Season 1 was a masterpiece in writing and art direction, while season 2 only meets S1 in terms of art direction.
First and foremost the writing going from s1 to s2 is so jarring. The pacing is off and the story direction takes a 90 degree turn.
Ambessa's entire character felt like a mcguffin to unite Zaun/Pilotver against a common enemy that wasn't even that interesting. Her conflict with Mel or with the black roses didn't feel intriguing. Her motivations were never explained well. She was just evil because the story needed her to.
Piltover teamed up with Ambessa to gas and fight Zaun, but suddenly in the finale Zaun is totally cool to work with Piltover against Ambessa, even though Piltover treated them like shit even before Ambessa or her army arrived.
I also didn't like the unnecessary characters in season 2. Vander and Isha's storyline felt pointless. Vander had no reason to return. Also Isha felt pointless in the end. I guess character bloat is just a symptom of netflix shows, very similar to Stranger things and squid games.
Isha was a voiceless character with no personality that Jinx had no reason to care about. And Jinx loses the will to live after her death. Isha just started following her around one day and Jinx just adopted her? What about Isha's real parents? Their kid is suddenly gone one day and they will never get closure as to what happened to her. Her screen time should have been given to characters that deserved it such as Heimerdinger.
Vander's return as Warwick had no reason to exist. His only point was to bring Vi and Jinx together, and in the end they were separated, which just means his story led to nowhere. Vander had to die in season 1 for Jinx to even exist as a character, but his return ruins that.
Even though the art is great in s1, the animation itself fell off. In s1, characters movements and body language was very in tune with their personality. Jinx is a prime example. Her movements display that she is a psychotic character and the 2d drawings and glitching mixed into her meltdown scenes add a lot, but those visual elements seem to be missing in season 2. Everything else lives up to season 1 though in terms of animation. Cinematography and atmosphere felt worse, but I can't put my finger on it.
The soundtrack also declined in s2. Some scenes just felt like a music video rather than a scene enhanced by music. What makes it worse was that they are pop songs which doesn't really give the show a unique soundtrack. The pop songs were present in s1, but now as much as in s2. That one scene with the D4vid song will forever be stained in my mind. Riot couldn't have know he was such an evil person, but it ruins that scene for me.
Heimerdinger's character was destroyed in this season. He never believed that hextech had a good ending. He deserved an "I told you so" scene and never got it. Also his death wasn't earned. He deserved so much more.
All of episode 7 sucked. The entire multiverse shit was so ass. One of the writers said they were inspired from avengers endgame. Just because it worked in one movie, doesn't mean it will work for half of one season centered around an undeveloped plotpoint, the hexcore. Ekko possessing someone else's body and then lying about who he really is to Powder and then kiss her is manipulative at best and evil at worst. He tries to bring his manipulative relationship to the main universe and shows some attraction to Jinx. The multiverse should have never been introduced to this show.
The overarching class struggle plot of s1 was completely thrown away in s2. It focused on the hexcore way too much. Which was never explained well. The story of class struggle is a very relatable and human storyline to explore, but it was thrown out for no reason. The hexcore storyline was abruptly made the overarching story behind everything.
Also Jinx and Vi's relationship is thrown to shit. It's a cycle of betrayal and forgiveness throughout the second season and it ends with Jinx supposedly flying away from all of her problems. I feel like at that point in the show, Jinx would have wanted to let Vi know she is okay, but it is implied that Caitlyn knows she survived. So Caitlynn doesn't get closure on the terrorist who killed her mom. Vi doesn't get closure with her sister, the last remaining member of her family. An evil terrorist gets to fly away from her last family member and accountability for her actions. This is such a bad ending for Vi, Jinx, and Caitlynn.
Jinx's character also went to shit. Her gadgets and ingenuity was underutilized in the second season. Her mechanical firelights would have been incredibly useful against Ambessa's army, but instead she shows up with a minigun halfway through the fight and she doesn't utilize any gadgets after that point.
And my final critique was the amount of seasons. This show suffered so much from the limited amount of seasons. There was so much that was unexplained or ended too early. I don't think that they needed 5 seasons, but having 4 or even 3 could have done so much good for the show assuming they had good writing of course. If they did go that direction, Silco shouldn't have died in the first season.
There is so much wrong with the second season, but these are my main problems with it.
Arcane introduced me to the League universe and got me really interested in the characters and the overarching story. Season 2 was such a large falloff that I didn't feel that I got any closure on the story.
I fear for the Noxus show and future League shows because of the almost marvel like approach by making the vilian extremely powerful. I fear that the other shows are going to be eye candy with big stories that aren't self-contained. And its just going to be a slop factory from now on. Christian Linke has already revealed his incompetence, so the future of League content may only get worse.