#viktor analysis

Some notes:

I am not a LoL player and haven’t cross referenced the wider lore. I’m coming at this with the information available from the show

I am going to be referring to the spacey spirit realm/mind palace/ hexsoup Viktor spends s2 in as the astral plane. Prolly not what it’s actually called, but this is my yap session so I make the rules

the timestamp for the whole convo im gonna be talking about is s2e8 ~16:23 and the specific moment I want to point out is at ~16:48

For those who don’t want to pop open Netflix, a summary:

Viktor has come to Jayce as a mannequin to talk to him, asking Jayce to help pursue their shared goals with hextech once more.

Then the following words are exchanged:

J: “Everything you've done to these people, you did alone.”

V: “Perhaps. But I'm alone no longer. I now speak with all their voices.”

Viktor is lying.

While Jayce might think this last statement is true, he saw the cult and talked to Viktor/Salo, it’s blatantly false. Viktor even admits to it outright later during the finale, “I thought I could bring an end to the world's suffering. But when every equation was solved... all that remained... were fields of dreamless solitude.”

But it’s not the finale yet. So why do I claim Vik’s bullshitting?

Because as he makes his claim of being backed by many, the camera gives us this shot.

A full body zoom out of Viktor standing *alone*.

But I think Viktor *believes* in this. I think the framing is chosen to fit the narrative he wants to tell here, it even mirrors ascended Viktor, who gets the same framing.

But in the latter image, Viktor has evidence. Viktor has thousands of souls all around him.

So it’s not as if they can’t be ensnared in the astral plane. It’s not as if Viktor during e8 can’t have evidence. It’s that he simply *doesn’t* have any.

Because Viktor is lying.

And Viktor is alone.

Anywho, that’s all ((:

VIKTOR AS A MAGE

The first important thing I think here is that this almost certainly means that Viktor is becoming or has already become a mage himself, as he is in the game (which actually shocked me when I first found out because it just... didn’t fit right in my mind). @arcane-temp-fandomblog has some wonderful posts analyzing the hex core itself and how it bonds with people, but I’m really interested in what this means for Viktor himself.

This is a man who has dedicated his life to science and invention, and a man who later dedicates his own body to the exploration of technology and metallurgy. And yet… now he has the ability to wield magic.

I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive— science OR magic instead of and— and I actually think they’re quite intertwined for both Jayce and Viktor in the very nature of working with hextech. But there is something that feels incredibly different about investigating Magic’s practical use in the every day, seeing if you can essentially use it as a renewable energy resource, and… bonding with magic in a personal and very singular way.

The general populous of Piltover and Zaun do not have that connection to magic: the ability to wield it and shape it to their will. Jayce himself isn’t bonded to the hex core or to any of the crystals, and he is who they know of as the inventor of hextech.

It’s just Viktor.

On one hand, as a character, I’m very excited for him… this is a man who loves discovery and invention, who craves exploration of knowledge even at his own detriment. And we already know that that passion burns so deep within him that he is willing to break the rules in the pursuit of knowledge at every turn.

And now he has the ability to explore something completely new, to create tools and shape magic to do anything he can imagine, which must be the most incredible, heart stopping gift to give someone who loves discovery. An entire world has just opened up for him to explore, and if everything were chill in the world, I think that this is possibly the best thing that could every happen for Viktor. (My little academia loving heart just adores him omg)

However… he is now a mage in a society that hates magic.

Sure, they now accept hextech. But it’s branded very distinctly as technology, and I’m genuinely not sure how much the citizens of Piltover or Zaun think it is intertwined with magic? (I would assume it’s talked about a little bit as it does enable literal teleportation lol. If anyone knows, lmk). It also seems that the refined hex crystals are no longer magical, but are genuine tech created by Jayce and Viktor in Arcane, and the Ferros Clan in lore. From the brackern wiki page:

Piltovan scientist have created synthetic hex crystals as an alternative power source for hextech devices. It is unclear if this was done to prevent the wide exploitation of Brackern namestones, or as a result of the namestones being a finite and a difficult to gather resource.

So it seems that the majority of hextech used is not powered by the truly magical brackern namestones, or the unstable crystals we see in Act 1, even though they are sort of marketed as “magic meets science in the new frontier” or whatever. But, as I said, there is something that feels distinctly different about the crystals and tech that are manufactured in a lab to be used in ship engines and hex gates, compared to the overtly organic thing that hex core seems to be.

And once again, hextech is bonded to no one, so it doesn’t feel as innately personal as Viktor being an actual mage who can wield and shape the power of a namestone.

I think that maybe Viktor’s new status may play into his exile in Arcane?

It also feels like something that has the possibility to tear at Viktor’s priorities a little bit. Right now, and for the last seven years, Viktor has focused on hextech knowing that it had to do with magic, and he now has a much larger field to personally explore and experiment with in a way he never has before. Essentially, he has the opportunity to dive headfirst into magic and nothing else. But he becomes the Machine Herald. Every voice line he has is about welcoming in steel and technology, and how much better it is than the organic— which the hex core kind of fits imo. I know Arcane could simply be altering or retconning this, but if we go under the assumption that they are not right now, that means that Viktor either rejects his newfound ability to genuinely create and shape magic, or he lies about it.

Both are incredibly interesting to me.

MACHINE HERALD MAGE

On one hand, the Machine Herald could be created partly by magic (or the Void, or whatever the brackerns represent). It makes “Machine Herald” a bit of a misnomer, but it would make sense with the transformations we already see in the show. Perhaps he continues to use magic to augment himself, whether through the power of the hex core, some other manifestation of his newfound mage abilities, or through other means. For other people to join him his Glorious Evolution in this case, he would have to figure out how to use magic to augment other people as well.

Perhaps calling himself the Machine Herald, or even just allowing others to call him that, is simply a form of self defense or plausible deniability for Viktor in a world where no one should be using magic like this— his augmentations from the hex core certainly look to be made of metal, so perhaps he says he constructed them with metal when that isn’t quite the case. I think this theory feels a little disingenuous to Viktor’s intelligence, however, and actively choosing augmentation is pretty important to his character in lore, so I don’t know that this would be a likely case.

The last option I see is him trying to remove, alter, or perfect the hex core augmentations mechanically, moving him closer to the Machine Herald in lore. I could see him doing this out of guilt from what happened to Sky, as he already wants to destroy the hex core, so I don’t think loathing of the augmentations it created are that far off. Personally, I think this is the most likely theory, but I am interested to see how his becoming a mage and the possible communications with the brackerns affect his transition into steel augmentation. Perhaps it simply helps him gain better knowledge on how to create superior augmentations? The brackerns did give him visions that helped his research even before his blood touched the hex core.

I also think there is some fantastic inspiration in this for Viktor desperately trying to rid himself of the limbs that killed Sky

CONNECTED TO BRACKERNS / THE HEX CORE

I’m sure I am not the first to speculate this, but I think this is further support for the theory that the hex core could help protect Viktor in the explosion following Episode 9. 

Again, on the brackern wiki, it says:

Through their namestones, the Brackern posses a hive mind connection with each other, being able to sense each other from long distances. Skarner himself was able to sense the cries of the namestones from as far as Piltover.

And of course in the show we see that Viktor is unable to harm or destroy the hex core after he has bonded with it, indicating that the hex core certainly has some self-preservation tendencies, and that Viktor himself may have bonded enough with the hex core or the brackern that was attached (?) to that namestone in order to connect himself with the brackern hive mind.

The theory that mages could bond with the namestones is either well known enough or discoverable enough that twenty-something Jayce made note of it long before the events of Act 1. In his journal:

I have collected several theories I've discovered on my journeys on how the power of the Arcane might be harnessed: Crystals form bonds with a sole user - their power is channeled though it

- Can a device be created to manufacture such a connection? - What determines the bond?

Of course, we know that while Jayce and Viktor were successful in creating a loose bond strong enough to discover how the hex crystals work and turn it into marketable and recreatable tech, Viktor was the only one who actually made that unique bond with a crystal-- through his blood.

Because this particular bond is unique, I think it is possible that Viktor has connected to the brackerns / the namestones in a way we have not seen yet.

With their hive mind and their instinct for self preservation, I think it is even more plausible that this is what saves Viktor in the Council explosion.