Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
Yeah, I've heard, which is why s2 feels like a bunch of interesting multi-chapter fanfic concepts squeezed into one season. But even so, it IS technically possible to write a story this way. You have to do it a lot in video games - certain levels and quests and other gameplay features will be made and you have to write around those. It's definitely a more difficult way to write a story, but it's possible (although why you would write a story like this when you AREN'T beholden to video game writing restrictions is beyond me) and one of the reasons I find video game writing kind of interesting. It's like a creative exercise.
Thing is, one of the things you have to do in that case is put in additional scenes that make the scene you HAVE to include make sense. Like, if the scene you want to include is x character disappearing to another dimension, that's fine, but you then also have to add a scene where people react to that and start looking for them, since that would be the natural consequence. You still get to have your cool scene, but then the scene you added reinforces the connective tissue between your cool scenes.
The thing that baffles me in season two is they just didn't do that. That's why I'm so confused - putting in a scene I think is bad on a critical level is one thing, but choosing not to put in something that would be so obviously natural to include is baffling. It probably was an intentional writing choice, but not including such an obvious action -> consequence element makes it seem like they just forgot. I get that they were trying to resolve everything in one season so they had to be picky about what scenes they included, but if you ask me, following up the disappearances of several people is more important to me than than flashbacks or new plotlines.
Besides, if they DIDN'T want to write in such a way that would require extra scenes to properly connect all their different ideas together, then they should have included less ideas in the first place. Each act in s2 feels like it should have been a season by itself. It's harsh writing advice, but sometimes you really do have to kill your darlings. The writers do this a lot with individual scenes...
(See: them not including any jinx or sevika interactions after act 2 because somehow they felt like all the other scenes had already said anything that needed to be said, completely disregarding that having two characters bond for two whole arcs and then never talk onscreen again is weird.)
...But they seem unable to do this with any of the bigger concepts they want to play with, like the noxus invasion or hexcore brainwashing everyone. I say this as a viktor and mel enjoyer (not that mel ended up having anything to do with the noxus plotline anyway), but removing either one of those plotlines would have left the rest of the season a lot more room to breathe.
Anyway, it also wouldn't be so bad if this was just one character they did this with, but every single time a character goes missing (which includes Sky as well, now that I think about it) it sets up the expectation that surely at SOME point, SOMEONE is going to start looking for one of them, and then that expectation is never fulfilled. That's why I can't just call it bad but WEIRD. Like, why would you do that? It makes it seem like nobody cares about them. Actually, no, to be fair, the firelights do make a mural for ekko, so good on him for being the only missing person anyone actually cares about, I guess.
There's some stuff in arcane s2 that's bad, like, on a critical analysis level, but there's also some stuff that happens that's just plain weird. Like, did you notice any time someone disappears in s2, nobody goes looking for them? Jayce, Ekko and Heimerdinger go missing and nobody ever mentions it. Same for Mel. It makes it seem like they were only gone for two seconds, but they were definitely gone long enough to notice.