The Most Pause-Worthy Jinx Moment In Netflix's Arcane
Amidst the rise in popularity of adult animated series, Netflix's "Arcane" — based on the video game "League of Legends" — stands out with its unique, stunning art style. The characters are rendered with rich expressions, and hand drawn elements are overlaid on top of the CG animation, making for incredibly detailed and dynamic visuals that are often gone as quickly as they appear.
The animation brings the characters to life, so it goes hardest on the show's resident blue-haired girl Jinx (Ella Purnell), coloring in her quirky style and revealing her layers of trauma. Among the many players in the complex political struggle between Zaun and Piltover — from the eager young scientists Jayce and Viktor to the devious crime lord Silco — it's Jinx who keeps changing the game. She's an agent of chaos with a penchant for explosives and a knack for disrupting carefully laid plans.
In the frenetic animation depicting her, it's easy to get lost, so don't be afraid to pause and take it in — especially during this key moment.
Stop and admire Fishbones
In the final scene of Season 1, Jinx hefts a new weapon onto her shoulder and fires it directly at the Piltover council meeting. Not only is it worth pausing just to look at Jinx's sweet shark rocket launcher — Fishbones, one of her weapons from the game — but it's also worth it to hang in the moment before everything goes horribly, terribly, irreversibly awry. Just before she shoots, the Piltover council is agreeing to make peace with Zaun in a move that would surely solve some of the characters' problems. We don't yet know which of the council members, if any, will survive the blast, but we can bet there won't be peace after this. The scene calls back to episode 3, the end of "Arcane" Act One, when Powder uses one of the volatile magic crystals to help Vi rescue Vander, but it ends up being a horrible mistake. This is the second time she's used such power to radically change the show's trajectory.
Fishbones is important not only to Jinx's character, as its Super Mega Death Rocket is her Ultimate attack in "League of Legends," but is also crucial to the whole story of "Arcane." This is what the rest of the season has been building to: A weapon made with the harnessed magic of Hextech. Council member Heimerdinger has been warning everyone about the dangers of magic for nine episodes, while others have been debating its use for weaponry, and now we get to see it's awesome — in the literal sense — power.
And, oh, isn't it beautiful — after Jinx pulls the trigger, there's a gorgeous shot of the rocket's blue tail soaring through a moonlit sky over the city. But, of course, that beauty doesn't last, because then the rocket hits its target.