Why was Arcane delayed?​

Arcane Season 2 was delayed to ensure it matched the quality of the first season, and also because production only started after season 1 was released, as per Nicolo Laurent, CEO of Riot Games.

Arcane is an animated adventure show that was first released on Netflix on November 6, 2021. The show is developed by Riot Games in collaboration with Fortiche Productions. It was created by Alex Yee and Christian Linke, who are also the showrunners of the show. The show is directed by Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord, and Bart Maunoury. The show has won 16 Annie Awards, 4 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, 2 Golden Reel Awards, etc.

The show’s voice cast included Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, Kevin Alejandro, Katie Leung, Jason Spisak, Toks Olagundoye, and Harry Lloyd. The show is set in the universe of the popular video game League of Legends. The story digs deep into the complex relationship between 2 sisters, Vi and Jinx, set in the twin cities of Piltover and Zaun. Piltover is portrayed as a progressive and advanced city, while Zaun is depicted as its oppressed and poor area.

Why was Arcane delayed?

Following the success of the 1st season, fans eagerly anticipated the 2nd season of the show. However, the production of Arcane Season 2 faced notable delays. One main reason was the creators' promise to maintain the high-quality standards set by the 1st season. Nicolo Laurent, CEO of Riot Games, talked about the delay in an interview with Bilibilii.

He said, “I just watched the third episode of Season 2, before my flight to China. We’re making progress on it. It’s not ready yet. There are two reasons for that: you want the quality, we just don’t want to rush, and so that takes time, and that’s a good reason. The bad reason is that, honestly, we didn’t know if Season 1 was going to be a success. So we didn’t start Season 2 until after. We didn’t know. And so if I’d known, we could have started Season 2 way earlier, but we didn’t know so we kind of waited a bit and so now we’re paying the price.”

The unexpected success of the 1st season influenced the production timeline. The creators were uncertain about the show's reception and, as a result, did not start work on the 2nd season until after the positive feedback from the first. The co-creator of the show, Alex Yee, also shared how the process of writing the ending line for the show took too much of his time. In an interview with GameRadar+, he said, "I spent just an insane amount of time on the last line of the show. It was literally like 27 hours or something like that. I was just sitting there trying to be like 'what is the line? How do you end a show like this?'"

He further explained why it took him so long to write the ending. He said, "When we talk about state of the world stuff, or the feeling where you face impossible situations or you look at impossible conflicts, I think in a lot of ways, that line for me is speaking to me own take, or my own kind of hope."

Does Arcane have any spin-offs?

The world of League of Legends is full of interesting stories and characters, giving many ideas for new shows besides Arcane. Christian Linke, co-creator of Arcane had confirmed that many spin-offs are being planned. In an interview with The Direct, he said, "We definitely have a number of products that kind of are born out of 'Arcane.' We are in the process of just developing. Nothing is in full production yet, but we're pretty aggressively developing a few of them in particular that we're just excited about."

The possible spin-off that is being linked with Arcane is Welcome to Noxus. In an interview with Screen Rant, Christian Linke talked about adding Arcane’s characters into upcoming projects. He said, "Arcane is just the first one. We're working on a bunch of new projects, a bunch of new stories from across the different regions and characters of our IP, and some of them are actually continuations of character stories from Arcane." Mel’s character from Arcane will be part of Welcome to Noxus.

In an interview with GameRadar+, Christian Linke shared about the pressure of coming up with a new project after Arcane. He said, “It would be a shame and a failure on our part [if a new show looked and felt] the same [as Arcane]. I think that's one of the benefits of animation. In live-action, you're still kind of bound to reality and what humans and all kinds of stuff look like. But in animation, we can kind of do anything. So hopefully, I would say that our animation style should be as eclectic as our games. I figure we would say that if we're just another superhero thing as an IP, then there's no reason to do this.”