‘Arcane' writer Amanda Overton describes reworking the end of season one so that a second season could be allowed to develop
When Arcane was first being mapped out as a series, the initial plan was to only do one season in the Piltover-Zaun region. When the decision was made to do a second season, Amanda Overton and the show's writing team had to do a major rewrite of the last two episodes of that first season. 'The idea was we're gonna get to really dig into what leads up to the war and the build up to the war in Season 2. That decision was made after the writer's room of Season 1 ended and then we came back and we're like, OK, let's write a season two that builds up to the war,' she tells Gold Derby during our recent Meet the Experts: TV Animation panel.
Arcane, which can be streamed on Netflix, takes place in the universe of the online multiplayer battle video game League of Legends. The show centers around two cities: the prosperous and ideal city of Piltover and the dilapidated and sleazy undercity of Zaun. As the disturbance between the two places gets more heated, sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) begin becoming aligned on opposing sides of a looming war over differing beliefs and mysterious occurrences. The series picked up the Emmy for Best Animated Program for its first season back in 2022.
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The writer's room always knew from the beginning that they wanted the relationship between Vi and Caitlyn to be their OTP (one true pair) couple for the series. But Overton wanted to draw out the establishment of their romantic attraction to make their romance epic. 'You really have to earn that relationship getting together. I think we did things in season one to make that attraction they had to each other explicit. We made that conscious choice to take the entire series as we knew it to get them together so we could feel like they had the same sort of treatment that most couples like that would get.'
One of the more difficult things in developing the show was keeping track of all the world-building that a series like this requires. 'It's a huge scope game and it's a game that changes all the time. It's kind of like they're always iterating on the game. It's not just one set story. It's something you always have to keep your pulse on in order to make sure that what they're doing in the game would reflect properly in the show.'
This article and video are presented by Netflix.
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