Jinx’s Greatest Fear
Arcane: Episode 02.05 — An Analysis
By the time Act Two of Arcane’s second and final season was released, my social media timelines were inundated with content from the show. All of my algorithms were highjacked by this show. If you’re interested in the topic of this essay, then chances are your timelines looked like mine. So, it’s entirely possible that we may have come across the same tweet that contained screenshots of Jinx’s face in the dark, lit by a small fire, as she reacts to seeing Warwick holding Vi after Jinx insisted that it was Vander within the beast and that Vi should surrender to it. The caption to the attached images said something like “You would think she saw something terrifying.”
I examined at the pictures, I looked into Jinx’s eyes, and I had to admit that the Original Poster was right. There’s no denying that Jinx looks utterly overcome with terror — despair even — as she stares into the darkness toward what should theoretically be a pleasant sight. The question indirectly being asked here is why did Jinx react that way to seeing her father holding her sister, when there’s no doubt this is an image she would have given anything to see since she was a child with a different name. To answer that question for myself, I watched the scene over and over again, watched previous scenes, and watched last season’s scenes, all with a close eye and a sharp ear, because the people involved with making this show do not do anything by accident, and their attention to detail is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The answer that I eventually arrived at was that Jinx appeared utterly terrified looking at an otherwise lovely scene because in that moment, she was staring down the barrel of her greatest fear — something that broke her once, and would surely end her this time around.
The episode opens with Jinx trying to convince Vi to follow her on a hunt for their father — the man that died in Vi’s arms many years ago. Jinx has to know that Vi wouldn’t believe her, after everything they’ve been through together. Vi knows that Jinx knows that Vi wouldn’t believe her. But there she was, against the wall with Vi’s hand around her throat, with shimmer-laced tears falling from her eyes, telling her sister that their father was still alive. Vi being Vi, incapable of letting her loved ones go, no matter what, removes her hand from Jinx’s throat, against her better judgment, against everything within her that says this is just another one of Jinx’s tricks.
They arrive at the tunnels, and Vi watches Jinx move through them, clapping with Isha to turn the lights on. You can see in her face that she’s still unsure, shaking her head, rolling her eyes as she follows behind the two of them, toward god knows where, still under the impression that she’s with them down here, chasing another one of Jinx’s fantasies. She’s still convinced Jinx is wrong, but the possibility of seeing Vander again is enough for her to remain in step with her estranged sister. They bicker at each other, each convinced the other one is crazier than them, they get into a fight, and Vi instinctually strikes Isha, making her bleed. Jinx shoves her big sister away and takes care of the young child as Vi watches. Maybe she sees Powder in Jinx here. Maybe she sees herself in Jinx here, and Powder in Isha. Either way, it was clear at this moment, that there were cracks beginning to appear in the image of her psychotic sister that Vi had in her mind.
This change in Vi’s headspace was clear in the words she uttered immediately after, as the exchange that follows is between equals, as adults with level heads — not between two sisters, one crazy and one sane, or between enemies that mean each other harm. She wasn’t just tagging along as the butt of a joke, this much was clear to her now. She wanted to know what was actually going on, the assumption being she would believe her little sister this time around.
“Why’d you come get me?” Vi asks. “You don’t actually need my help. You haven’t for a long time.”
How Jinx answers that question is at the heart of the answer I arrived at to the question that was posed in that aforementioned tweet.
Jinx says, “Last time Vander needed us, we tried it alone, and nothing was ever the same. So, maybe this is like a do-over.” This is at the heart of why Jinx went through the trouble to find Vi and to convince her, against all odds, to join her. This is at the heart of why Jinx is doing what she’s doing — and she says those words with a heavy heart, unable to make eye contact, each line carrying so much weight, entirely devoid of irony. It’s so earnest that she attempts to stick a laugh in before she suggests this could be a do-over, but even that is humorless — she can’t even convince herself that she’s not expressing her deepest desires at that moment. It’s only after this that she can turn to look at Vi and let some of the air out of her tone. “Besides,” she says, “he’s your father too.” The first part was all about why Jinx needed Vi to be with her. The final part is to convince Vi to stay.
When they find Vander’s letter to Silco in the next scene, we see Jinx mulling over how things could have been different if Silco had received this apology from a brother. This is a sign of how Jinx susceptible to struggling with the concept of What Could Have Been — a sequence of words that happens to be the title to the final song in the final episode of Season 1. The lyrics in the song are phrased in such a way that presents the character juggling in their mind all of the ways that things could have been different, “playing” as it’s stated. “I want you to lose how I lose when I play what could have been.” The word play makes it seem like this is something that comes around often in the character’s mind — this is a game they’re used to playing.
Vi sees how this contemplation is affecting her sister, and moves to comfort her. She pulls back, however, redirecting her hand to her oversized bitch-mitten instead. Isha approaches Jinx and does the comforting. And then, they’re back into the dark to continue their hunt for Vander.
It doesn’t take long for them to hear the rumblings of the beast hunting them. Vi wants to run, but Jinx tells her it’s Vander, except “something’s got him riled up.” Warwick pounces in Isha’s direction, hungry for her blood, but Vi stops him, seemingly protecting the child. Vi looks up at the monster with fear in her eyes, and she utters, “He’s gonna kill you.” She wasn’t protecting Isha; she was protecting Jinx. And as Jinx screams, “Don’t hurt him”, Vi charges at the beast, now hellbent to stop him from hurting her sister, with no regard for how much danger she’s putting herself in.
She takes a beating, but bloodied and bruised, she stands up with her gloves up, prepared to fight this monster to the death. You can see in her eyes that she might be preparing for the worst. Still, there is nothing that’s going to stop her from seeing this through to the end. Nothing, that is, except her sister’s pleas. “Vi, it’s him. You have to believe me.”
Vi considers this for no longer than a second before dropping her hands to her sides. After everything that has happened to lead these two sisters to this point, Vi makes the choice to trust Jinx with her life. A moment later, Jinx sees this and terror begins to fill her eyes.
Warwick charges. Vi stands in place, defenseless, helpless. The drums in the score cease. Then the rest of the music drops out. All we can hear is the beast’s growl. Then, the rapid beating of a heart. Then… Now, stay with me here! Then, we hear a sort of ticking, right at the tail end, before Vi yells out Vander’s name. For a couple seconds, the heartbeat morphs into a ticking. Now, what in the world would lead to the makers of this show to make such a specific choice? Like I mentioned earlier, nothing these brilliant minds do is an accident. I knew that I needed to get to the bottom of this before I continued.
So, I racked my brain for what this ticking sound could be connected to. Naturally, my first thought was Ekko, him being so thematically tied to time. But I discarded that thought in no time, as it simply didn’t fit here. I replayed that two-second section on loop, trying to figure it out.
Then, suddenly, it hit me. My mind went back to a moment in Season 1. Before I even confirmed my suspicions, I realized that this was the exact moment that Jinx’s mind went back to as well. Terror was already slipping into Jinx’s eyes here as her mind transported her back to the root of her deepest, darkest trauma. In the final seconds of this scene, we hear Vander’s growling, we hear Vi’s heartbeat, and we hear the ticking of Powder’s monkey bomb.
Do you need some convincing? Listen to this:
As Warwick closes in on her sister, Jinx’s mind goes back to the moment she wound up her invention and set it off in an attempt to save her loved ones. Their lives were in her hands, and the result was catastrophic. In trying to save her family, she tore them apart. As Warwick closes in on her sister, Jinx’s mind goes straight to her greatest fear: Reliving the trauma of the moment where she killed her friends, killed her father, and caused her sister to turn on her, leaving her alone in the world as a child, with nowhere to go, and nobody to care for her — setting herself on a path that has brought nothing but death and destruction.
So we cut back to Jinx in the dark as the lyrics to the song in the soundtrack begins. Loud sounds bring forth the light where they are, so the stillness is deafening and blinding. Jinx is left in the silence to face the possibility that her do-over had caused just as much heartache as the first time around. She was left in the darkness to grapple with the possibility of losing everything, all over again, with nobody to blame but herself — mourning the death of her sister, battling the guilt of it being her fault, and accepting that Vander did, in fact, die in the explosion she caused.
Jinx creeps forward, primed to burst into tears. Finally, the dim light catches the body of the beast that attacked Vi. And at this exact moment, the lyrics in the song on the soundtrack say, “Don’t make me go through this again.” I’ve said it twice, and I’ll say it a third time: This is not an accident. That is precisely what is going through Jinx’s mind here. It’s her moment of reckoning. She got her do-over. Now it’s time to see the consequences of her actions.
It’s insane the complex emotions on display in the animation here. Jinx only gets a split second of relief before being drowned by all of the emotions that come with a tendency of playing what could have been. When the thing you’re dreading is bad enough, the relief over it not happening can crush you by itself. Instead of being overwhelmed by joy over it not happening, Jinx switched from the terror over it potentially happening to dread over it almost happening.
This is a girl traumatized by her own actions, hurt by her own decisions. This is a girl who has learned that everything she touches withers away, everyone she loves dies or otherwise abandons her. She knew all too well how things would turn out if things went terribly wrong here. Still, the risk of losing everything all over again was outweighed by having the chance to fix the mistake she made that ruined her life, ruined her sister’s life, and ended the lives of the members of her family.
There’s no telling what would have happened to her if this do-over had gone like the first time. The thought of it being a possibility was enough to break her down. Luckily, in the heartbreak of events that didn’t play out, Jinx had her family to lean on — she had a pair of open arms to run into.
