Since Arcane, Netflix's animated adaptation of the hyper-popular League of Legends video game franchise hit screens in 2021, Hollywood has started to produce a handful of quality video game adaptations. HBO just finished airing the first season of its critically acclaimed version of Naughty Dog's zombie drama The Last of Us, and Illumination Studios made bank with The Super Mario Bros movie last weekend. Even though we're in a golden age of video game adaptations, it's important to remember that when it was released, many fans touted Arcane as the greatest gaming adaptation of all time.
With all of the critical and financial success that Arcane garnered during its first season, the show would already be well on its third. However, the masterful team of animators at Fortiche Productions needs some time to craft a quality season, and according to Comicbook.com, that means we're probably going to be waiting for a while. Oh, the misery.
A new release window for Season 2 of Arcane has been detailed by Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent, and unfortunately, it's coming much later than many fans have surely been hoping for. Following the release of the League of Legends animated series back in 2021, Netflix announced that it was in the process of working with Riot on a second season of Arcane. Since that announcement, though, no further news on Season 2 has ended up coming about, which has led to many questions from fans. Sadly, it seems like this lack of information is something that will only end up continuing for the remainder of the year.
Speaking to the LPL's Guan Ze Yuan in a new interview, Laurent made clear that Arcane isn't going to be released before the end of 2023. Recently, Laurent said that he watched the third episode of Season 2 and expressed excitement about what is being done with the show. For those that are eager to see more of Arcane for themselves, though, Laurent said blatantly that they'll have to wait until 2024.
"It is not ready yet and there [are] two reasons for that," Laurent said when asked about where Arcane Season 2 is at. "One, you want the quality. We just don't want to rush and so that takes time. So that's the good reason. The bad reason is, honestly, we didn't know if Season 1 was going to be a success so we didn't start Season 2 until [later]. If I had known, we could have started Season 2 way earlier. But we didn't know so we waited a bit and now we're paying the price. So, unfortunately, it's not going to be this year."