Which League Of Legends Characters Die In Netflix's Arcane Season 2?
by Rafael Motamayor · /FilmHeavy spoilers ahead for the "Arcane" season 2 finale.
After just two seasons, the groundbreaking, award-winning, critically acclaimed "Arcane" has come to an end. The animated series made a huge impact when it premiered in 2021, doing for TV animation what "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" did for feature animation. Indeed, "Arcane" season 1 delivered a visually stunning spectacle with a great story (and an even greater budget), memorable characters, and a world that felt as expansive as the narrative was intimate. It's the kind of show that arrives just once in a generation, and now it is over.
An adaptation of the world of Riot Games' hugely popular "League of Legends" game, "Arcane" season 1 put the final nail in the coffin of the idea of a video game adaptation curse. It felt like an expansion of the game rather than an imitation, and understood what made the characters and world exciting while telling its own story. It was also a prequel to its source material, revealing the origins of several characters and how they became the larger-than-life champions gamers know and love.
In spite of this, "Arcane" was not afraid to stray away from the "canon" of "League of Legends" in order to tell a more dramatic story. Indeed, the second and final season of the show — which wound up being rushed due to "Arcane" being canceled before it could realize its original multi-season plan — ends with the deaths of a whole bunch of characters from "League of Legends" while also leaving the fates of certain characters rather vague.
Whether you somehow decided not to watch one of the most anticipated titles of 2024, or you were left confused by what went down in the last episode, here are all the "League of Legends" characters that died in the "Arcane" season 2 finale.
Professor Heimerdinger made the ultimate sacrifice
Professor Heimerdinger was one of the most fascinating characters of the first season of "Arcane." A brilliant but eccentric scientist, Heimerdinger has lived countless lifetimes, and has become sort of detached from everyday problems. In the first season, he was skeptical of the Hextech technology Jayce and Viktor invented, and advocated for caution and taking things extremely slow (a luxury he has) rather than trying to fix the problems of Piltover in a timely fashion.
In the second season, Heimerdinger found himself trapped in an alternate timeline, leaving behind his life of science and becoming a street musician while waiting for his new pupil Ekko to show up in this timeline, too. When the two worked out a way to go back to their timeline, Heimerdinger was reluctant to leave his new home, finding peace and joy in this new timeline. Still, he did his job and helped Ekko, but at a great sacrifice. In episode 7, Heimerdinger sacrifices himself to prepare the machine that sent Ekko to his own timeline, with the professor getting disintegrated by the arcane forces.
Granted, some fans are not so convinced that was the last we'll see of Heimerdinger. In the lore of "League of Legends," Yordles like Heimerdinger are immortal spirits that just respawn after death, so perhaps the professor will make a return.
Ambessa got what she wanted
One of the main antagonists of "Arcane" season 2 is Ambessa Medarda, a Noxian general who arrives in Piltover under promises of diplomatic relations and visiting her daughter Mel, but ends up all but staging a coup and declaring martial law in the city. Throughout both seasons, Ambessa repeatedly expresses that anything she did was for the sake of family, but she ends up having her son killed and her daughter estranged, kidnapped, and tortured.
In the season 2 finale, Ambessa confronts her daughter Mel and her protégé Caitlyn, who use Ambessa's own lessons to defeat her. Mel employs her new magical powers to deliver her own mother to the Black Rose faction, which begins to torture the general. Though Mel has a change of heart and saves her mother from the other mages, she is still gravely injured from her fight against Caitlyn and dies in Mel's arms, inadvertently forcing her daughter to take up a leadership mantle she had always rejected.
Warwick fell down a hole
In a show full of tragedy, arguably the biggest one in "Arcane" is the story of Vander, the surrogate father to Vi and Jinx who died at the end of Act I in the first season. Vander then comes back in season 2, now transformed into a mindless beast known as Warwick in the game. Still, there were hints of his old personality, and even a hope that Vander, Vi, and Jinx could reunite and be a family again. Then everything changed when the Noxians and Jayce attacked, and Vander was once again lost to Warwick.
In Act III, Warwick's body is used to heal Viktor after Jayce's attack, with the Shimmer-infused blood transfusions seemingly erasing any last remaining bits of Vander's personality and fully transforming him into a raging monster. In the series finale, Warwick attacks Vi and Jinx, who still hold some hope that their father figure is alive somewhere within the beast. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case, with a last attack from Warwick forcing Jinx to jump in and save her sister, sacrificing herself in the process. Jinx gives Warwick one last loving look before the two fall down a shaft into an explosive death.
Viktor and Jayce pulled an Evangelion
On a macro level, the story of "Arcane" really was the tale of Jayce and Viktor, two men who become friends through a love of science and a desire to make the world a better place, only to end up with an invention that brings both progress and disaster to Piltover. In the second season, the two become estranged when Viktor turns into a sort of techno Jesus, praising "glorious evolution" via Hextech, while Jayce has a vision of a future so dark and grim he sets out to kill his best friend.
In the finale, Viktor's dreams come crashing down as he all but unleashes the Human Instrumentality Project from "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and forces everyone's consciousness to melt together into a hive mind. In order to stop it, Jayce's consciousness has a heart-to-heart with Viktor in a metaphysical space just like Shinji in the final episode of "Neon Genesis Evangelion." Unfortunately, it is not easy to undo the damage, and the two friends end up sacrificing their lives to contain the power of the arcane and return the people of Piltover back to normal. It's a tragic, emotional ending to their story, one that started with a genuine desire to improve humanity, then got morphed into resentment and pride, and ultimately, sacrifice.
Granted, there's a chance they simply disappeared to another timeline or something similar, seeing as the characters are very much alive in the source material. Still, the scene felt quite final.
Jinx may not be dead after all?
Finally, there's Jinx. The heart and soul of "Arcane" was always the story of sisters Vi and Jinx, and how they found themselves on opposite sides of the Piltover/Zaun conflict. As a young kid, Jinx was raised by a sadistic mob boss and turned into a weapon. At the start of season 2, however, Jinx became a revolutionary symbol for the people of Zaun, a sign of rebellion. Even when she avoids the spotlight or even making a statement, Jinx can't stop herself from becoming a hero in the end. She helps during the fight against Viktor and the Noxians, and when she saw her sister getting attacked by Warwick, she jumped right in after to save her.
As she fell down a shaft with Warwick, Jinx took one of her monkey bombs and seemingly blew herself up. It's a bittersweet echo of how she first went from Powder to embracing the moniker of Jinx after she used one of her monkey bombs and accidentally killed Vander and her friends. This time, though, she was saving her sister.
But is Jinx dead? Though the show doesn't make it clear, and there is something beautiful in the way her story ends, there is a hint that Jinx might be alive. In the very last scene of the series, Caitlyn is looking at her family's schematics of the Undercity when she sees where Jinx fell — a series of shafts connected to that chamber — before it cuts to a shot of an airship flying away, just like how Jinx once said she'd fly away in one of those in season 1. This implies Jinx actually survived and decided to leave everything behind to find happiness, finally breaking the cycle of violence she was trapped in.
"Arcane" season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.