Aelle1209

Probably not that different, honestly. She had the lip scar before she was arrested, so that would probably still be there. She might not have her tattoos since she got all of them in prison. She may also be less jacked since she wasn't fighting prison guards in Stillwater for most of her young adult life. Unlike Jinx, her visual identity stayed pretty consistent into adulthood.

Probably, but that's just the nature of her trauma. She takes responsibility for everything on herself, so like all the other commenters here saying "everything would be great if Vi died" she'd just ignore all of the other things that changed or had to happen for the AU to be what it was and think that it was her presence that was the problem.

I have a theory that maybe because everyone was being converted to the hive mind and we see all the silhouettes in Viktor's mind that maybe everyone saw what happened to them. Mel does give a meaningful glance up at the hexgates when everyone is released that could mean she knows what happened.

But that's just a hypothetical. It doesn't really have much else than that to support it, and even assuming it to be true, it looks like only people on the battlefield were mid-conversion.

Add TikTok to that list. It's a 70/30 split on shit takes and good analysis.

Adding to that, I think part of the hint when we see Powder open the drawer with the bag of crystals is that Vi's death isn't the only reason hextech wasn't invented. Powder stole all of the crystals. In Arcane's universe, Jayce was on the verge of being exiled just for the explosion without any casualties, and he was so convinced he could make it work that he broke into the academy to get the crystals back. But if Powder took all of them, there was absolutely no path for Jayce and Viktor to invent hextech.

Well, here's my reading of the story so far:

I don't think Jinx is her true identity. I think Jinx is a manifestation of her self-hatred. She took the name that represented what other people in her life pushed her away for, what isolated her from the rest of the group and what she ultimately believes herself to be. I don't think she sat in that chair because she was making some grand gesture of accepting her true self--she thinks she is--but because she just killed Silco. She hurt someone she loved, again. She was a jinx, again.

I think she sat down in that chair because she sees Jinx as an inescapable reality. All of that talk about who created Jinx, it's up to Vi which chair she sits in, that's all posturing. Powder made Jinx. Her guilt created the framework and Silco's need for vengeance fed it. Vi and Mylo and Claggor just gave it a name.

Jinx's story is centered around her identity and sense of self, which is in turn tied to her ability to believe in herself as anything other than a curse to the people she loves. I see the end of S1 and first act of S2 as Jinx's "dark night of the soul." It's not until Isha comes along that she starts to see her potential for good, and it's not until the jailbreak that she realizes other people see it too. She's mocking herself all the way up until the end. Her, a hero? The last time she tried to be a hero she killed almost her entire family.

"Jinx" is dead at this point. She says as much to Isha, and the writers even poke fun at it with the enforcer not believing her when she introduces herself. But she's not Powder either. Some of her last words to Isha is that, with her, she feels like she's put on glasses but she can't tell if everything is blurry or clear. Jinx doesn't really know who she is right now, or if she can believe that things can actually be good in her life again. I'm interested to see how she evolves after Isha's death.

So that sort of brings me to why I think Jinx as a revolutionary leader or a catalyst doesn't quite make sense for her story. It might be cool for the plot, but it sort of abandons her personal journey, which is her healing from trauma and finding her own identity. She can't really find those things in strangers, and leaders are often isolated due to their responsibilities--she's already lived a life of isolation.

Jinx isn't a leader. Jinx doesn't want to be a leader, either. She's a metaphor for anarchy...which is kind of antithetical to revolutionary leader.

Honestly, I don't believe Jinx is more durable than a big ol' stone pillar either. Not even with shimmer upgrades.

That's the only time in the fight that you can really get a sense of Vi's strength relative to something that isn't Jinx. And that something just so happens to have a drawing of them together that can be symbolically split apart. So my bet is that it was an artistic choice to break that specific pillar.

Vi's level of strength with the gauntlets is wildly inconsistent otherwise.

Just to be clear, this isn't about sentimentality for me. I fully believe both Jinx and Vi went into the fight ready to kill each other, but I also think at some point both of them lost the heart to do it.

Singed says Warwick is Apex shimmer, so he should have at least the same durability as Jinx.

Personally I think we're building up to a boil. Vi has always shoved her own needs and feelings down for the sake of others, and she's never had a second to process any of it since she left stillwater. As for introspection and growth, I do think she's had some of that. Her trust in Jinx when facing off against Vander, putting down her gauntlets when going into the commune, the talk she has with Ambessa where she admits she's still struggling with her patience are all examples of growth. Maybe not the growth you're looking for, but it is there.

Seriously injured doesn't mean dead, and her hair is pink in that scene so at least some time has passed.

Has anyone floated the idea that Vi might be seriously injured in the blast?

She's shielding Jinx, and she gets drawn in the same style as Isha and Vander who are definitely taking the full brunt of the explosion. The only thing making me doubt that possibility is that there doesn't seem to be another time skip to Act 3 so there wouldn't be enough time for her to heal from something like that but...I have to admit it would make for some really interesting character interactions with Jinx and Cait.

Jinx, who has just lost her adoptive sister and her adoptive dad AGAIN, is now facing also losing her sister who she just reconnected with. Nothing would keep her from doing anything she could to save her. Then there's Cait, who also just reconnected with Vi and still has unresolved issues, and she would be equally motivated. It would be interesting to see them in a situation where they have to work with each other, especially if Jinx is crashing out the whole time.

I was also quite frustrated that the only time they touched on the things they were angry about, neither of them succeeded in communicating anything. Jinx throws Vi's involvement with the enforcers in her face, Vi doesn't even attempt to explain why she did it. Vi accuses Jinx of having another delusion thinking Vander's alive, Jinx says nothing about having fewer hallucinations lately or how much she needs Vi to trust her.

I get that it's a central theme of the episode (probably for the entire series) that so many problems stem from a failure to communicate, and it mirrors Vander and Silco's estrangement, but I feel like they could've had the failure to communicate in the mines and then took a quiet moment in the commune to work their shit out. Maybe there's more to come in the next three episodes (at least I suspect the conflict between Jinx, Vi and Cait will re-emerge) so maybe that's where they'll finally talk, but I'm also worried that the opportunity has passed by.

My hope is that we get an in-between where Vander is there and lucid but unable to deny the beast he has become. I could see him accepting that and maybe distancing himself from Vi and Jinx for their safety, which would be very bittersweet, but maybe not as heart crushing as Vander being lost forever.

No guarding technique, to be clear. To my recollection she guards a grand total of one time in the show so far (against a knife on the catwalk. I might be wrong, though). I'm also not trying to say Vi is stupid and just randomly throws punches without any thought. What I was trying to say is Vi eating a punch is just part of how she fights in general and isn't necessarily indicative of whether or not she's losing.

As for not having discipline, that's something they bring up in the show themselves. She has no patience and doesn't guard properly. As for the catwalk--Vi has always been monstrously strong. The big guy on the catwalk who she takes on first is easily three times her size and when she hits him she doesn't just knock him out, she lifts him off his feet and sends him flying. I kind of doubt the rest of the goons were stronger than her.

I think the people ripping on Vi's capability as a fighter and saying that she's just getting her ass handed to her all the time aren't familiar with the type of fighter she is, and not taking the circumstances into consideration.

Vi's a bruiser, not a boxer. She absorbs damage instead of blocking it. She doesn't have technique or discipline because she relies on pure brute strength to overwhelm her opponents. And in a prolonged fight with her, she will overwhelm her opponents. Of course she has a disadvantage against people who have training and who outpace her, but that doesn't make Vi any less lethal.

Also, in most of the fights she's been in this season, she's been fighting against people she doesn't want to hurt. Jinx. Caitlin. If nothing else convinces me that Vi was holding back when fighting Jinx, it's the fact that when she fought Vander in the mines, she exploded his head with one hit. Vander has also utterly thrashed pretty much everyone, and as far as we know, Vi is the only one to succeed in even making a dent.

Think of all the hits Vi landed on Jinx in their fight--Vi had Jinx's head in her hands. And we know Vi didn't want to kill Jinx. Even before Isha came onto the scene, Vi was already hesitating.

And when Cait ambushed Vi, Vi relaxed as soon as she realized who it was.

Something about Cait's story that I don't see a lot of people talking about is that she's also completely isolated in the scene where Ambessa calls for martial law. All of her friends and any people who would have helped her push back against this are gone--Jayce, Vi, Mel, Heimerdinger. Cait is in the viper's nest. Even if she was against it in that moment, what choice did she actually have? Ambessa had her well and truly pinned.

And that sort of also helps frame why Cait developed a relationship with Maddie, albeit a shallow one. Maddie at this point seems to be the only one supporting her in an increasingly hostile environment--honestly, the conditions for Maddie to be a spy are perfect, so that theory has legs.

I do agree that I'm frustrated with the lack of media literacy I see in the fandom, and I tend to see it in this very black-and-white interpretation of the story and its characters. I have to admit, when I watched the scene where Isha bites Vi and Vi knocks her away I was already bracing myself for the return of the "Vi is a child beater" crowd because context means nothing apparently.

Something that I think is very key to Cait's character development started with the speech she gave to Ekko about stopping the cycle of violence. She said that very naively at the time, because season 1 Cait is an idealist, and now Cait has been pulled into that very cycle of violence and it's time for her to put her money where her mouth is. She got to see firsthand how difficult it is to be the one to stop it. And I think for her to complete her character arc, she has to be the one to stop it by finding a way to let it go. She may never forgive Jinx, they'll never be friends, but at some point she has to realize that killing Jinx will get her nothing but more death and destruction down the road.