Arcane‘s final season on Netflix raised the bar for what a high budget animated series with a plethora of talented artists can accomplish. While fans are hard at work theorizing where the next League of Legends animated shows will go next, what’s not up for debate is that the second season’s seventh episode, “Pretend Like It’s the First Time,” is far in a way the strongest one of the bunch. What’s more, Arcane‘s third act episode not only provides years’ worth of catharsis for League of Legends shippers, it’s also written with the heart and sincerity of a fellow video game darling, Life Is Strange.
“Pretend Like It’s the First Time” follows Ekko, the show’s time-warping freedom fighter, sequestered in an alternate reality after he, Jayce, and Heimerdinger messed with a wild rune gone haywire in the show’s act two finale. In contrast to Jayce being sent to a hellscape reality where they fail their mission to rid the world of harmful runes, Ekko is sent to a reality where the class conflicts between posh city of Piltover and his hometown Zaun never escalated to their ruin. Instead, he’s allowed to see the impoverished undercity he worked so hard to liberate thrive as a city of invention rivaling that of Piltover.
What’s more, Ekko’s childhood love interest, Powder, never suffered under the cruel conditions of their upbringing that turned her into the show’s primary antagonist, Jinx. This not only provides Ekko, Arcane‘s best boy who never did anything wrong, the chance at a good ending, it also gave him the chance at a relationship with his star-crossed lover. A relationship he turns down to save his friends back home.
Although Ekko is basically given the out by Heimerdinger to stay in his perfect universe, Ekko chooses to do the impossible by reverse engineering a way back to his original dimension. With the help of Heimerdinger and Powder, Ekko basically pulls a Tony Stark by creating a dimension-jumping device. But before Ekko dives headfirst back into the fray, he spends one last night in his would-be paradise. It’s here where Ekko enjoys a heartwarming evening with Powder on the dance floor and a moonlit kiss before making the leap back home.
this scene being animated 4 fps which is the same amount of time that ekko has to rewind ok whos joining the group suicidepic.twitter.com/au8JNxZ6m4
— amber ⋆ (@visfist) November 25, 2024
While many online have drawn comparisons to Powder and Ekko with Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse‘s Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy, the show’s tone actually reflects the vibe of Square Enix’s Twin Peaks-esque narrative adventure game, Life Is Strange. Like Ekko, Life Is Strange protagonist Max Caulfield is gifted with time rewinding powers. These Uno-reversing powers, while convenient on first blush, eventually force Max to decide to save her hometown from ruin or to save (and stay with) her childhood crush, Chloe Price—a blue-haired girl that’s just as doomed by the narrative as Jinx. Much like Max, Ekko faces an ultimatum: save his hometown or stay with Powder. Ekko’s decision to leave is made more poignant when he and Powder, who until then believed Ekko was not from another dimension, exchanged a meaningful look before he leaped back to his own world.
When he returns in the following episode, Ekko uses his time rewinding powers repeatedly to prevent Jinx from taking her own life. Ekko also imparts a life lesson he’d heard from alternate dimension Powder about the virtues of take a leap forward even if it means leaving a few things behind. This quote that not only pushed Ekko to leave his perfect universe behind to perform a LeBron James-esque last-minute save in the show’s finale, but it also pushed Jinx to live on, join Ekko in battle, and venture out on her own adventure at the close of the season.
“Pretend Like It’s the First Time” is favorite for fans as well as the show’s lead writer, Amanda Overton, and its animators. What makes Ekko’s episode all the more bittersweet is that it’s the second time he stole the show in Arcane. The last time happened in the first season’s seventh episode, “Boy Savior,” which saw him and Jinx battle one another. In typical referential fashion, season two’s seventh episode drew a parallel between their encounter on the battlefield and their first dance. Rather than highlighting Ekko’s time-rewinding abilities to the rhythm of rapper Denzel Curry’s “Dynasties & Dystopia,” their dance is set to the melody of Belgian rapper Stromae’s “Ma Meilleure Ennemie,” which roughly translates to “My Dearest Enemy.” The episode’s popularity is resonating musically, as Stromae’s track has become his first top 10 global hit on Spotify, amassing over 5.972 million streams in just three days.
What’s more, eagle-eyed fans are already theorizing that alternate dimension Powder somehow made her way to Ekko’s dimension. Should their theories come into fruition, her reunion with Ekko and her alternate universe self would be interesting to say the least.
All episodes of Arcane season two are streaming on Netflix.
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