Arcane showrunner teases the future of the franchise

Arcane, an animated Netflix show based on the the video game League of Legends from Riot Games, is rounding the corner on the end of its second season, which will also mark the end of the show. A lot of fans don't want to hear that, because Arcane has been a huge success. Showrunner Christian Linke and his team put a ton of effort into the project and it shows. "We spent nine years at this point on these 11 or so characters, so there’s also something about wanting to make sure that we are able to tell the stories of other characters that we’re also really passionate about," he told Animation Magazine. "There’s people who were single when they started on Arcane and now they’re married and have kids in school."

Is the team really going to hang it all up after the final three episodes of Arcane drop on Netflix this Saturday? It may not be so. According to Variety, Linke may be working on a feature animation project. Also, Riot has already bought a season's worth of scripts for a theoretical live-action League of Legends series, so it seems like they want to keep working in this universe. And Linke mentioned wanting to tell stories about "other characters" above; I wouldn't be surprised if the story of Arcane continues in some form or another.

But for now, we can enjoy the series that is, because Linke and his crew deserve credit for turning in something that's resonated with so many people. "We definitely started Arcane at a time where there wasn’t a lot of precedent for this approach," Linke said. "People told us, ‘Hey, you can’t have 40-minute episodes in animation; that’s insane.’ And I think there was just this dream of, ‘Well, we think you can.’ I think, really, the drama, the long pauses and silences between two characters — those are things that have been very unusual, at least in Western animation."

In the end, Arcane will have 18 episodes over the course of its two seasons. They cost $250 million in all, including marketing, which is a fair amount of money, but it seems like it paid off. "I think no one has ever made a great thing by not taking bets," Linke said. "I think it’s just if you have the right team, you will have the quality and it’ll be great, but you need to take bets. And I think we just were really, based on the work that the people had done that’s so wonderful on Season 1, we knew that we wanted see, ‘Hey, what would you do with more, if you can have your voice amplified and louder?’ I think it’s sometimes really just genuine desire to see what would that person do if given the power."

The final three episodes of Arcane will drop all at once on Netflix this Saturday, November 23. Beyond that, we wait and see. Something tells me we won't be waiting that long for an announcement.

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