we don't sleep here

First off, let's start at the end of episode 9, where we learn some very crucial pieces of information:

Viktor is the hooded figure in the Piltover wasteland (Hitherto, I'm just gonna call him "omni!Viktor", since he now seems to be a tri-omni deity. Additionally, I want to separate him from Viktor from the original timeline, "origin!Viktor")

Omni!Viktor is also the mage who saved Jayce and his mom and who gave him a rune-etched hexcrystal; this is our catalyst for this entire story. It is revealed that there are numerous variations of this rune across timelines, all provided by omni!Viktor.

Omni!Viktor is in an Avengers-Endgame-Doctor-Strange-14-million-possibilities multiverse where, with the exception of that one universe Ekko and Heimerdinger went to where everything is fine and dandy and hextechless, everywhere where hextech does exists is shit.

Given reveal # 3, apparently, there is a universe originating from a very specific rune provided in reveal # 2 where the existence of hextech would not lead to inevitable doom. This involves getting Jayce to show origin!Viktor omni!Viktor's warning from the future.

Jayce, now understanding how this wasteland came to be, then asks omni!Viktor to send him back to his own timeline so he can stop origin!Viktor and ultimately, hextech (The Goal™), where they both could then make things right for their universe (The Motivation™). He wants to try, despite acknowledging that he may very well lose this fight.

Now, the cool thing about multiverse and time travel in fiction is you can easily go back, retrace the threads of the plot and see if it still makes sense if you look at it at the lens of now being well-informed. And what I want to do in this post is just follow one: Jayce's decisions in Season 2, Act 2 and Act 3.

Season 2, act 2, episode 5

Imagine yourself in Jayce's shoes after # 5. You have now been sent back to your origin point, the hexgate. You now know what needs to be done. Surprisingly, you meet Salo there, and learned that, in your absence, origin!Viktor has been "healing" people using hextech. He's still part of this sinister equation, as you were already shown.

During this enquiry, you're immediately given the chance to have a discussion with the person you need to talk to the most. This is encounter 1. Quick question - what would be one of the first things out of your mouth, armed with knowledge of the future?

Not gonna fucking lie, it wouldn't be this:

Why say this? You came from the bleak future that supposedly could spawn from this present. You already know that origin!Viktor, by using hextech, is barreling towards triggering the literal end of the world. Why act dumb here?

Well, ok, maybe you're just a bit out of the loop. You're trying to catch up, yeah? You're exhausted and traumatized, sure. Origin!Viktor even says "your mind suffered"; he sees that you too had been "touched by the Arcane".

But The Motivation™ and The Goal™ still stands. You must convince origin!Viktor that hextech is dangerous and he should stop. Now. You even say this out loud, that hextech is a curse. But what do you do next to support your premise?

Fucking flatten Salo, apparently.

So... why? What is the purpose of doing this seemingly out of nowhere? How does this serve The Goal™? You're immediately throwing hands... for what, exactly? I'm not a huge fan of Salo but this achieved literally Fuck All.

One could argue that he's severely traumatized and unstable here. We could accept origin!Viktor's premise and go so far as to say something is corrupting Jayce's mind, influencing him to be uncharacteristically brutal. Remember, we already have the benefit of hindsight. We already know Jayce's and omni!Viktor's agreement.

This is, by all accounts, an irrational and unnecessary action.

Season 2, act 2, episode 6

In witnessing this act of vicious violence, origin!Viktor's inclination is not to retaliate or rebuke; It's to figure out what is happening to his bestfriend. Setting aside the fact that origin!Viktor moved on from the murder he witnessed far too quickly for my taste, the important thing is though disturbed, he is not closing the doors on engaging with Jayce.

He recognizes that Jayce needs help.

Alright, now we go to the commune.

Let me just shift to origin!Viktor for a minute because I want to highlight something: origin!Viktor, even before the Machine Herald/forced assimilation arc in episode 9, is already capable of interacting with a being's essence/soul and can see all of their experiences and motivations. (side note: this is reminiscent of Rohan Kishibe's stand ability, no?)

We see this via his decision to save Vander/Warwick:

And him touching Singed for a literal second:

Alright, okay. We have The Solution™, no? They can talk and Jayce can just show him the future via physical contact. All we need to do is have these two meet. Neat. And so fast too, gosh. We're only on episode 6.

Now, we shift back to putting ourselves in Jayce's stanky ass shoes.

Remembering The Motivation™ and The Goal™, you arrive at the commune on a mission. You see a place that alarmingly resembles the Piltover wasteland. This is it, the beginning of the end. Understandably, your trauma is triggered and you feel unraveled. But you must not fail.

You are led to the heart of the commune, where, again, you are given the chance to convince and reason with origin!Viktor. Remember what you must do. This is encounter 2.

What would your next course of action be?

a. Take fucking 5 minutes to breathe, holy shit. You've suffered tremendously but you deserve some semblance of respite so just fucking chill for a bit.

b. Immediately approach and speak to origin!Viktor. Sure, you don't know shit about his newfound abilities. But, he's still human. He's still your partner. You will do your damned hardest to pull him back from the brink of no return, like you've always done for each other. It isn't too late; the existence of the commune doesn't mean he's irredeemable. You both always had good intentions. You just need to get through to him, implore him, because you already know what's at stake. Getting here was a miracle and you will not waste your chance.

c. Shoot origin!Viktor immediately.

So yeah, should be an easy cho-

Sigh.

Y'know, I've already exhausted my emotional outburst about this scene on another post so I won't be repeating that here. Instead, I want to focus on how, given the information we have, if intentional, this was a monumentally stupid move on Jayce's part.

This was the worst thing to have done even if he didn't know about Vi, Cait, Vander, Isha, Ambessa, and Singed's presence and their own ongoing subplot. The inhabitants of the commune were not hostile. Origin!Viktor was not hostile; we're even given another variation of this interaction in episode 9, wherein he smiled warmly upon seeing Jayce. Barring a red carpet, by all accounts this was a very pleasant welcome. There was absolutely no reason for him to incite this level of violence not only upon the foundation of this commune, but his fucking friend. The same one who, in the future, told him to stop this chain of events.

In doing this, he only ensured it.

What the fuck is he doing?

Season 2, act 3, episode 7 & 8

After Jayce's Big Fuck-Up: Singed revived origin!Viktor using Vander/Warwick's blood. He's weak, but not totally incapacitated. Unfortunately, his goal has changed. He is now in pursuit of the Glorious Evolution. Oh, also origin!Viktor has now colluded with Ambessa and the Noxians. But anyway.

Now, we get to Piltover, in the council room. Jayce is reunited with his now gilded girlfriend and they have a long overdue confrontation (I have other thoughts on this interaction but for the most part: damn, finally).

In the midst of their heated conversation, Jayce spots a potential threat lurking atop one of the pillars. His trauma is triggered, he shoots. Surprisingly, this "threat" is the third leg of this love triangle, and we are awarded an encounter 3. (Yayyyyyy)

Yeah, let's skip the "What would you do in Jayce's shoes?" schtick because I'm tired, it's cringe and we all know what he'd choose.

Ding, ding, ding!

I'm going to give Jayce the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps he is perceiving this visit as hostile given origin!Viktor's current form. This form, this thing bears a stark resemblance to the wasteland mechs who hunted him down and almost killed him.

We can even go one step further. He might already know this is an evolved form of one of the people in the commune, now devoid of any semblance of its organic self, and is enraged and horrified by the product of origin!Viktor's transmutation.

Sure. Understandable.

But can someone just... remind Jayce who triggered all this?

Mind you, origin!Viktor had every right to just forgo reaching out to Jayce at this point. Jayce has shown nothing but reckless rage and personally, I'd be avoiding him out of heartbreak and scorn.

But despite having one of his followers murdered before his eyes, despite being blown to smithereens, despite his commune falling apart, despite being consistently rebuffed again and again, Jesus is a champ and gives it one more shot.

…although, yeah, maybe now for a completely different, more Noxian reason. And in a very… questionable vessel.

Genuinely, I was hoping that third time's the charm. Trauma-triggering robotic vessel aside, this is still origin!Viktor going out of his way to reach out to him without any show of force. One would think Jayce would seize this opportunity.

But nope.

No, they instead start their immediately aggressive discussion with Jayce distancing himself from hextech. For some reason, he's denying his involvement and not taking any accountability for any of the events leading up to here.

Seriously, what the fuck did he mean by this? In episode 7, Jayce had that entire scene in a hole where, injured and starved, he almost drove himself insane from contemplating all of his mistakes and regrets.

So then why is he angry and lashing out at origin!Viktor now? Was the conclusion he got in that pit was that somehow he bears absolutely no responsibility in all of this?

But that doesn't make any sense. We see him hallucinating Heimerdinger's warning over and over and over again. Him finally understanding what a destructive force hextech is, him seeing the entirety of the Piltover wasteland coupled with omni!Viktor's warning are the pillars of The Motivation™ and The Goal™. That's why he asked to be sent back in the first place.

So that can't be it.

Ok so then maybe, what he's angry at is himself, and how he had allowed all of this to happen. But then that just makes Jayce self-centered and childish. This is not about him. This is about saving Piltover. He doesn't have time to waste on his deleterious self-hatred.

OK THEN MAYBE, he's angry at omni!Viktor for being the catalyst for all of the hextech timelines. But that still makes out Jayce as a drama queen here because again, this is not the time.

What the flying fuck is happening to you, man?

--

Sooooooo… we're seeing a recurring pattern here, yes?

Alright then. I want to present a theory here.

Maybe… just maybe… omni!Viktor, in sending him back, unintentionally messed up Jayce's mind so much, to the point that he might have just inadvertently delivered a bomb to this timeline's doorstep. Maybe this new Jayce, more similar to Vander/Warwick than to his old self, was the linchpin that keeps triggering the apocalypse; his corrupted mind remembers "Viktor must be stopped" as part of his objective… and then nothing else. Grimmer still, maybe this was always bound to happen, in every iteration of a timeline where hextech exists.

I want to state that I may be wrong. It doesn't perfectly fit all the problems I have with this season. We can't even compare this with Ekko's experience, given he returned too; that was via a different anomalous wild rune, a product of his and Heimerdinger's creation. When we see him in episode 9 reasoning with a suicidal Jinx, he doesn't seem to be exhibiting the same symptoms.

This is solely affecting Jayce. And honestly… I don't know if that's good writing, but I digress.

Given this theory, I'll begrudgingly concede that Jayce's actions from returning in episode 5 up until this point makes some sense.

Now, origin!Viktor defends himself and rightfully so. We see the love triangle duke it out in the place where they all almost lost their lives.

Kind of sad that origin!Viktor's "P2P soul link" ability does not extend to his mechs. So once again, The Solution™ was not achieved.

Goddamnit, ok fine, let's go the next scene.

Understatement of the year, bro.

So, Jayce and Mel part 2. But, in stark contrast to his initial confrontational attitude against Mel, we now see a much more... sensible Jayce. He apologizes, admits he was abrasive and lets her share her feelings about her lineage, about everything.

He says something interesting here: he expresses how, even in the midst of all of his confusion, he firmly believes that "there is no force in this world that can control you." He believes that Mel "will never be a passenger."

Setting aside the obvious setup for the Noxus sequel and the irony of this spiel coming from arguably the most manipulated character in S1, I want to touch upon what he meant by his whole speech. He could either be solely referring to Mel, or he could be referring to himself. If it's the former, yeah ok that's kinda sweet, I guess? And also perhaps a weird dig on Mel instead, telling her to own up to her choices. That not all of those were driven by her ambition to prove she's a Medarda.

On the other hand, if it's the latter... If I'm understanding this correctly, he saying he won't let himself be controlled by... what "force", exactly? Does he mean the corruption his mind received while travelling across multiverses? Does that mean during his whole ongoing temper tantrum since coming back, he's not only aware of it but resistant to it?

Does that mean him choosing to be antagonistic towards origin!Viktor is a conscious fucking choice?

If that's so... well, shit. Now what?

I don't fucking know man, jesus christ.

It's now glaringly clear that Jayce is acting irrationally, propelled by... a conviction I still don't fully understand. He's consistently forgoing any semblance of diplomacy in favor of acts of aggression, be it verbal or physical. He had been given numerous chances to connect with origin!Viktor and negotiate but had chosen the exact opposite.

He had chosen conflict.

Which leads to Jayce yet again in the council room, now urging the citizens of both Piltover and Zaun to heed a call to arms.

This confirms what I already had suspected at the beginning of this season was going to be the main cliché: the Watchmen gambit. You see this in Game of Thrones, in Code Geass, in Attack on Titan. It's uniting opposing sides to fight against a common enemy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is a bad direction for the story. What annoys me is that instead of getting to this point organically, it feels like the writers tried to shoehorn this in the narrative with Jayce's... odd choices at the helm.

All of it just feels so forced.

Season 2, act 3, episode 9

Now we go to war and the birth of the Machine Herald (Hitherto "MH"). Ambessa's forces have laid siege to Piltover. Their goal was to get MH to the hexgate to take control of the anomaly. They achieve this by employing a misdirect (MH's cocoon) and monopolizing the majority of the opposition's combatants to one location so he can slip in, unbeknownst to the city's defenders.

Because of the success of the Noxian's infiltration plan, we now have encounter 4. Jayce and origin!Viktor meet at the hexgate but now on opposite sides of a battle. The former is scrambling to disable the hexgates to protect it against the intrusion. (side note: why is he alone? Did Cait really not even send a couple of Enforcers with Jayce?) The latter, now transformed into his eerie final form and seemingly devoid of humanity, has arrived to take his boon.

So pop quiz - given the consistency of Jayce's decisions from encounter 1-3, what would be the logical outcome of this 4th one, pray tell? Makes sense that Jayce come out swinging and spewing vitriol from the get-go, no?

*insert GIF of me banging my head on a wall

Apparently the motherfucker had his turn on the sanity because he is now, for some reason, doing a 180 and opening a line of communication. Sure, he still feels very intimidating, but he's now... trying.

..............................GOD FUCKING DAMn it

AGAIN, what the fuck is going on?! This is a total shift in approach and we aren't shown how he even got here. What triggered this? Was it the brief flashback of origin!Viktor smiling warmly at him before Jayce fucking shot him, interspersed with a close-up shot of his own corpse? If not that, then what is it? Why now?

If my corruption theory was correct, where the fuck is it now? Why isn't it messing with him? What healed him? What restored his sanity?

On the other hand, if it was incorrect, then upon getting back to his own timeline the logical thing to have done was this exact thing immediately. He could have saved so much time, so many lives (Isha D:), but no. Now, presented with a fucking demigod working with a warlord and their loss at the horizon, now Jayce tries to appeal to his humanity and finally reason with him. Not the numerous times origin!Viktor invited him to a discussion with 0 hostility. Not when his partner still resembled his former self. Now.

i don'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS, TALIS

(Just wanted to put in a segue here and say that Jayce adopting S1 Viktor's "there's always a choice" philosophy and using it to argue against MH was the best part of this scene for me, along with MH letting Jayce desperately eject energy cells during their discussion just to re-insert all of them in one flick of his hexclaw. But that was the extent of my enjoyment of this scene.)

God ok let's just fast-forward to the top of the tower because jesus-fucking-christ, I'm getting angry again.

We find ourselves at ground zero of the apocalypse, where Jayce, to his horror, finds himself kneeling in the same exact position his future corpse is frozen in. Right as Machine Herald is assimilating Jayce into the Glorious Evolution and we're inching closer to the barren future, we get the unthinkable: now an astral entity in the, uh, I don't know what to call it, hexcore dimension? Finally, Jayce is fucking calm. He approaches MH not with anger, but with sincerity. Albeit, a bit too fucking late.

So why? Well, let me just re-insert my proposed corruption theory. We can look at this similarly to origin!Viktor and Vander/Warwick arc. Jayce's body bears a corrupted mind but it also houses his essence, his soul, his actual memories and experiences. Entry into the hexcore dimension finally frees him from whatever malevolent force is constricting him so he can finally achieve The Goal™.

Kind of makes sense, I guess. He's suddenly... more approachable. We finally get the normal, kinda pathetic Jayce back.

Listen, I'm not going into depth about what they discussed here, mostly because Twitter has gushed about "there is beauty in imperfections" to death at this point. It's sweet, true. But, personally, felt flat, hollow and... out of place after all of angry Jayce's actions leading to this.

Aaaaand here, moments later, MH's assimilation of Jayce is cut off by Ekko, coming in clutch and saving the day via portable time machine.

MH gets his face cracked open by the anomaly in said device, revealing the warm gooey Viktor center and freeing Jayce from his clutches. Thus, we finally get to why this ending was... not it for me.

See that? Somehow only made possible by Ekko's incredible assist, The Solution™. AKA what could have taken place immediately in episode 6 but had to happen in episode 9 instead.

But why here? Well (thinking about this for the better part of the last 48 or so hours, and possibly very incorrect), apart from the corruption theory explaining Jayce's weird decisions, the only thing I can think of is the writers or the creators wanted this heart-to-heart to happen right at this very moment. A classic cliché, where the end somehow justifies the very convoluted means. It doesn't matter if it frankly butchered Jayce's characterization along the way. We got the emotional payoff we were gunning for exactly where we wanted it, no?

Now we've come full circle.

As both a huge fan of this show and as a JayVik shipper, you don't understand how much it pains me to be so critical of the ending, especially after seemingly "winning". It all just feels so off, in a way that, even though I've spent hours on this post, I still think I haven't conveyed accurately.

I honestly would have gladly taken them blowing each other up if it still made sense with all the individual characters, with everyone else's story. It's the main reason why I loved S1 so much in the first place. The characters drove the plot. The domino effect of their actions, the subsequent reactions, their intentions, their motivations were consistent to each individual and just made sense. It felt organic and real, like a DND adventure.

But that was all seemingly... ripped away in S2 in exchange for the complication of time travelling and multiverses, tired tropes that I felt did such a disservice to what was the charm of the show.

So. How do I end this long winded rant?