What's The Hold Up On Arcane Season 2?
"Arcane" is not only the best animated show Netflix has released, but one of the best animated shows of the modern era. This loose adaptation of Riot Games' "League of Legends" universe has a compelling and thrilling story of rebellion set in a fantasy world, a fleshed-out world rich in lore and details, and an absolutely stunning visual style that mixes 3D and 2D animation.
While Netflix finally announced a release date for season 2 of "Arcane" for 2024, fans have still spent the months since the first season's release just salivating at any new piece of information. In an interview with e-sportscaster Guan Ze Yuan on BiliBili, Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent gave fans an update on season two and explained why the return to Piltover has taken so long.
"We're making progress on it," Laurent said. "It is not ready yet, and there are two reasons for that. One, you want the quality. We just do not want to rush, and that takes time. So that's a good reason." Laurent continued, "The bad reason is honestly we didn't know if season 1 was going to be a success. If I had 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." While Laurent's comments make sense, they also feel like a poor excuse. It would make sense to say that a season 2 was never expected or prepared for if this was any other show, but not "Arcane."
The cost of success
As Nicolo Laurent himself said on Twitter, the first season of "Arcane" took six years to make, most of that in pre-production. While we don't know exact budget numbers, Toonami co-creator and anime producer Jason DeMarco has pointed out that the show did have a much bigger budget than most animated shows. "[The] budget is WAY beyond a normal TV animation budget by many millions of dollars," DeMarco tweeted. "It's literally one of the most expensive animated series on."
Sure, being cautious in turning an unaired show into a franchise is a rather smart approach — particularly in today's franchise-laden landscape — when streamers are also canceling series before they've ever had the chance to thrive. The problem is that it is rather unlikely that Riot Games really did not expect "Arcane" to be a big enough hit to warrant a season 2 when they spent so many years (and so many millions of dollars) making the first. The studio has so much money that SpongeBob could not bury, shred, or burn it in a single lifetime, but still, that's a poor excuse.
Worse yet, it is simply a lie that no work was done on season 2 before the renewal news — unless the studio literally erased every file and shredded every document. Even if scripts weren't written yet and animation hadn't commenced, they still have the season 1 assets. The visual style is already developed, and the main characters are already designed. This is not to say that Riot and studio Fortiche could have made and released the season in a year or two, but some work has been done on season 2 already, which should cut down the time needed in pre-production.