Image: Riot Games
League of Legends is retooling its lore to be more consistent, starting with Arcane.
It’s safe to say that after a few years of short stories, events, cinematics and spin-offs, League of Legends’ official lore has become rather inconsistent. To that end, Riot Games has announced plans to start smoothing out the lore’s rough edges to get rid of confusing inconsistencies, such as the origin of Hextech. The first step? Making Netflix’s Arcane part of the official canon.
League of Legends’ lore needs fixing
Following the explosive debut of Netflix’s Arcane, fans might’ve assumed that it had immediately entered League of Legends’ official story timeline, but a few inconsistencies made that difficult to swallow. For example, Hextech originally came from living crystalline creatures called the Brackern in League lore and became prominent in this universe long before Jayce and Viktor are said to have invented it in Arcane. That alone creates a clear inconsistency in League’s timeline, but the game has become rife with them over time.
Champions’ backstories also get retconned all the time thanks to Riot more or less making this stuff up as it goes along, and spin-off media like Mageseeker or Legends of Runeterra only further complicate the matter. Mainline lore events tend to not progress or get forgotten about due to how fragmented the game’s storytelling is. This wasn’t an issue back when League was a solitary MOBA and not an entire universe consisting of tie-in media, but things have changed.
Arcane was previously considered to be part of its own canon because of its many inconsistencies with official League lore, but it sounds like Riot is using it to soft-reboot the timeline, starting with the creation of Hextech. Laura DeYoung, head of IP Creative at Riot, assured players that “our goal is to ensure that major events and our stories, as well as the essence of what makes a Champion who they are, will be reflected across everything that Riot makes.”
However, she also warned that, “Getting to that consistent state is not going to be a sudden flip of a switch, but a gradual process.” Riot also plans to focus less on short stories to advance League’s lore in the future, and instead lean on storytelling, “through other mediums.” This is likely in reference to tie-in games like Bandle Tale.
That means Arcane Season 2 will be part of official League lore when it hits Netflix in 2024, giving Riot plenty of time to figure out what it wants to do with Hextech by then.