Our top three favorite Arcane moments

Arcane, the animated League of Legends series on Netflix, was a smashing success with fans and critics alike. While the series was exciting overall for the League of Legends community, there are some standout moments that were more exciting or emotional than the others.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

1: Vander’s rescue gets jinxed

Anyone who has watched Arcane will have a hard time shaking the tragedy of the third episode`’s warehouse sequence. After Silco ambushes the Enforcers arresting Vander with his Shimmer-enhanced thug and kidnaps him, Vi, Mylo, and Claggor mount a daring escape. The dynamic between Vander and Silco reveals the past betrayal that drove them apart, and the stakes are as high as ever with Vander prisoner.

Vi and her gang arrive just in time, working together seamlessly to free their adoptive father. As Vi holds off Silco’s henchmen, Claggor finds an escape, and Mylo picks the locks on Vander’s restraints. It seems to be working, each character contributing to get the “Hound of the Undercity” free. Just when it feels like everything is falling into place, it goes horrifically wrong.

Jinx’s improvised Hextech grenade explodes, collapsing the room in on Vi and her family. Mylo and Claggor die, and Vander consumes Shimmer to save Vi, nearly dying in the process. The heartwrenching aftermath that separates Vi and Jinx only adds to the tragedy.

This scene proved the stakes of Arcane’s story, seeding Warwick’s backstory as well as contextualizing years of lore clues. The warehouse sequence is our first favorite moment. It is daunting, dark, and masterfully crafted.

2: Ekko and Jinx face down on the Harbour Bridge

This fight sequence has come up over and over again as one of many fans’ favorite Arcane moments. As Caitlyn and Vi try to return the stolen Hextech gemstone to Piltover, Jinx ambushes them. Childhood friends become deadly adversaries as Ekko and Jinx square off in the blinding searchlight of the Enforcers’ blockade.

The fight scene between Jinx and Ekko is some of the strongest character-influenced animation of the series. Without needing his miraculous Zero Drive, Fortiche Studios was still able to use time and Ekko’s tendency to overthink things to play with temporal storytelling. The flashbacks in the fight carve out the difference between the two characters.

Both Ekko and Jinx were left alone in the aftermath of Vander’s disappearance and Benzo’s deaths, their childhoods shattered by the traumatic event. Jinx has let that trauma control her, siding with Silco and falling back into patterns from her childhood. Conversely, Ekko took up Vander’s mantle and became a leader for Zaun’s most vulnerable, opposing both the tyrannical Enforcers and Silco’s exploitative organized crime.

In the fight, Jinx and Ekko replay movements and moments from their childhood. Jinx’s behavior remains the same as she is unable to break away from Powder’s experiences, no matter how hard she tries. Ekko, on the other hand, has learned and grown in the intervening years. He has adapted and changed to grow into the leader that the Firelights and Zaun need.

Ekko wins this gorgeous combat sequence because he refuses to let himself make the same mistakes as his past, while Jinx lashes out instinctually. This scene is a staggering accomplishment and yet another moment where Arcane raises the bar on video game adaptations.

3: Vi and Jayce’s fight against Turbo Chemtanks

It was clear from early trailers that fans would get to see Vi acquire her signature Hextech Gauntlets over the course of Arcane, but the execution of her first outing with the magical fists was even better than fans could have hoped. As Vi and Jayce lead an Enforcer raid into the mines to disrupt a Shimmer production factory belonging to Silco, a fight breaks out with henchmen armored in Turbo Chemtanks.

From Vi’s aerial entrance, complete with a shockwave-inducing punch to shatter the Chemtank is just plain cool. It’s the first time in the series fans get to see champions fighting in a way reminiscent of their in-game playstyle. Vi’s brute force approach is felt in every punch, and her punches land in sequences of three to reference her W.

Jayce’s Hextech hammer also gets its time in the spotlight, with bright blue blasts vaporizing the Shimmer and Chemtech hybrids. As the scene begins, the weight of Jayce’s hammer is evident in every crushing blow sending the Chembaron’s minions flying.

Honorable mentions for our favorite Arcane moments

Compressing Arcane’s best moments down to merely three scenes is a fool’s errand. The show’s greatest strength is its consistent narrative and visual quality. There are plenty of moments that could have easily made this list, from the cliffhanger ending to Silco’s death to Vi’s facedown with Sevika in the Last Drop. Arcane is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, but these three moments stuck out as particularly awesome set pieces.