#mage viktor throw me a bone here i need to know your plan

[asgardian--angels]

Scene Breakdown: What Actually Happened Atop the Hexgates

Hi everyone, this has been bugging me literally since I watched the finale for the first time three months ago and I've been trying to put the pieces together ever since. I still have a lot of questions about the metaphysics of hextech and the alternate timelines (Mage Viktor you frustrate me!!), BUT, setting those aside for the time being, I wanted to break down that final climactic scene atop the hexgates so we can see what actually occurred. A lot happens very quickly, with multiple key elements interacting - Viktor (i.e., the hexcore), the anomaly, the z-drive, and the runestone. This is my best attempt to make sense of it, and I'd appreciate your own theories and feedback! It is rather long but has plenty of pictures.

So, the first very important element to examine is the anomaly - in particular, what Viktor's doing with it and why it acts the way it does in this scene. I still have a great deal of questions about that first point, that is, what role it's playing in the Glorious Evolution, because it's really not super clear. But, as it pertains to what we see in this scene, Viktor says the following -

"The sublime intersection of order and chaos."

Hextech is engineered order, wild runes/anomalies are organic chaos. Both are apparently needed to carry out the Evolution - while Viktor on his own with the hexcore can Evolve individuals, for some reason (help me out here) the anomaly allows him to extend his power and will. I won't say a whole lot on this as it's not super pertinent - but I still intensely question why in the ruined timeline, we see only some Evolved (likely only those who had mind-strings) while the rest of the population just got anomaly-blasted (I refrain from calling it hexcorized as many do, because it literally isn't - it's the corruption we see from the anomaly) and just, Pompeii'd in place. But I digress.

In the hexheart, Viktor frees the anomaly from its chamber, instead moving it to a containment field in his hexcorized staff.

The anomaly hypothetically can only exist in conjunction with the hexgates, or more broadly, concentrated runic activity that wears thin the wall between the material world and the arcane (thus the hexcore may fit this also). It would not persist outside of these conditions. Thus, Viktor keeps it stable in this hexcore force field, allowing him to safely transport it up the gravity chute of the hexgate.

I haven't seen it mentioned before but I don't think Viktor in his Evolved form can actually fly - he appears to rely on the gravity field generated by activating the hexgate gemstone mesh. This creates a concentrated beam that travels up the length of the chute, and we're going to assume here, atop the hexgates as well, in a very narrow field - where Viktor and the anomaly float but not where Jayce and the Evolved stand. This could be a result of him breaking through the dome or not.

He releases the anomaly, where it floats upwards into the sky along what we can presume is the same gravity field.

Key here is that it is still, somehow, tethered to Viktor. If it leaves the hexcore field, it would implode. It's not shown explicitly what this connection is, but it must be there. It is no longer connected to the hexgates - if it were, it would not implode at the end of this scene. It is solely tied to Viktor now.

One thing that remains unclear to me is whether Viktor intended to use the energy of the hexgates to power himself/the anomaly. The concentration of the energy into a vertical beam is stated by Jayce earlier in 2x03, but we never see this - either Viktor was stopped before it could get that far, or it's unrelated and has no bearing here.

The next element here is the z-drive (or inverse anomaly).

There's been plenty of theorizing and speculation about the z-drive, as it was created from inverting the acceleration rune, thus controlling time rather than space. (It is not abundantly clear to me how the anomaly made the jump from a 4-second time travel machine to a reality-hopper thanks to some mysterious tinkering from Heimerdinger... but let's ignore that here). But its role in this scene is actually less than it may seem.

The primary consequence of Ekko launching the unstable z-drive at Viktor is that blasts what I'm calling a time-hole in Viktor's armor (physical, emotional...). This allows Jayce to get through to him where he'd otherwise be impenetrable - yeah yeah, the cosmic yaoi, we've all seen it.

The z-drive does not destructively interact with any other element in this scene - not the anomaly, nor the rune. Just Viktor/the hexcore.

It actually breaks Viktor's staff into pieces, which is a neat detail though I'm not sure it has any impact on events.

It's easy to think that the two anomalies canceled each other out - but that is not what happens, as we'll see. While I don't have a perfect screencap for it, after watching this scene a few dozen times, I can tell you that the rotating cloud cover concealing the anomaly does not change during the z-drive explosion. Those bursts of corruption we see in the above shot are what the anomaly's been doing the whole time. The two anomalies do not affect each other.

The time stop we see during this explosion could either be a visual storytelling effect from the animators (i.e., everything we see actually happens in a split second but time works differently in the astral plane) or the explosion of the z-drive actually creates an isolated time bubble around the top of the hexgates. It is not clear which is true. I'm inclined to believe the former.

That brings us to the runestone, the most complicated element.

The runestone has been embedded in Jayce's body by Mage Viktor, complete with anomaly corruption webbing. Mage Viktor's ultimate plan here is still largely a mystery (and it keeps me up at night). But I maintain, purely speculative, that he did this for a dual purpose - the runestone is now linked in some way to that ruined timeline/with that timeline's anomaly; it glows whenever Jayce activated the alt-hammer, which was able to hurt Viktor (perhaps it was the only thing that could?).

But, relevant here, it appears to act as a pre-programmed set of runic instructions to be read, interpreted, and executed by the hexcore inside Viktor. It activates when placed into Viktor's spectral body, anomaly corruption traveling up his arm. This triggers hundreds of copies of the acceleration rune to burst outwards which frees the souls of the Evolved from their bodies.

These souls travel in the astral plane into a swirling mass that close in on the rune.

We never actually see the souls go into the rune, although we are shown beams of blue light being gathered into the rune on Jayce's wrist, which could potentially be the souls though it could also just be energy/a sign of the rune activation. It's highly unlikely the souls went anywhere else even though visually at times it looks like they're floating near the z-drive - it would make no sense for them to go into either anomaly as those are both about to explode, and it was the rune that beckoned them in the first place. They could just be 'freed' to disperse into the aether, but, ehh, that does not appear to be what's happening based on the visuals.

Most of the souls are sucked into the rune before the spell runs its course and interacts with Jayce and Viktor. The last remaining appear to go with them.

So here's where it all comes together, and everything happens very quickly.

We have the anomaly, in the sky, tethered to Viktor & the hexcore. The z-drive is mid-explosion. The rune is now running its course.

This is what happens in quick succession, in order:

The rune sucks in Jayce, Viktor, and the z-drive explosion.

It's hard to capture in a screencap, but yes, the rune takes the z-drive explosion with it.

2. The shockwave of the z-drive explosion, which had been in progress before it was sucked into the rune, throws everyone back. However, since the explosion is gone, Ekko and others are unharmed. The soulless drones are ragdolled around.

3. The anomaly, no longer connected to the hexcore, becomes immediately unstable and collapses, imploding, which sends a shockwave outwards from the top of the hexgates (both screencaps are of this moment).

Now, I am a wholehearted believer that Jayce and Viktor were teleported elsewhere, and there's plenty of speculation posts both here and on twitter that lay out evidence for why it's likely.

I'll just mention that besides the fact that the blue flicker at the end of the rune's disappearance perfectly matches that of the other example we see of it being used - by Mage Viktor saving young Jayce - it also glitches out:

What does this mean? Potential reality-hopping? Anomaly influence to say the least, perhaps caused by the z-drive explosion interacting with it. I personally don't see why Mage Viktor would embed a pre-set teleportation rune into Jayce's wrist to give to Viktor without the intention of, yknow, teleporting them, especially if freeing the souls was an intended part of his plan. But we may never know.

So there you have it. The play-by-play. The anomaly needs the hexcore and imploded when the connection broke. The z-drive did not cause the anomaly to implode, its only narrative purpose here was to give Jayce the precious moments to reach Viktor. The hexcore is hypothetically still part of Viktor, and we have no idea if getting his face blasted open would be fatal for Evolved Viktor's body were they to get spat out somewhere, nor whether the z-drive would also explode in their faces or just fizzle out in the arcane. Many questions remain, but I hope this clarifies at least the technical aspects of what actually went down atop the hexgates.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know your own theories!