Oil and Water

Episode Guide

"**Oil and Water**" is the eighth episode of the first season and eighth episode overall of *Arcane*.

## Synopsis

Disowned heir Mel and her visiting mother trade combat tactics. Caitlyn and Vi forge an unlikely alliance. Jinx undergoes a startling change.

## Plot

We flash back to a scene from Mel's childhood. She stands amidst the wreckage of a crumbling throne room. Her mother, Ambessa, joins Mel in the room and begins lecturing her, extolling the virtues of war. Moments later, two Noxian guards enter, escorting a young woman as their prisoner, apparently a member of the newly dismantled royalty. Mel encourages her mother to show mercy, but Ambessa beheads the prisoner with one swipe of her blade.

Back in the present day, Mel awakes from the apparent dream, startled by the painful memory. Above her bed is a large painting of the prisoner's necklace on the ground and covered in blood. She sees Jayce next to her, still asleep.

Caitlyn and Vi make their way back into Piltover, evading squads of enforcers as the police rush to the Bridge of Progress. Caitlyn opens the canister and realizes that the hex crystal is missing.

Silco arrives at the bridge sees Jinx's body lying amongst the wreckage. He rushes to her side, finding the hex crystal in her limp hand. He carries her back to Zaun.

That morning, Jayce and Mel arrive at the Bridge of Progress. Upon seeing the enforcers' many corpses, Jayce vomits into the water below. While bent down, he sees the remnants of one of the mechanical firelights.

Vi and Caitlyn sneak into the latter's bedroom through the window. Mrs. Kiramman kicks the door down, pointing a rifle at the pair as if she were expecting intruders, but is surprised to find Caitlyn instead. Mr. Kiramman embraces his daughter, relieved to see her safe. Mrs. Kiramman asks to speak to Caitlyn in private.

Mr. Kiramman begins to remove the shrapnel from Caitlyn's leg. Mrs. Kiramman reprimands Caitlyn for her recklessness, but Caitlyn admonishes her mother, a councilor, for her role in creating the squalid conditions she witnessed in Zaun. After some convincing, Mrs. Kiramman agrees to allow Caitlyn and Vi to make their case before the Council.

Silco bursts into Singed's lab carrying Jinx, still unconscious, and they strap her down to an operating table. Singed claims that he can save her, but that the process will be "demanding." Silco assures him that Jinx can handle it, and implores him not to let her die. Singed surprises Silco with a syringe to the neck, anesthetizing Silco for the sake of his "sanity." As Silco fades, Singed claims that he too once had a daughter.

Sevika is sitting alone in The Last Drop, drinking and repairing her prosthetic arm. Finn sits across from her and strikes up a conversation. He expresses disappointment in Silco's performance and asks her to consider turning against him. Sevika is resistant to the idea, but Finn leaves her to think about it.

Ambessa arrives in Piltover on a Noxian ship, accompanied by a host of soldiers. Mel and Elora meet her as she deboards. Ambessa attempts to frame her arrival as an innocent family visit, but Mel is suspicious of her mother and still harbors anger since Ambessa banished her over a decade prior. Ambessa informs her that Mel's brother, Kino, is dead, having "crossed the wrong man." She reveals her ulterior motive: she wants her hands on hextech weaponry, but Mel refuses to oblige. A young male escort arrives, and Ambessa departs at his side.

Caitlyn returns to her bedroom, where Vi had been waiting, and informs her that they'll present their case to Council that night. Vi laments on how badly she misses her younger sister and expresses regret for failing her, while Caitlyn simply listens intently.

Jinx wakes up in Singed's lab, wracked by incredible pain. Singed injects her with shimmer, and Jinx begins to see vivid hallucinations of Vi, herself, and Caitlyn. In the visions, Vi betrays Jinx and replaces her with Caitlyn. Singed remarks that the pain will only get worse, and Jinx conflates him with the image of Caitlyn. She screams in agony.

Later, Silco, comes to his senses. He groggily examines Jinx's operation table: the girl is gone, but the table is still covered in dirt and blood. He holds a scalpel to Singed's neck, asking what he did to her. Singed replies that he saved her life.

A cloaked Heimerdinger walks through the streets of Zaun, taking in the depth of the city's poverty and violence. A young child approaches and gives him a handful of nuts and bolts as a gift. Hoping to impress her, Heimerdinger performs a sleight-of-hand trick to "magically" replace the scrap metal with a spinning top. However, the girl's mother angrily takes her away from the stranger.

He returns to the Bridge of Progress and discovers Ekko's hoverboard on the ground, remarking on its "ingenious" design. Ekko is sitting against the bridge's supports, clutching an injured leg. He recognizes Heimerdinger, asking what he's doing on this side of the bridge. Heimerdinger bemoans that after losing his councilorship, he wanted to offer Zaun his assistance, but that he's "not welcome." Ekko laughs, saying that he's having the exact same day. Heimerdinger tells Ekko that his wounds look serious and that he requires medical attention. Ekko replies that the professor is holding his ride.

Jayce meets Ambessa, who is enjoying a hot bath at a bathhouse. She strongly encourages him to build hextech weaponry. Though he is initially dismissive of her advice, she seems to convince him of the real dangers posed by the undercity, and implores him to listen to the experience she has gained through age.

The Council convenes, processing the revelation that Marcus had been secretly working against them. Caitlyn and Vi arrive, informing the Council that Silco is behind everything and is working to achieve Zaun's independence. Jayce presents Jinx's grenade, asking who created it. Caitlyn hesitates, but Vi admits it was made by Jinx. Jayce proposes the use of force, but the other councilors are unwilling to start a war until all diplomatic avenues have been exhausted. Vi angrily asserts that there can be no diplomacy with Silco, but the Council is unwilling to listen, prompting Vi to storm out of the room. She walks out into the rain, but Caitlyn tries to stop her. Vi insists that their efforts to reach the Council have failed and that she was naive to think things could change, but Caitlyn believes there must be another way. Vi compares Piltover and Zaun to "oil and water," saying her relationship with Caitlyn is the same. She tells Caitlyn to forget about her, and walks away.

Viktor stands at the docks and lets his crutch clatter to the ground. His bad leg has been completely transmuted into a purple metal. He begins to walk, and though he nearly stumbles, he breaks into a run, something he'd never been able to do before.

Back at his lab, Viktor prepares to continue transmuting himself into metal, carving runes all across his body. Meanwhile, Sky is approaching, nervously rehearsing ways to ask Viktor to take a look at a project she'd been working on. Once again, Viktor attempts to inject himself with shimmer but after examining the vial, he realizes he's run out of shimmer. Viktor slices his hand open, feeding his blood to the hex core, and attempts to go through with the procedure anyways. Sky walks in on him shrieking in pain as the hex core violently transforms his flesh. She rushes to his side, attempting to pull him away, but the magic of the hex core disintegrates her into ash. Viktor faints.

He wakes up a short time later, only his hand having been transmuted. He sees that Sky has become a pile of dust on the ground, and is heartbroken. In addition, the hex core has taken on a fleshier, more organic appearance.

Jayce begins forging a hextech weapon: what will eventually become the Mercury Hammer. Vi appears unannounced, and Jayce threatens to have her arrested. She berates him for his readiness to throw strangers into a criminal justice system whose consequences he doesn't fully understand. However, they agree that they both want to make Silco pay. Vi dons one of the Atlas gauntlets; despite being designed for mining, she seems to reckon that they would make decent weapons, likening them to Vander's gauntlets. She suggests that they go against the Council's wishes and attack Silco's shimmer manufacturing facilities.

Later, a squad of enforcers helmed by Jayce (now wielding the finished Mercury Hammer) board a train carrying numerous barrels of shimmer and force it back to its station. The enforcers quickly take control of the production facility and begin arresting workers, many of whom are children. One red-haired boy escapes an enforcer and presses a button triggering the alarm, waking up a squad of chemtanks: people in full-body mech-suits enhanced by shimmer. The chemtanks begin killing enforcers with superhuman speed and strength, eventually surrounding Jayce. Vi appears, wearing Atlas gauntlets on both hands, and destroys a chemtank with one massive punch. Together, they begin dispatching the remaining chemtanks. Jayce switches into cannon stance and fires furiously, but in his fervor, he mistakenly strikes the red-haired boy. The child falls over a railing and plummets to the ground. A short time later, Jayce and Vi find the boy just in time to watch him die.

Caitlyn takes a shower, seemingly unable to take her thoughts away from Vi. Eventually, she emerges into the bathroom. Looking into the large, foggy mirror, she slowly realizes that someone has scribbled Jinx's trademark monkey symbol into the condensation. In the reflection, she sees that Jinx—eyes now pink from the effects of shimmer— is standing behind her.