This will be an analysis of Arcane’s conclusion mostly from a thematic standpoint, and stablishing one of the keys to this: Jinx is alive, if you also interpreted it like that you can skip to the next paragraph, otherwise here’s why I think that’s the case: Cait has the monkey head of the grenade and is looking at the projects of the place where Jinx blew up (implying she didn’t found a body) and has a little smile when she notices Jinx probably fled, and there’s also a pink trace right before the explosion. One of Powder’s first lines is saying “one day I’ll ride one of those” looking at an airship just like the one from the ending (a take that seems very random otherwise), and the “the end” card has her aesthetics, all of that right after a speech that ends with “Our story isn’t over yet”, I don’t even see it as ambiguous to be very honest.
Jayce says that Viktor has always been trying to fix what he deems as “imperfections”, characterizing his lack of self-acceptance as what fuels many of his actions, which is similar to Jinx: labeling herself with the nickname that reduces her to her mistakes, a self-destructive way to take agency over her own self-loathing, and as “Silco” puts it in her hallucination when imprisoned, it became a box that confines her sense of self. Jinx and Viktor can’t handle flaws, one reduces herself to them in desperation, and the other wants to sacrifice everything else for “cleansing”.
Jayce and Ekko stand opposite to Viktor and Jinx as contrasting views about the core of Arcane, very clearly put in Viktor’s speech at the end of Act 5: The good and the bad often come from the same source, be it in the sense of emotions, intentions and the capability for them or in the form of cycles and causality, opposites are what enable each other, and this friction is what makes us human even in the most basic level, like trying to balance reason and emotion. Viktor and Jinx see this negatively in their own ways, while Jayce focuses on how this makes us human, and Ekko focuses on how even with this conflict there’s always space for the good to flourish, the basis is pessimism vs optimism in the face of the world’s inner workings.
Ekko here also stands opposite to Caitlyn’s words to Jinx, about how there’s no way to erase your mistakes (another unhealthy way of dealing with imperfection), which reenforced an idea Jinx already had and surely enabled her suicide attempt (that also carries her hopelessness for the state of the world in general, as framed in her hallucination with Silco saying the cycle started way before him and Vander).
When Ekko comes to stop her, he carries with him the fact that things didn’t have to be that way, that there’s still a human being beyond the storm inside Jinx’s head. She notices the monkeys on his device while he says that “it’s never too late to build something new, for someone worth building it for”, just by that she at least understands that she has something to do with Ekko’s words, and that to him she is the one worth building something for, like Vi is to her, and ultimately it’s for Vi that she comes back (she tells her “Even worlds apart, I’ll always be with you”, implying that Ekko did told her what he lived and she’s carrying all of it with her). As always human connection is the key to everything she does.
Her conclusion is bittersweet: She’s able to get rid of the “Jinx” identity, to take a leap forward while leaving some things behind, to search for a new path… But she doesn’t think she could do that in Zaun or Piltover, as she noticed Vi will never let go of her, and there she’s already a symbol with too much history and mistakes, she breaks the cycle of conflict not by dying in a literal sense, but by leaving her old life behind and starting anew, far from the rotten soil where she grew in.
This also parallels the alternate Powder’s conclusion, she says she doesn’t want to “lose what makes her herself” (talking about the life she had at that moment being what keeps her from using her talents for greater things), but when witnessing Ekko’s departure, everything they talked about resonates in her heart. To me the take of the gemstones she has kept implies that Powder will use them to fulfill her potential, accepting to take a step beyond the “identity” that became a box, and accepting reality’s imperfection of this step having a cost. “To take a leap forward you have to leave some things behind” really summarizes the conclusions of both of her versions.
Jinx’s decision of trusting her own potential to help (a direct contrast to her trauma of always ruining everything when trying to help) is what allows Piltover to resist, and for that and her bringing more zaunite forces, Zaun ends up receiving a seat at the council.
The social struggle isn’t over, it isn’t that simple (and to somehow end it the show would need way more seasons focusing solely on that, this is not a story about a cathartic revolution for a model society, even with the critiques of how things are being essential), but Jinx did manage to help Zaun get a louder voice, a better path to the future than by Viktor’s “cleansing”, and politically a more realistic step considering the story’s scope and focuses (and how things work on our own world, with all the unfairness that comes with it. The final speech makes it clear that the remaining problems are treated as problems, they don’t need to be thoroughly solved to be framed critically, one of the main messages is exactly how things will never be perfect but that doesn’t mean that they’re hopeless).
Viktor’s mistake was trying to erase everyone’s identities as a way to eradicate the existence of flaws, Jinx’s mistake was confining her identity to flaws, when both of them become able to accept imperfection as part of their own humanity and look at a possible future despite of it, they achieve the necessary balance in their hearts.
Arcane is bittersweet, full of opposites that rarely get everything their way, an ending that’s fully happy or fully tragic wouldn’t fit as well as this one did. I loved what we got and can’t wait for this team’s next project exploring this universe.
