The world was so big, I was so small

(This post focuses on 2x07 because there are plenty of other parallels between these four characters in various combinations and iterations of themselves, but I just rewatched 2x07 and have a lot to say about this episode specifically.)

● AU Ekko doodles AU Powder, his lab and romantic partner, in his journal & Jayce doodles Viktor in his.

● AU Powder and AU Ekko work together to participate in the Innovators Competition & JayVik reminisce about their time at the same Competition in 1x09

● AU Powder offers her help to Ekko (and Heimerdinger) in their experimentation to build the anomaly & Viktor offers his help to Jayce to make Hextech in 1x02

● Ekko falls in love with AU Powder (and, by extension, with Powder/Jinx of his own timeline) while working with her & Jayce falls in love with Viktor while working with him (as we know, this happens in every timeline but this, since they're 💀💀 in this AU)

● Together, Ekko and AU Powder build the reversed anomaly & together, JayVik built (and are) the original anomaly (more on that in my Jayvik meta)

● "Can we just pretend like it's the first time?"

Ekko asks this before AU Powder kisses him because it's the first time for him, while it isn't for her (since AU Ekko and Powder were already together). Then the scene cuts to Jayce arriving at the top of the Hexgate tower, where another version of Viktor awaits. This is Jayce’s first time—seeing Mage Viktor’s face, realizing they’re in a loop of their own making, and experiencing it all—while it isn’t for Mage Viktor.

It’s a brilliant foreshadowing of the final JayVik revelation in 2x09, while also paralleling Jayce—who has finally reached his partner of another timeline, standing in what feels like an oasis of peace, separate and protected from the storm raging below—and Ekko, who finds his partner of another timeline in the oasis of peace that is the AU timeline.

● Ekko leaves AU Powder to return to his own timeline, leaving her with the AU version of himself & Jayce leaves Mage Viktor to return to his own timeline, leaving him with the original version of himself (again, see JayVik meta)

I kept this one for last because, so far, the character mirroring has been Ekko/Jayce and Powder/Viktor, but as I said earlier, there are many different parallels and combinations. This is relevant to this episode so I had to include it:

● Ekko gives the necklace to AU Powder & Mage Viktor gives the rune(s) to Jayce.

While Jayce always keeps the rune on himself for his entire life and makes Viktor his whole raison d'être, Powder places the necklace in her drawer alongside the Hextech crystals she has kept—a memento of "what could have been".

I've seen people interpret this scene as suggesting that Powder might become the future inventor of Hextech in this timeline because of Ekko’s influence, but I strongly disagree. She says it herself: "I like my life. I don't wanna lose what makes me 'me' chasing some wild dream."

She has no interest in pursuing this "wild dream" because she already has everything she needs: a support system. She has her dads, she has Ekko, she has her friends... she has love. She’s grieving her sister and always will, but she’s not doing it alone.

You may be wondering what Arcane and Olivie Blake's Atlas Series have in common, and my answer is: everything.

It starts with a man who cheats death to save the one he loves, only to end up dooming the world. It starts with a man who tries to end the world's suffering (or perhaps just his own) by building a new world, only for him to bring about the end of the world. Is this man Jayce? Is he Viktor? Or is he, perhaps, Atlas Blakely?

It's all about humanity's paradoxical condition: pain is an unavoidable component of the design-without it, there could be no love. That which inspires us to our greatest good is also the cause of our greatest evil. Our loss is an ocean, but we are a speck in the sand. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of their ignorance. Left to their own devices, humans will inevitably resort to baser impulses, to self-eradicating violence. Left to their own devices, humans will inevitably care for one another at great detriment to themselves.

The fact that this list is a combination of quotes from both stories, but you cannot truly tell which is which (unless you know them by heart), is proof enough that these are the same story in different fonts.

And the moral of the story is this: the world doesn't end-only we do. Our own personal world is always ending, while the world at large will live on. That's what it means to be human. The only thing that matters is the choices we make with the resources we're given, and the only thing that lessens the pain is the connections we build in the brief time we have. It's the love of a parent, the love of a sibling, the love of a lover, the love of the other half of your soul, the love of a friend, the love of a stranger who cares enough to be kind to you. No, it's never about the world-it's only ever about one person.

"We can't change what fate has in store for us, but we don't have to face it alone."

There were so many moments throughout Arcane that reminded me of The Atlas Series: characters, philosophy, quotes, themes. It feels fitting that I started 2024 in a state of existential despair, partially due to The Atlas Complex, and I'm ending 2024 in a strange mix of ever-present existential despair and adoration, thanks to Arcane.

If you loved Arcane, then you should read The Atlas Series. If you loved The Atlas Series, then you should watch Arcane. If you've already read and watched both, then you understand exactly what I mean.

In episode 1x03, Silco tries to convince Vander to join him one last time. After everything that happened between them—after Vander tried to kill him—he still wanted Vander by his side to see their dream come true.

Sound familiar? That’s exactly what Viktor wants and keeps trying to achieve throughout the second half of S2. Jayce basically kills him, and yet Viktor never stops trying to make Jayce see.

Both Silco and Viktor fail. And then this happens: forehead touches and bringing back the hidden parts of your other half.

Jayce brings Viktor’s humanity back through the power of love, while Silco brings Vander’s violence back through the power of hatred—a hatred that was once love.

● The parallel between Baby Jayce's flashback & the scene in 2X07, where Jayce sees the mage upon landing in the other timeline and calls out to him:

● Mage Viktor teleporting Baby Jayce to safety/creating a new timeline & Mage Viktor teleporting Jayce to meet him in his original timeline:

● Jayce telling Viktor how beautiful the magic he saw as a child was (without either of them knowing he’s actually talking about Viktor) & Jayce telling Viktor he’s beautiful in the finale:

● The parallel between Viktor saving Jayce/giving him the rune back & Mage Viktor saving Baby Jayce/giving Jayce the runes + Viktor introducing himself & Mage Viktor revealing his identity in the finale:

● Not exactly a parallel, but the moment where Mage Viktor creates a new timeline for Baby Jayce, the world he holds in his hand becomes Jayce's eye... we know now Jayce is Viktor's entire world, so 😭

Of course, I had to write notes upon notes about it, rewatch it many times, and try to untangle it all. So here we are, with an essay that is part speculation (time loops always require some good old mental gymnastics) and part analysis.

"In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this." ~ JayVik and The Making and Unmaking of Worlds.

Humanity Explained Through a Jayce/Singed & Viktor/Warwick Parallel

Arcane has always been full of parallels that play beautiful variations on the same fundamental principle governing humans: "That which inspires us to our greatest good is also the cause of our greatest evil."

While this theme runs through every character's story (Silco and Vander's is my favorite from S1), Season 2 delves deeper by making Jayce and Singed—and by extension Viktor and Warwick—the perfect (and unexpected) parallel through which the human condition is dissected.

"Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? For love."

Singed, a brilliant scientist, committed the worst possible crimes, betrayed everyone, and did the unthinkable—all for love. He loved and lost his daughter, and everyone else paid the price for his grief when he decided he would find a cure for death, no matter the cost.

Jayce, a brilliant scientist, created impossible technology out of a genuine desire to help people. But when faced with the possibility of losing Viktor, he betrayed his mentor, broke promises, and used that technology to cure death. He did it for love, but that act (nearly) destroyed the world.

"What am I?"

"You're alive."

In his final attempt to bring his daughter back to life, Singed created a wolf-hybrid monster out of a dead man. In his final attempt to save Viktor, Jayce created a machine-hybrid monster out of the very person he couldn’t imagine losing.

Warwick and Herald-Viktor are monsters born out of love. One seems to have lost his humanity to the wolf, driven only by a desire to kill. The other seems to have lost it to the machine, driven only by the pursuit of inhuman perfection.

But their humanity isn’t lost. It’s buried beneath layers of pain, horror, and metal. In the end, it is love that reaches that humanity and brings it back—the very same love that created them.

Warwick fights the wolf inside himself and finds the remnants of his humanity—for his daughters. It was the love of a grieving father that made him the monster he is, and it is the same fatherly love that brings him back.

And in all timelines, in all possibilities, only Jayce’s love can bring Viktor’s humanity back. Because just as Jayce couldn’t accept a world without Viktor, Viktor cannot fathom a world without Jayce and that is both his ruin and his salvation. But that is something that deserves to be untangled in an essay of its own.

The crux of it is this: it’s in our nature to be compelled to do the unimaginable for love. Given the chance and the means, we would all create and destroy worlds for it. That is the ultimate truth—the two sides of the same cog.

This is my first time watching 9-1-1 as it airs instead of binge-watching the whole season in one go. What I’m about to say could, potentially, be influenced by this because I’ve come to believe that this series is one that begs to be binged rather than watched weekly. That said, I’m not entirely convinced this is the only reason for what I believe is a very bad pacing problem.

Except for a masterfully written sixth episode and a few delicious scenes here and there, these past eight episodes have been very messy and poorly paced. Honestly, it almost feels like they aired them in the wrong order.

If we don’t count the three-part premiere—which advanced very little in terms of the characters’ personal stories, as is usually the case (though the first episode was actually one of the best, in my opinion)—episode 4 quickly wrapped up the Gerard storyline as well as Hen’s. These were the two storylines that should have been the focus of the remaining episodes, alongside Eddie’s storyline. Eddie, in episode 4, actually had some very cool and important moments, but more on that later. I was very confused by the decision to cut these arcs short, but I assumed something big was coming that would justify the rushed resolution. Sadly, that didn’t happen.

Episode 5 was a good Halloween episode, and episode 6 was incredible. But then episodes 7 and 8 happened, and I have no idea why.

They brought back the Hotshot/Brad storyline for no significant reason, since Brad ultimately served only as a final push for Eddie in episode 8. However, anything else could have achieved the same result without spending so much time on Brad and a pointless storyline. (The meta aspect was nice, but it didn’t need so much screentime across eight episodes.) In fact, what Brad did for Eddie in episode 8 had already been achieved in episode 4 with the cheerleader story.

This is why I said the episodes feel like they aired in the wrong order. A slightly different version of episode 4 should have been the midseason finale, resolving Hen’s storyline (which, in this case, would have had more time to develop), wrapping up Gerard’s storyline without brushing it under the rug, and bringing Bobby back to the 118. Only Eddie’s storyline would have been left up in the air, but it still would have led to exactly where it went in last night’s episode.

Eddie and Buck’s final scene in episode 8 was actually the only part that made sense in that episode, which otherwise felt flat and pointless (don't get me started on the cop cart bullshit or the cop story in ep 7)—and it definitely didn't feel like a midseason finale.

In episode 2x08, a very young Evan Buckley has a conversation about love with an old gay man whose husband has just passed away. This is how their conversation ends:

"𝐼 𝑔𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑."

"𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡, 𝑠𝑜𝑛. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡."

This moment is, I believe, one of the most impactful in the entire series. It's also an early declaration of intent because what 9-1-1 has been about isn't just saving strangers' lives; it is, first and foremost, about finding your own people and fighting like hell to keep them. It is about building a family different from the one you were born into and finally filling a void inside that you didn't even know you had.

You don't find it, son. You make it. And make it he did.

Throughout seven seasons, Buck has come a long way in his journey to self-discovery and self-acceptance. By wrapping himself around his loved ones to protect them and allowing them to fill that void in him, he has changed and has changed them in return.

Binge-watching his journey has given me so much joy. There was a lot of pain there, too, but the joy is all that I'll remember, especially now that that joy has become queer.

When finally, after years of hints and speculations, Buck opened that door and embraced that last piece of himself, all I felt was happiness. I wasn't there throughout the years, but I know how it feels, wishing for something like this to happen and being let down over and over again. I grew up in a time when it couldn't even be considered wishful thinking. It was just hopeless imagination. But now here stands Evan Buckley, kissing another man, in a mainstream show about firefighters.

Not that 9-1-1 has ever shied away from queerness, when one of the main characters has always been a lesbian paramedic, married and with kids, and gay secondary characters have always been present since day one. But still, that kiss made history.

[continues on IG]