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BBC's original Ghosts may be over, but series co-creators Mathew Baynton and Jim Howick spill how life goes on for the characters.
Posted in: Netflix, TV | Tagged: Arcane, CGI animation, Jinx, league of legend, netflix
Arcane: Act 3 Review – Animated Fantasy May Be Game of Thrones Equal
Arcane: Act 3 is the climax the series promised, a dark, downbeat, heartbreaking yet exhilarating payoff to everything that came before. It has become the best fantasy show on Netflix and one of the best fantasy series out there. The pleasant surprise of the Netflix animated series is that its characters may be common personality and genre types and so are its plot beats but goes deep on the characters' emotions and the story often swerves in unexpected directions. Vi is a hotheaded brawler with a heart of gold; Caitlyn is an idealistic cop from a privileged family who wants to save the city, Jayce is an idealistic scientist who wants to do the right thing and help as many people as possible; Silco is a ruthless crime boss willing to kill and destroy anyone who gets in his way; Jinx is a damaged, destructive, murderous agent of Chaos.
Yet Vi but also has guilt over her past treatment of her sister Jinx and is desperate to find and save her; Caitlyn finds her ideals challenged when confronted by the city's exploitation and neglect of the people in Zaun; Jayce ends up having to do bad things to achieve his goals and is horrified by the consequences; Silco's soft spot is his love for his adopted daughter Jinx because he thinks she has the same pain of betrayal and abandonment he does. He's trying to heal himself by loving her as a daughter, but he's in denial that she's more broken than he is, and that might prove his undoing.
And it all comes down to Jinx. She's responsible for literally everything that happens in the entire show. All of her actions have ripple effects for all the characters, starting with her interaction with the Hextech orb that she first stole as a child in Act 1. She goes from a sweet but accident-prone child in Act 1 to a grow-up murderous, psychotic agent of Chaos who destroys virtually everything she touches. In League of Legends, Jinx became the game's mascot. She was a Harley Quinn manqué whose antics were slapstick destruction in the promo videos. In Arcane, she's been reimagined as dark and tragic, not light and funny. The destruction she causes is horrific. She's as much the face of the show as she is its center. Every time something is about to go right for someone, she shows up to mess it up. In the cutscenes, it's comedy. In this show, it's tragic with monumental consequences.
Arcane might be the animated fantasy show's version of Game of Thrones. It's morally complex. The good guys do not always do good things, the bad guys are nuanced, and situations that look like the usual plot tropes keep swerving in unexpected directions. And most of all, it features a cast of characters that viewers will become invested in and want to follow for as long as the show is around. And Arcane turns Silco, our Big Bad, into its most complex. He's a bad man. He knows it. He's utterly ruthless. He's perfectly willing to kill kids without batting an eyelash, yet Jinx was the one child who broke through to him because he totally identifies with her pain. And he'll forgive her for everything she does, no matter how bad. It's a sign of the show's intent that his final moment in the finale is the most heartbreaking In the series, one he shares with Jinx.
Arcane ends on a cliffhanger that suggests there's a lot more story to come. Fans of the game will see that only half the main characters have their origins told and got the weapons that defined them as the player characters in the game while the rest are still on their way.
The complete first season of Arcane is now streaming on Netflix.
Arcane: Act 3
9.5/10
Netflix's Arcane: Act 3 is the climax the series promised, a dark, downbeat, heartbreaking yet exhilarating payoff where nobody gets what they want. It has become the best fantasy show on Netflix and one of the best fantasy series out there.
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