Arcane's showrunner comments on Season 2's 'rushed ending'

The second and final season of Arcane was once again a very high quality piece of television, but there does seem to be an underlying consensus among the community that the final three episodes were a bit too quickly paced and even rushed. This was something we even highlighted in our review of the last Act.

With these comments currently circling the internet, Riot Games Christian Linke, showrunner on Arcane, has taken to Reddit to explain why the ending happened the way it did and that there was no pressure or "corporate greed" forcing the team to wrap the series up as quickly as possible.

"No, we didn't ask Fortiche to produce a 1h30 final episode. It's quite the opposite, our scripts are always shorter than what Fortiche ends up proposing in the story board phase. We wanna let them get inspired and roam free, so we can then reel it in while also allowing for the magical moments to find themselves. It's a tight creative collaboration, not some sort of "alright vendor company, do your work, achieve the impossible, but do it quickly!" -- I consider many of the people at Fortiche to be some of my closest friends. I find it disappointing that people suggest these things.

"No, we didn't get "corporate greed" pressure or anything.

"However, yes, there are always constraints, both in budget and time. That's part of our job as creatives, to work within those constraints. Constraints are NORMAL, and they were always generous, and I always had final say on anything creative. But they do exist. They also existed during Season 1."

Linke did then talk a tad about how it would have been great to do more episodes in Season 2, but also commented on the elephant in the room: the budget.

"It would have been great to have more time to work on this second season, or extra time to add to the episodes, but we didn't have it. For a number of reasons. Budget being one. We have been EXTREMELY lucky to get these absolutely insane budgets from Riot to produce Arcane. We all feel incredibly lucky. NOBODY ELSE gets these types of budgets. Please don't forget that."

Linke then mentioned that fans have waited three years between the first and second seasons of the show and that this is far from a normal situation when it comes to producing television, and that "Arcane is unrivaled in sheer scope of high fidelity animation."

He comments that he's unsure if any series has ever attempted to do what Arcane did and in a better way and that while "It's not perfect. You don't take these types of hefty swings and expect that everything wraps up perfectly with a neat bow tie. It grows and evolves in its own way, and it becomes what it becomes."

Do you agree with Linke's statement and what were your thoughts on Arcane's second season?