E

Personally, I would have loved to see her interact with Ekko and the firelights as she would have admired and aligned herself with this cause specifically, and understood a bit more of the nuance behind the situation, therefore: clearly defining her intent, providing character development, and breaking her away from the Piltover and Noxus conflict which would have prevented the glorification and victimization of Piltover season two. I also believe this choice would have further villainized both Silco and Mel, who are complex and complicated characters who are deeply affected by their upbringing and their ingrained understanding of violence and its societal importance/impacts.

While they do have a lot in common eventually breaking apart their “allyship” would have placed Silco in an objectively “evil” position and demonized his attempts at liberation (not calling him a good person I am merely approaching his character from a class conscious perspective and understanding the intent and source of his actions). It would have also demonized Mel, as people who already struggle to understand her objective goodness would feel justified in their hatred of her. It really would not have helped misogynoir in the fandom. But it does hurt knowing they considered having Mel interact with Zaun and completely disregarded it, especially seeing the outcome of season two where she is entirely isolated.

But I do love the confirmation that she is goodhearted and a hero (average Mel lover W.)

Then, with the possibility of Vi as the protege of Silco’s.

I think this would have been extremely interesting initially. While we see Vi regret her actions nearly immediately after hitting Powder, this is mostly spurred by the sight of her sister in danger. But if Silco intercepted before that and attempted to manipulate her at a moment where her anger and emotions are high, then I do believe he would be successful. My only doubts come in when I consider the rest of the show.

Vi is very individually motivated. We see her engage rather heavily with politics, more so than Powder does. But she is stopped in her tracks when Vander tells her that she’d likely just endanger those around her. She cares about Zaun but she cares about Powder more. Powder is the same way, but to an extreme where her priority is not only the person, but the person’s opinion of her.

Operating under the widely accepted headcanon (please forgive me if it’s actually canon I haven’t seen any confirmation, however) that Powder has BPD, and Vi is her favorite person — we can assume that a lot of Powder’s motivation comes not from a desire to be the strongest, but to be worthy within Vi’s eyes (as Powder’s perception of Vi is that strength is most important to her because she has difficulty believing herself to be more important due to her self esteem issues.) While it is possible to argue that as she grows into Jinx her list of important things and people becomes shuffled and she is more politically motivated, Vi remains her priority. Whenever she genuinely believes that Vi wants to leave with her we see her drop her adopted identity and her previous desires and embrace her sister — until something interrupts that reinforces her doubt.

That being said, I do not think Powder would go after Vi in the same way Vi went after Jinx. I am not arguing that Powder loves Vi any less but I believe that incident — and the reinforcement of Vi’s negative feelings towards her through Vi’s decision to join Silco and leave their old life behind — would prevent Powder from ever engaging with her sister again, at least if she could help it.