Riot Games’ multiple Annie and Emmy Award-winning adult animated steampunk series is back with a long-awaited new season filled with twice the number of songs, a deeper dive into the inner workings of magic and its connection to hextech, and more grimy, seedy underbelly fun; premieres November 9 on Netflix.
After only a single season, Christian Linke and Alex Yee’s adult animated steampunk action-adventure series garnered a whopping nine Annie Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards.It has the distinction of being the first streaming series to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program; within a week of its streaming debut, it also set the record (at that time) as Netflix's highest-rated series, ranked first on the Netflix Top 10 Chart in 52 countries, and ranked second on the chart in the United States.
So, it’s understandable why, when Riot Games announced ’s second season would premiere Saturday, November 9, on Netflix, the world went wild. “To ourselves, we always said that Season 1, for most characters, is the path to becoming the champions that they are in the game and the characters people know,” shares Linke.“Season 2 is all about taking them further.There was this new territory to say, ‘Alright, where should these characters go? What have our players not seen from them yet?’ That was really exciting and very hard.” Based on the world behind Riot Games’ multiplayer online battle arena video game , dives into the delicate balance between the rich city of Piltover and the seedy underbelly of Zaun.
Tensions between these city-states boil over with the creation of hextech –a way for any person to control magical energy – in Piltover; and in Zaun, a new drug called shimmer transforms humans into monsters.The rivalry between the cities splits families and friends as brings life to the relationships that shape some of' famous champions, including Vi, Jinx, Caitlyn, Jayce, and Viktor. Check out the trailer for Season 2: The series features a complex world of moral decisions, breathtaking animation, and suspenseful storytelling.Linke, a co-creator with Yee, also serves as executive producer alongside Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck.
Riot Games produces the series with Paris-based studio Fortiche Production directing and producing the animation, under the direction of the founders Pascal Charrue and Arnaud Delord.“I think was always very inspired by Paris life, the city and the artists that live there,” says Linke.“And that inspiration stays in Season 2.
When you talk about , it easily sounds like Zaun is the shitty place.But, if you were looking to have a fun night out, and were to choose between Zaun and Piltover, you’re going to choose the undercity.Things are grimy and kind of dirty sometimes, but that’s where you’re going on a weekend night.
It’s just fun.And, in Season 2, we wanted to push all of that.We wanted to stylize things even more and break a lot more rules.” One of the challenges of ’s first season was adhering to the natural laws of light in the animation.
The colors and shadows would have to be adjusted from the original vision boards because the show’s grounded nature made it tough to go against the way a scene looked at 11 o’clock in the morning.But, in Season 2, Linke says the team leaned far more into epic contrasts and abstract aesthetics. A great illustration of this can be seen in the series’ recently released clip, “Nothing to Lose,” which shows a tortured Vi, punching away her troubles in the boxing ring and losing herself at the bottom of many, many glasses of alcohol.Watch it here: “We went a bit crazy, to be honest,” shares Linke.
“The animation really comes alive in Zaun’s streets.When you stretch and bend things, it can easily look cartoony or broken in animation.When things get warped in that medium, it’s not easy, but it’s a big part of what we wanted.
If you don’t push what you want to do with animation, then why do animation in the first place? I think the animation lovers of Season 2 will be really happy.” Another way Linke and the team pushed the show’s animation was by giving it a soundtrack that slaps twice as hard.Season 1 received recognition for its score from Alex Seaver and Alexander Temple with a Billboard Music Award for Top Soundtrack, a Golden Reel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-Theatrical Animation, and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) and Animation.But while the first season contained roughly 10 songs, Season 2, according to Linke, will contain over 20. “And it's all original music,” notes Linke.
“Nothing's licensed.We worked with artists from the ground up on everything and I’m really excited to see people embrace it.The songs are super cool.
I'm a big fan of what we did there.” Before joining the team, composer Seaver had been working with Riot Games for a number of years, developing music videos to celebrate champions within the game, as well as stadium-fueled musical anthems to populate the larger-than-life opening ceremonies for their E-Sports events.But, he says, his whole life he’d been eager to find a way back to working in traditional film and television. “The second I realized those two worlds were converging, I was in heaven,” says Seaver.“The amazing thing about writing for is that we get a ton of lead time, and that virtually everything is done ‘in house.’ In certain respects, the show functions like a traditional television show or animated project, where we get an animation filled with temp music, we tackle every song and every cue bit by bit and then we mockup and develop our demos until they are approved.” He continues, “But then our show has some unique qualities that makes it super special.
I get to take songs into the theatre at Riot and work very deeply with our Sound Design team, collaborating on the best ways we can possibly deliver the show’s audio story to audiences.The results of this are (in my opinion) that everything is so beautifully cohesive and when one artistic aspect of the show takes a step forward, everything else locks arms around it to support it and help it land with full emotional impact.” Seaver and the team set big goals when it came to the music for Season 2, including writing lyrics in a brand-new language, relating to the ancient people of Shurima that populated the setting of the story long before the events of .Rather than it just serving as a soundtrack, the music is a “core part of the show’s identity,” as noted by Seaver and plays into the characters actions and emotions in a tighter, more succinct way than in Season 1. “I think one of my favorite examples from Season 2 is the song ‘Sucker’ featuring Marcus King, in Episode 2,” shares the composer.
“From the get-go, we wanted that to be an incredibly interactive piece of music to the events on screen. The opening half of it kind of plays out like a traditional Song moment, a lot of musical beats timed perfectly to picture, like changes in editing, Jinx’s feet walking to the tempo of the song as she meanders through what's come of the undercity, and so on.By the second half of the song, we had a lot of fun stripping the music away and having it blast back in, playfully timing it with the conversation she’s having near the end of the sequence.” By the end, “Sucker” plays out for nearly its entire length.“I don’t remember if we got anywhere close to programming a three-and-a-half-minute song break in Season 1,” shares Seaver.
“In this case, it just felt like the story still benefited from it, so we chased that feeling.” And they chased Fortiche through watercolor-looking montages and comic-book style 2-dimensional panels. “We spent a ton of time syncing musical timings to picture this Season,” confirms Seaver.“The other massive upgrade was how music and sound were integrated during action sequences. I think the climactic moment in Episode 3, while Woodkid’s “To Ashes And Blood” plays over a thundering fight sequence, is one of my personal proudest memories collaborating across so many departments on the show.” Linke, who Seaver credits with leading the charge on doubling ’s music count, says this season takes a deeper dive into the depiction and inner workings of magic and the connective tissue it shares with hextech.And much of this is expressed through action sequences and, yes, more music. “I just think this story is so damn beautiful and the fact that this show exists still blows my mind,” says Seaver.
“I just hope we made folks proud, and that the places we go to in Season 2 live up to the dreams and expectations that people had at the close of Season 1.This is pretty embarrassing to admit, but this show legitimately taught me how to become a film composer.When Christian asked me to come aboard, I had all the worst imposter syndrome sensations you could imagine.
I saw the scope of this thing and the jaw dropping paintings Fortiche was creating and all I could think about was ‘Holy shit, I can’t screw this up.’ But I love the songs, and I love our score, and I love the sound and the animation and the acting.” Linke agrees, “The performances of the voice actors are fucking awesome.We have some very vivid stuff this season, and it's just beautiful.” Season 2 Act 2 drops November 16; Act 3 drops November 23, only on Netflix.Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.
She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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