Silco And The Moment Arcane Became Human

this scene broke me it broke me as a person arcane did a wonderful job of doing more emotional damage to me in just nine episodes than my depression has for my entire existence silke meeting vander at his statue contemplating his old brother and realizing his failure to jinx and tazon just i have so much to talk about with this scene the best way i can describe it is the moment that arcane became human but first it's impossible for me to talk about this scene without the context surrounding it silke was a complex character that breaking down everything about him in just one video would be doing him a disservice specifically i want to explore the moment that the show became human and the moment that a villain became a broken man silko has been lauded as the best character in arcane by many for good reason he's enigmatic compelling sympathetic and just overall a good ass complicated villain but is he really a villain sure he does horrible things he isn't a good person is willing to sacrifice people around him to achieve his goals that's not looking good for him but he isn't the classic mustache twirling cartoon villain he's much softer more corrupting more sinister in the simple fact that he's human and he's doing what he thinks is right and the terrifying thing you kind of agree with him you empathize with him you understand him and he kind of has a point sympathy for the devil if you will when silke was first introduced as that classic cartoon villain i thought oh boy here we go another pretentious bioshock looking idiot spewing out drivel about power about how one achieves it waxing on about his philosophy fully understanding how many people will die in order to create the nation of zan but through these scenes we do learn a couple very important things about silco above all else he respects loyalty and desires power true power which as he says you see power real power doesn't come to those who were born strongest or fastest or smartest now it comes to those who will do anything to achieve it now throughout all of these scenes he is discrediting vander his blood brother is opposite the one that betrayed their ideals for a small girl vander who went soft to protect the daughters that he quite by accident became a father to when a bloody revolution that he led ended the lives of their parents dander who gave up everything but then something happened that silko didn't expect a small child jumped into his arms originally looking like he's either going to stab her and end things then and there or use the child to find vi and kill her silko is taken aback by what she says she's been betrayed and he understands her seeing himself in her and the betrayal that he felt towards vander he feels some responsibility towards her and assures her that they will make those who left them pay i'll show them we will show them all what follows is a complicated messy toxic father-daughter relationship that by the writer's own admissions was written to make the audience uncomfortable i mean some of these scenes make my spine crawl silko while clearly caring for powder doesn't understand how to be a good father to her and he takes for granted what she does for him just for his approval just look at how desperate powder is for him to approve of her handing him the gemstone and instead of putting his attention on her and congratulating her he's absorbed by the hextech he manipulates her forcing her into isolation creates an alter ego for her that drives her further into insanity and irresponsibility and when his relationship with powder is threatened by vice still being alive he becomes wild and fixated on eliminating her and goes on a wild attempt to protect what he has with powder hunting down vi by using people and shimmer in an attempt to kill her when this fails he descends into a raw feral nature in a scene that still haunts me long after i first saw it i mean we've seen selko as a calm calculated terrifying villain up until this point now we get to see his raw brutality but when he finds powder half dead on the bridge this demeanor of this villainous man cracks and in stark contrast he barely looks at the stone in her hand before fully focusing on her the conditions she's in and then looks on in pure hatred at the perfect city of piltover that has done this to his daughter a lot of people have asked questions like did silko love powder was silko a good dad was silko just using powder the answers are yes absolutely the [ __ ] no and kinda the mask fully breaks when he's at his lowest bringing powder to singe to save her life he's desperate unable to bear the thought of losing her he's willing to do anything and sacrifice anything or her keep in mind this is still the same man that has threatened children has child workers and has choked his subordinates with poisonous gas just to prove a point through all of his actions fear tactics and manipulation he's garnered enough attention from the top side to warrant a meeting with chase in which jace offers peace and a seat at the table his nation of zone the goal that he has sacrificed so many lives for it's now within his reach on one condition give powder as the final scapegoat this should be an easy decision jinx is merely a tool a puppet he's used for his own gain that has gotten out of hand silko desires nothing more than power remember to see the nation of zan rise with him as its savior right that would be the case if the show wasn't human now we finally come to the moment that arcane became human silko has to face the growing fact that he now understands vander's position and motives he now understands why vander betrayed him he understands what needs to be done to save the life of somebody who quite by accident he has become attached to as a surrogate father at this moment we see that he isn't a villain anymore but a man pushed too far by a society that has left him behind he's fed his ego for so long as being the savior that will leads on to its independence that he has such little regard for those around him or how he goes about achieving his goals hell he's flooded the lanes with shimmer killing thousands of people in the process and destroying the lives of countless more what's one more life zoko comes to the realization that his greatest failure was powder well he did his best to comfort the child to develop a separate entity and jinx away from the trauma that she endured he failed her and is now sitting in the exact same position as vander was his brother the one that he despised and now selco finally understands this scene shows that even the most twisted of viewpoints change humans change as much as silko blames vander for the downfall of the undercity he realizes that now when he's placed in the exact same position as the man that he hated he is the same he's failed what does it mean to be human and what do i mean by the fact of the show becoming human being human means duality being haunted and holy shades of gray doing the wrong things for the right reason the right things for the wrong reason and everything in between it means failing the rhinos of arcane know what it means to be human nobody in the show is this shining example of purity everybody has a dark side everybody has been blinded in one way or another either by ambition or their own traumas the writers get it they understand what it feels like to be hit in the face with reality and they convey all of these emotions and mixed motives just so beautifully in a way that just makes my heart hurt silco's failures are why he succeeds as a character not only because he recognizes his failures but in a twisted way he attempts to make up for his faults ultimately in the creation of jinx the final twist of the knife is by his own hand when silko threatens vi's life powder acts out of instinct to protect her sister killing silko and in one final breath and a gut-wrenching line silko completes chinks not for anything don't cry you're perfect you could argue that because powder herself says to vi that she created jinx that silke was innocent in this matter and you're correct to a point you see vai may have started jinx but soko completed her silko is a complicated character with many parallels in the show his relationship with powder mirrors vander's relationship with vi silko strikes a deal with marcus and the enforcers in the same way that vander did albeit in a worse way going beyond that there's the parallel of him and powder versus vi and caitlyn as kaelyn helps vaya to heal from her trauma and face her past silko hides powder and fuels her mania driving her into isolation and insanity i knew that i wanted to talk about soco and i probably will continue to talk about him in the future as this video was really hard to write and condense down to just one thing he's just such a fascinating character with this complex complicated nature and it doesn't hurt that in my opinion he has one of if not the best scenes in the show silco is the heart of a lot of discussions around arcane for good reason he's at times spine chilling again the examples i gave earlier when he visits marcus's home to threaten his daughter or he chokes an entire room of crime lords stalking through the room being only minorly affected by the poison just to make a damn point at times he's demonic and feral as he literally beats to death a follower out of frustration and at times he's touching as he tries to help a daughter that he doesn't know how to save silko might be the villain of season one but he also grounds the season in a very real human heartbreaking way he showed the human side of evil that sometimes it isn't even coming from a place of malice but simply doing cruel and corrupt actions in the name of justice and further on down the line what it means to realize when that way of thinking is sometimes flawed to abandon it and everything else for someone else only to fail the person that you couldn't let go the person that you cared about more than anything else and in one simple scene managed to encapsulate the moment that arcane became human [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Flying Walrus

Views: 1,003,290

Keywords: the moment arcane became human, silco, arcane, arcane writing, arcane moment, Silco villain, silco death, silco and jinx, silco arcane, silco and vander, silco vander statue

Id: emScTUbwl8g

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022