Netflix's spectacular series Jayce and Viktor's relationship in the show is dramatically different than the game's original lore. Created by Riot Games and French animation studio Fortiche, Arcane was released in November 2021 exclusively on Netflix, and was met with near-universal acclaim from fans and critics alike. The show has been an unmitigated success, topping the Netflix Top 10 list in 52 different countries upon release, prompting the streaming giant to greenlight Arcane season 2 almost immediately.
The series follows several popular League of Legends characters, focusing its attention primarily on the city of Piltover and the politically complex relationship between its upper-class families and those living in the polluted, crime-ridden undercity later named Zaun. Among these characters are estranged undercity sisters Vi and Jinx (formerly known as Powder), their surrogate father figure Vander, Yordle scientist Heimerdinger, Piltover peacekeeper Caitlyn, and Arcane's exclusive new villain, Silco, who was specifically created for the series. Silco will actually be ing the League universe through the game Teamfight Tactics in February 2022 as a testament to the popularity of the show.
Few relationships throughout the series are as well-built and meaningful as the bond between genius hextech innovators Jayce and Viktor, however. While their stories are sometimes drastically different than how the characters are presented in League of Legends' original lore, many of the changes Riot and Fortiche have made are ultimately for the better. These changes allow the studios the liberty to tell their own unique stories while also masterfully paying proper respect to the parts of League's source material that matter most. Here's a look at the key changes made to Jayce and Viktor throughout Arcane season 1.
Jayce's League Of Legends Story Explained
In League of Legends lore, Jayce is an extremely intelligent scholar and inventor who became the youngest apprentice to ever be taken on by Clan Giopara, one of Piltover's well-respected ruling clans. While exceptionally gifted and genuinely altruistic—spending a great deal of his patronage crafting machines that bettered the lives of the city's working class—Jayce is also overwhelmingly arrogant. It got to the point where most of the scientific minds in the academic community didn't want to work with him. He did find a kinship with a young man named Viktor, the son of two inventors from Zaun, who had worked his way up to the academic world without the benefit of a rich family house or patron. Having found a rare intellectual equal, Jayce frequently worked with Viktor on various projects, and while the two developed a measure of mutual respect for one another, they were never good friends.
Jayce was more idealistic and wanted to push the bounds of science for the sake of progress. Viktor however, was more focused on using science to weed out human error, and his more questionable methods and philosophies were the source of great debate between him and Jayce. At one point, the two invented a new diving suit for Piltover dock workers, giving them increased strength, stamina, and allowing them to dive deeper underwater. However, this led to many divers seeing "phantom corpse lights in the depths" and "suffering from chem-induced hallucinations" (from Viktor's official bio), with many divers being injured or killed in the resulting panic. Viktor created a revolutionary helm that could by the wearer's fear response, effectively allowing the divers to be controlled, but drastically reducing the potential for work-related fatalities. Jayce argued this was a form of "mental enslavement" and a crime against free will, and reported him to the academy. Viktor was dishonorably expelled from the university as a result.
Sometime later, Clan Giopara explorers discovered a crystal in the Shurima deserts. It bounced around between their various scientists, none of whom could figure out what to do with it, before they finally assumed it was useless and gave it to Jayce. He ran every experiment imaginable to no avail, and the constant string of failures—something he wasn't accustomed to experiencing—actually humbled Jayce, somewhat. He finally got the idea to chip off a small piece of the crystal and, using a liquid metal alloy, ran a current through it that produced a massive power spike. This power spike alerted none other than Viktor, who claimed that he had finally found a way to rid the world of hunger, disease, and humanity's other self-induced ailments, but that he needed a power source to make it possible. The two argued, Viktor knocked Jayce out and stole the crystal, save for the small scrap that had been experimented on.
An irate Jayce used the crystal shard to power a modified demolition hammer that he had been working on and descended to Zaun in search of Viktor. What he found was a lab full of corpses; dozens of bodies with their brains removed and placed inside what appeared to be an army of metal soldiers, all being powered by the crystal. After it quickly became clear that the two were not going to talk each other down, Viktor sent the "army" after his former lab partner. Jayce was nearly killed by the automatons but managed to break free and destroy the crystal with his enhanced hammer. The explosion brought down the building, killing the automatons, but Viktor's body was never found. Jayce returned home and told his higher-ups what had happened. Word quickly spread and he was heralded as a hero, branded as Piltover's "Defender of Tomorrow".
How Arcane's Jayce & Viktor Differ From League Of Legends Cannon
While there are important changes to Viktor's character in Arcane—he didn't know Singed at all, for instance—all of his most important stories are more than likely still to come in Arcane season 2. Rather, it's his relationship with Jayce that has been drastically altered. As noted, the two worked closely together in League of Legends lore, but they were not friends. Jayce is described as "an insufferable genius" in Viktor's official bio, and was directly responsible for his being ostracized from the scientific community. In Arcane season 1 however, the two appear to be close friends from the start, and while that bond is tested due to Jayce's natural distrust for the undercity, his singular motivation as the show progresses is to save his "brother". This is obviously a huge creative difference, done to soften Jayce's rough edges enough to be one of Arcane's main protagonists.
Arcane seems to be taking from different elements of Jayce and Viktor's original material in order to tell their own unique story. In League lore, hextech was established long before the two rose to semi-prominence in the academic world. In Arcane it is Jayce—obsessed with the idea that science could be used to harness magic—who first discovers hextech, and with Viktor's help uses it to change the world. This creates an intriguing and layered political drama in which Jayce is ultimately elevated to a powerful place on the Piltover council, with his own House Talos (which is never mentioned prior to Arcane) given a seat at the table. Because in League lore Jayce is impossible to work with and almost completely devoid of redeeming social qualities, this political element is a completely new addition to the character's story.
The gemstones, Viktor's sickness, and the traumatic creation of the seemingly organic hexcore by way of alchemy—all new territory in Arcane that did not exist previously. Interestingly, the experiments they run in order to stabilize the gemstones in Arcane very closely mirror the experiments Jayce ran on Clan Giopara's gemstone in cannon, right down to activating it with an electric current. The Shuriman gemstone was even said to "sing" out to Jayce while he was working on it, which is at least similar to Viktor's blood-modified hexcore potentially having a mind of its own. Likewise, the story of the two creating a diving suit for Piltover workers in the original lore is similar to Jayce and Viktor developing special tools for the city's mining workers in Arcane. Ultimately these changes allow the Netflix series to dive far deeper into League's characters and tell unique new stories, but there are key aspects of Viktor's journey that must play out a certain way going forward.
Jayce Is The Real Villain In Viktor's League Of Legends Story
The official League of Legends bio for Viktor tells a much different story by further explaining the character's motivations. Viktor grew up in Zaun—which doesn't exist yet in Arcane—and witnessed the many work-related deaths due to the harsh working conditions of the undercity. He studied these deaths and realized that most of them stemmed from human error, which became the basis of his scientific research. To his credit, a chem-forge once hired him, and his inventions actually reduced on-site deaths to zero within one month. More than anything though, Viktor was an ardent scholar who worked endlessly to make the lives of his fellow Zaunites better.
Multiple times in the original lore, Viktor's attempts to do the right thing are seen as radical and unethical by others. When he creates the diving helm, Jayce turns him in and Piltover's academics basically accuse him of committing crimes against free will; but he knows from first-hand experience and years of study that removing the fear reflex will ultimately save lives in this case. There was also another incident involving the professor that first convinced Viktor to leave Zaun. The professor stole credit for one of his incredible inventions—the character Blitzcrank, actually—and nobody believed Viktor because he was a lowly Zaunite. Not even Jayce stood up for him, choosing to remain silent. The combination of his first mentor stabbing him in the back, Jayce betraying him, and being unable to continue his studies in Piltover drove Viktor into a deep, traumatic depression.
Viktor spiraled into his own philosophies and realized that human emotion and weakness were in the way of true progress. By the time he stole the Shuriman crystal from Jayce, he had replaced most of his physical body with "mechanical augmentations", which further took a toll on his mental state. This is where their stories greatly diverge. At the time, Viktor was dealing with a toxic event that turned hundreds of people in the Sump into "rabid psychotics". He was able to sedate them and slow the deterioration process eroding their brains, creating mechanical bodies for those whose real bodies gave out during the experiment. This is what Jayce really walked in on—a man trying to save hundreds of people by any means necessary. Instead, by destroying the crystal and bringing down the entire lab, Jayce ended up killing all of them, before returning to Piltover a hero for his actions.
What These Changes Mean For Arcane Season 2
Arcane season 1 ends on a major cliffhanger, concluding just as Jinx's Super Mega Death Rocket reaches the Piltover council chambers, with several of the show's main characters including Jayce and Viktor still inside. It's incredibly unlikely that either character will be killed off—although not impossible given the changes the show has already made—which poses a few interesting questions for Arcane season 2. Viktor has already begun experimenting on himself in the final episodes, although in Arcane the grotesque modifications appear to be alchemic in nature and have something to do with the organic hexcore he made Jayce promise to destroy (spoiler alert: he hasn't yet).
In League of Legends, Viktor continues his research and actually begins experimenting on volunteers from Zaun, replacing their limbs and body parts with robotic enhancements. His trauma and depression drive him over the edge, and he refers to this transformative process as his "Glorious Evolution"—in his mind, a necessary next step for humanity. Some even begin to worship his methods as a kind of cultish religion. It's unclear how Arcane season 2 plans to adapt this Glorious Evolution, if at all, but Viktor's work is unlikely to sit well with Jayce, potentially setting up the emotional and widely destructive fallout that the show has been teasing since the start.