#sometimes we forget that Zaun is filled with “mad scientists” for a reason

[mollysunder]

Potential Complications of Ekko's Time Shenanigans

There's a lot about Ekko that makes me nervous for him next season. Besides the fact that the Firelights tree house could easily get firebombed, because it's a literal hole in the ground with no cover. We'll ignore that most of the exits are above ground-level or sealed with a heavy door, and that some of the small metal fixtures on the treehouse look like human skulls. There's this larger, but more understated threat that Ekko's going to lose his mind after using the Z-Drive too many times.

When Vi berated herself for how she should have been there to protect Ekko, she wished that she could change the past, Ekko said, "That's a good way to drive yourself crazy". I thought that answer was pretty ironic, because wanting to change the past is his whole thing. At first I thought it could be a one off thing to tease Ekko's future ability. Then I remembered that Ekko has a joke voiceline that makes light of the effects of time travel on his mind. Sometimes Ekko would say, "Time scramble doesn't travel my brain.".

The dangers of the Z-Drive became more plausible the more I thought about Ekko's place in Zaun. Of the three most prominent minds in Arcane's Zaun (Singed doesn't count, he's from Piltover), two of them, Jinx and Viktor, deal with debilitating mental illnesses brought on by their respective work. For Jinx, her bombs killed her brothers, worsening her paranoia and fear of abandonement. While Viktor's work with the Hexcore has only further isolated him from his already small circle of friends, which will only make his future depressive spiral worse once the Hexcore causes him to be exiled in disgrace from Piltover. In both their cases, their work has lead them to be partially alienated within their communities, usually by their notoriety alone.

Ekko is supposed to be the exception to the rule for most Zaunite champions, but in Arcane he's not. Ekko builds technology to sabotage Silco's Shimmer supply chain, putting a target on himself and anyone associated with him. Ekko and the Firelights have to live clandestinely from the greater Zaun. Their fight against Silco has caused them to be less connected or just present in Zaun than someone like Jinx is. And on top of that isolation you have Ekko being placed in a de facto leadership position for his group for who knows how long, everyone there either looks the same-ish age as him, or are literal children. All the while he's responsible for the raids they carry out that were shown to carry a high fatality rate, at least one of the raid members looks younger than Jinx did in Act 1. Ekko may live in a nice tree, but he isn't doing well.

Then there's Heimerdinger, who is sure to be a pivotal influence on Ekko's story next season. Every mentor-student relationship in Arcane has shown that the students (Jinx, Vi, Viktor) inevitably internalized the lessons of their teachers (Silco, Vander, Singed). But more importantly, these pairs tend to share parallel experiences with one another, though it's more general than 1-to-1. And based on Hemierdinger's VA, Mick Wingert, the most defining aspect of Heimerdinger's characters was the suffering he experienced at the loss of his home, Bandle City, from the Rune Wars. Wingert stated that the closest frame of reference for the loss Heimerdinger experienced was similar to a Holocaust survivor. If the director and writers found Wingert's interpretation appropriate enough to play Heimerdinger, then part of that is likely to come through more in the next season.

Ekko's perspective is bound to change once he works with a person who will tell him that everything that can go wrong, in fact has gone wrong before. And the weight of Heimerdinger's words will probably carry considerable weight on Ekko's opinion next season. Heimerdinger's character is likely to fulfill the role of (grand)parental figure that Ekko has long needed. I can only see Heimerdinger heightening Ekko's fears and anxieties on the potential future disaster that will destroy his community and his responsibility in preventing it.

For next season, Ekko will probably believe he is at least partially responsible for Zaun and Piltover's war because he couldn't stop Silco or Jinx in time. When he finally creates the Z-Drive, he'll have the opportunity to rewrite every new potential mistake he could have made, even if it's only by 2-seconds. Ekko will either keep rewinding until he gets trapped in his own timeloop and breaksdown when he realizes his efforts are futile, or the instability of the Z-Drive creates too much attention and some outside party intervenes and pulls him out.