Arcane fans are shocked to see Vi as a cop – but League of Legends players want you to know that’s been her job for 12 years

As hype for Arcane Season 2 starts to grow ahead of its release later this year, some fans are finding themselves shocked by the fate of one of its central characters.

After the first Arcane Season 2 poster drop focused on Vi and Jinx, a brief teaser snippet changed the focus slightly, onto Vi and Caitlyn. Accompanied by a handful of currently unknown characters, the duo step forward wielding their iconic weapons – Caitlyn’s rifle and Vi’s gauntlets. What’s caught some series fans by surprise, however, is that both characters are now kitted out in Enforcer gear, placing them firmly within the ranks of Piltover’s police force.

That’s not gone down too well. Putting any potential negative feelings about the police as a whole to one side, some fans are flabbergasted as to how Vi – a character whose parents have spent a lifetime under the thumb of the Enforcers and have experienced their brutality first-hand – would eventually join the force. In Season 1, we come to know Caitlyn – a citizen of the upper class – as a member of the Enforcers, but we meet Vi through an almost entirely different lens.

That led several series fans to speculate about the narrative gymnastics that Arcane would be attempting in order to justify this apparent change. But for League of Legends fans, it came as no surprise at all – when Vi arrived in the game in 2012, it was literally in the role of ‘The Piltover Enforcer’. In the game, Vi has never really existed as anything other than a crime fighter, and in contrast to Caitlyn’s calmer, more calculated approach, Vi tends to opt for an approach that veers far closer to the ‘brutality’ type of policing.

League of Legends players wasted very little time telling those shocked by Vi’s new appearance that a decade of storytelling backed up this version of their newly problematic fave. And while Arcane is canon to the LoL universe, that means it exists alongside what came before, rather than existing in its place. I still think that Riot and Arcane studio Fortiche will have some work on their hands to sell this transformation, but given the importance of the show’s most popular ship to the story so far, perhaps that’ll be simpler to pull off than we think.

Elsewhere, Arcane fans are speculating that Season 2 could feature a substantial time skip.