#Theres been a lot of interpretations of symbolism in Arcane but this is where my personal beliefs lie

[stromblessed]

Mel 🔆, Viktor 🌌, and Jayce 🔥 symbolism

SUN 🔆

Mel's association with the sun is self-evident and still mostly shrouded in mystery, though her love scene with Jayce is notable, which is overlaid with starry imagery, where her silhouette and her freckled face are compared to the cosmos. The sun is also a star. It's just the star that's closest to Runeterra and has the most influence over the world.

Mel and the Hexcore are the POVs of the scene.

Hexcore and starry imagery is more strongly and consistently associated with someone else, though!

STARS 🌟 / THE COSMOS 🌌

Viktor's blue to purple pipeline is real

But seriously, the starry/swirly shapes point toward distant stars, the cosmos, a galaxy. There is no moon in Viktor's night scenes throughout the season, only stars.

Viktor's character regresses as the season goes on (blue to purple, ready to fall into Shimmer-like magenta as his corruption nears its peak).

His hubris opens him up to some kind of corruption by the Hexcore, or by whatever - or whoever - is using the Hexcore as a gateway, like what Jinx points out. Singed as his mentor plants and encourages the lie that Viktor believes, that he's better off alone and that the ends justify the means.

These perfectly ruinous circumstances lead to him getting Sky killed (Sky like sky blue, like Inspiration, lost as Viktor has lost sight of good in his pursuit of great).

In his running scene, Viktor runs not from left to right, filmspeak for progression - he runs from right to left, as though backstepping.

(And also for the Rocky Balboa reference called out in this brilliant post, but hey, I think it all works)

It's also worth laying the foundation that Viktor is a fantasy interpretation of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor who was fascinated with electricity, radio signals, the cosmos, and [REDACTED for another post probably lol]

If you've fallen down the rabbit hole of League lore like I have, you might have picked up that peoples and warriors who are sun-worshipers are (at least anciently) tasked with hunting down and destroying Void beings, who are eldritch beings associated with the distant stars, or are Runeterrans constructed by the Void Watchers trapped between realms. The sun fights against interlopers from other dimensions or celestial bodies.

Mel and Viktor have the same ideas about risk and the nature of progress, and they are both technically foreigners living in Piltover and pursuing that progress - in two very different (but complementary) ways. They are most likely the two characters whose literal bodies are celestial, imbued with the Arcane. Their bodies are most likely augmented with magical metals.

Yet the arcane imagery that seems to accompany them respectively are diametrically opposed - Sun vs. Void, possibly. (Also, purple and yellow/gold are opposite or complement colors on the color wheel.)

Whether they wind up working together or whether they clash (as Viktor loses himself) or if it's a mix of both, I think Mel and Viktor are destined to collide in season 2.

So where does this leave Jayce?

FIRE 🔥

Fire for Jayce means more than one thing. The first thing that should come to mind is the fire of the forge. Creation and industry. The legacy and hard work of his family.

However, his FIRST imagery with fire occurs when Elora says "Speak of the devil" and Jayce is framed in flames at Mel's fundraising party.

He's similarly framed in the flames of a Molotov cocktail on the bridge between Piltover and the undercity with Viktor, after he's just called the people of the undercity dangerous.

What I think we're being shown here are Jayce's choices. He can use his talents and influence for good - creation and industry - or he can use them for destruction and oppression. A hammer can create.

A hammer can also be a weapon, a tool of destruction:

Fire can quickly burn and spread out of control.

Hey look, blue all the way to magenta in one scene!

And if you know his original League lore, the reason why his rivalry with [REDACTED] crosses the point of no return - fire and destruction. Yeah.

Jayce is interesting because his point position in the Mel-Viktor-Jayce trifecta makes it tempting to assign celestial imagery to him, too. However, adult Jayce is only present with Hexcore, star, and sun imagery when he is sharing a scene with Viktor or Mel respectively.

The show makes it a point that Mel and Viktor are the reasons he is the Man of Progress at all:

Note that Jayce in the center of his Man of Progress posters is backed by a gear (Viktor) and the sun (Mel). If Viktor had not intervened in episode 2, Jayce would be dead or disenfranchised. If Mel had not intervened in episode 3, then Jayce AND Viktor would have been kicked out of the Academy if not imprisoned or exiled, and Hextech with Jayce and Viktor at the helm would not exist.

(This is reaching, but I like to interpret that the circle + notches in the gear shape are like Viktor's star symbolism, but even if that's the big reach that I think it is, Viktor is a machinist, engineer, and techmaturgist with Artificer parents - the gear definitely represents him on a meta level)

The imagery that I believe is Jayce's and Jayce's alone is that of fire. He is terrestrial, using magic contained within tools the way he has always wanted to bring Hextech to every household, while Mel and Viktor are influenced by magic on a whole other level.

Sure would be a shame if Jayce found a reason to choose the path of destruction and be corrupted further, diverging from Mel and Viktor's core values

Sure would be a shame if Viktor's personal choices had consequences that radiated out further than season 1 and he gets put on a disastrous collision course with everything that Jayce and by extension Piltover hates and fears

Sure would be stressful for us if Arcane decided to be a Greek tragedy about it

Though possibly the most important piece of this picture is how Mel - gold like the sun, gold that doesn't tarnish or rust, gold that is an excellent conductor - has already faced the abyss and said NO to her own corruption:

It sure would be something for her to have to watch Jayce and Viktor go down a different path, huh

#arcane #mel medarda #viktor #jayce talis #Theres been a lot of interpretations of symbolism in Arcane but this is where my personal beliefs lie #I take it as matter of fact that Mel survives like Im still flabbergasted that yall think she dies but I suppose we shall see #This post needs to be broken down into like 10 different posts but it's fine weve got 11 months til season 2 to cook its fine #and like 5 of those 10 posts need to be about Jayce alone like there is a lot to unpack and I do not say that lightly #but who I actually want to write about is Mel bc the fandom assuming that shes dead has completely nuked so much #of what the Mel-Viktor-Jayce storyline is trying to say AND what the ENTIRE storyline of all of Arcane is trying to say #I swear to god I will bring the receipts #and I will corrupt you all with my Mel + Viktor agenda on the side ehehehehehe