Arcane season 2 coming 2024 at the earliest
Delay partly due to initial uncertainty over success.
The brilliant animated series Arcane will not return to our screens this year.
Season 2 of Arcane is just "not ready yet", Riot Games boss Nicolo Laurent has said, when asked when the League of Legends spin-off show would be back.
The first season of Arcane debuted back in November 2021 to critical acclaim and an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. A second season was quickly confirmed by Netflix - though we've been waiting for more news ever since.
"I just watched the third episode of Season 2 before my flight to China, so we're making progress on it," Laurent said, speaking with a League of Legends caster (via IGN). "It is not ready yet, and there's two reasons for that.
"One, you want the quality, you just don't wanna 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 gonna be a success... If I had known we could have started Season 2 way earlier, but we didn't know so we kind of waited a bit and so now we're paying the price, so it's unfortunately not going to be this year."
If you're yet to give it a go, Arcane is a beautifully-animated and brilliantly written take on a city of League of Legends characters - and it requires no prior knowledge of the game or its world. It was my first encounter with either, and yet I quickly became hooked.
It's no spoiler to say Season 1 ends in dramatic fashion - and as yet, we've been given no word on what Season 2 might have in store.
In the meantime, there's a five-part making-of series to watch, which is also available on Netflix now.