish - Vi is clearly the overall main character of the series: most of the show has been constructed to push her towards some kind of definitive conclusion for her quest, whether it’s a success in saving Jinx or a failure leaving her to find a new purpose protecting other Zaunites. She’s only going to go down in a dark, bitter ending - either she goes down saving Jinx, she refuses to hurt Jinx so Jinx kills her first, or she becomes just another Zaunite casualty of Piltover after having done nothing wrong. I don’t see any of these happening.

Viktor: Extreme

I mean, we’re literally hearing his dying thoughts as E6 ends, right? The important distinction from Vander is this: Vander has no recourse and no future. Viktor has powers beyond our comprehension (we’ve seen him retain consciousnesses past their deaths), and there’s clearly a lot of story left to tell about what’s going on with him and the Arcane. I believe he is probably coming back in some form - I doubt this is the end for him. That being said, with fairly strong odds that he’s on his way to becoming a villain, there’s no telling if he comes back and still ends up dying for good as the bad guy by the end of the season.

Aubrey Graham: Mega-Super-Duper-Extreme

It turns out today’s biggest drop wasn’t everybody bawling their eyes out over poor Isha, but Kung Fu Kenny certifying his status as the Caesar of the Big Three. Bing-bop-boom-boom-boom-bop-bam- the type of shit I'm on, you wouldn't understand.