There was a time when Arcane writer and co-executive producer Amanda Overton wanted to be a geneticist. It was college; she was studying molecular biology and even working in a genetics lab. To her, this was the best way to figure out what made us the way we are.
Now, a few years, a handful of shows, and plenty of writing credits later, she sees it differently. “That is a very micro way to approach that,” Overton laughs. “Whereas storytelling is a much more macro way to approach the question of why we are the way we are.”
Her exploration of that idea has brought her to several gigs, including Severance, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and, most recently, Arcane, where she’s delighted in bouncing characters off each other in epic battles and desperate longing (though, as she’ll happily tell you, no one is happier than her about Cait and Vi).
It’s been about six years since she was working on the show, technically (and an eventful six years for Overton, having her now 2-year-old son, going on strike with WGA, writing a feature film and two pilots, and working on three other seasons of television). But in the years she worked on Arcane, she moved from executive story editor to co-executive producer, helping to run the writers room and produce the animatics for the second season. Post-finale, Overton sat down with Polygon over a video call to reflect on the season, the unique process of working with a game company and an animation studio to make a Netflix show, and her final notes on the Cait/Vi sex scene.
[Ed. note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Polygon: Tell me a bit about when you were going into season 2 — what were you guys trying to focus on as an arc of the season?
Amanda Overton: I think the sort of big arc for the whole series for us was: Would these two sisters repeat the sins of their fathers? And if not, why and how — and is there a way to break that cycle? And I think it was really great to finally get to have that conversation out in the open with Silco and Jinx in episode 8. I was like, And now we just pay off everything we set up! A lot of those scenes in episode 8 are kind of telling us what we thought characters arcs were.
So I think in season 2 we were just like, OK, what versions of this can we put our characters through? How different can we have them start the season with, and have them end the season at? And how difficult can we make those journeys? And I think Caitlyn’s, in particular, was very interesting, because she was a character so focused on justice. And then we’re like, Oh, but what does that look like if it fits into revenge? And where is that line there? Also, she kind of had to step up and be the Kiramman her mom thought she was, and what does that look like? Is she going to be the good daughter, the leader of Piltover? And even for me, I [thought of it as]: Is she going to date someone her mom would approve of? So that was why the Maddie character was really important to me, to kind of have her really look at all parts of her life and see, Could I be the Kiramman my mom wanted me to be, or am I going to find my own version of that?
Vi’s arc was also super interesting to me because it was like we always ask that question: Who would Vi be if she had no one left to protect? She’s a protector character; she never thought once about herself. So kind of getting to tell a whole story about forcing Vi to answer that question — what do I want, at the end of the day? Who am I, what do I want with my life? — and we answered that, with actions! In episode 8. [laughs] She gets to answer that question for herself. And so I think going after Caitlyn like that, in that scene, was so gratifying for me because it was the culmination of the romantic arc, but also her story arc, her character arc for season 2 — she got to answer with actions in that scene.
I saw in a different interview you did that you really wanted characters to do the “right things for the wrong reasons, and the wrong things for the right reasons.” With you having that as an ethos going into season 2, and knowing where the story was going to conclude, were there things you knew for certain were going to happen to characters, or did you find some of the nuances of their arcs as you were building the story?
We had our end scenes in mind from the beginning. So I think for us, the creative challenge was making sure we earned those the most we possibly could. And anything that we explored or tried or didn’t do in season 2, or did do in season 2, was all in service of trying to earn these final moments. The last moment between Mel and her mother, when [Ambessa] says, “You are the wolf” — we knew that line from the first minute that Ambessa entered the show. So making sure we earned that, as difficultly as possible for Mel and Ambessa.
And then I actually wrote a version of that final Jinx/Vi scene in season 1, because we actually thought Arcane was going to only be one season. But that scene is almost identical to the first version I wrote in season 1, down to her taking the crystal out to deactivate the gloves so that they fall. It was the same. And so I think that a lot of those final moments, having them in our minds gave us both the responsibility and the freedom to kind of see what we could do to earn those moments and make the audience feel the most they possibly could in those moments.
With queer romances and multiverses and time travel becoming more common tropes, how did you go about making Arcane feel different and distinct?
I think the nice things about tropes like that becoming more popular and [becoming] tropes is that you can shorthand them a little bit. So we were like, Oh, we can be very free to just let people experience the world as Ekko was. It’s fine! You can be confused the first five minutes of this episode because people are going to figure it out. They’re going to figure out it’s a multiverse thing because they’re more popular. Even though it felt like a stand-alone episode that was sort of outside of what Arcane traditionally is and was (which are some of my favorite episodes), you only get to earn them if you so thoroughly set up what your show is that then you can break it, which almost never happens. But then also making sure that what you learn in that episode carries through and is essential and integral to the rest of the story.
So, what you learn in [episode 7] is, when Jinx says in episode 8, “There’s no good version of me” — we know that’s not true, because we’ve seen it. And I think what Ekko learns, and takes away from that episode and carries into the rest of the season, is integral to his arc and his character, and the story wouldn’t work without it. And I also think that, thematically, that episode got to show the different side of the coin of breaking the cycle and stuff that we wouldn’t get to show in our universe, but we get to show there. So to me, making it feel like the fabric of that episode is absolutely interconnected to the rest of the season was how we were able to, I think, do our version of the multiverse in a way that felt satisfying to us.
Did you guys approach the musical segments as a storytelling device in the same way? How did those affect how you were able to pace the season and build the timeline and everyone’s arcs?
One thing I love about Arcane is it’s just very dense. We’re very economical storytellers; we only say things one time. For example, a final scene between Jinx and Sevika — I wrote one actually, because I love those characters so much. And every time I wrote that scene, I was like, [solemnly] We’ve already said all these words. This doesn’t need to be in the show, as much as I want to see it. But the action of Sevika joining Jinx in that final battle, that’s something we haven’t seen before; that answers all the questions that I needed to see.
[And] everything about the songs tell the story, tell part of the character arc. And all the montages, again, are sort of very dense and layered, and all the visuals, they’re just so dense and layered — it really takes time to unpack and expand the show. You need to listen to the music in your car on your way to work and think about what that means. And this is a show you need to talk about with your friends, and this is a show that needs multiple viewings in order to really expand and find all the layers of meaning that were put into it.
I know [co-creator] Christian Linke has said that there were things in the script that sometimes the writing team would toss to Fortiche and just kind of let them take it away. What was the line for you when you were writing? What felt useful to say, This is out of our hands?
I think the phrase we use for that is “solve it in art.” This one they’ll solve in art! [laughs] I can tell you, for example, with Ambessa: We always knew that she would be a close-quarters fighter. That was the kind of person she was; she was someone who was going to look you in the eye before she killed you. She was going to have two melee weapons. She was going to be a bruiser, soldier kind of thing, and we called them the Drake-Hounds, which is a wolflike creature in the lore. And then after that I was like, Solve it in art! [laughs] So then they had to spend months designing these weapons, and her fighting style, and all of that. So that’s kind of the fun example of how that relationship works.
But in the second season in particular, we actually got to work much more closely at the story phase. So we would have story meetings where they would pitch us their ideas, and their visuals, and what they were thinking, and what they wanted to see the characters to do. And then the writers would go back and talk about, OK, well, how could we fit that in? What does that look like in the story arcs? Then we would sort of write the outlines or the scripts, and then they would look at them, and then we would have a back-and-forth. And then when they were at the storyboard phase, we would talk more about the story and we’d be like, We don’t need this scene, or We can say this in the look, or This isn’t coming across, or Let’s lean into this more because this is actually working and this is becoming more about what the episode is than this other thing. So then we would actually do a lot more rewriting in that animatic phase as we kind of got the story up on its feet and made it visual together.
Obviously it’s been several years since you started working on the show — and several years, even, since you were last writing on this show. And since then, you’ve worked on several other incredible shows as well. What is it about Arcane you feel like you’re bringing with you moving forward, or that you’re excited to apply to the next thing you’re working on?
I’m always trying to make a show for my 16-year-old self, for one. [laughs] You know, the things that I wish I had seen, and the things that I love in the video games, in the big sci-fi worlds, and those sprawling world-building shows. I always loved them so much, but didn’t feel like I saw myself in them. So wanting to be able to do the things I loved, but add more differences, add more diversity, add stories we haven’t seen before. I want people to be as different as possible; that’s going to be the most conflict we can possibly have. And then I want to find a way to see if we can bring them together. That, to me, is an exciting, fun, conflict-driven story with tons of drama. And if it can be a weird tone like Severance where they just let us come up with — literally, it was like, What’s the weirdest thing I can think of today?
But what was so great about that also was just that you’re really getting to ask and answer the question of why we are the way we are. I used to be a geneticist; I studied molecular biology and I worked in a genetics lab in college. Because I was like: Genes! Genes, they make us why we are the way we are. That’s going to answer that question. That is a very micro way to approach that. Whereas storytelling is a much more macro way to approach that question of why we are the way we are. So if you don’t have part of your memories, for example, in Severance, or you have magic, or something out of the ordinary (which is what a lot of these huge IP shows have), you get to really dig into what that means, why we are the way we are, in a unique and interesting way.
What was your favorite thing you got to do this season?
I mean, the Cait/Vi sex scene is obviously my favorite thing ever.
It’s a good scene!
I’ll never, ever, ever not say that, just because it was so earned in that moment. It was finally the right thing for the right reason. It was the culmination of Vi’s character arc in a scene. So that’s a gift — it’s something I’ve never seen before, too, and that my 16-year-old self would’ve died to see.
I think it’s also a scene that’s so delicately choreographed; it sets up a lot about their characters and where they are now without having to have them say a lot. It’s the way they are reacting to each other, it’s the way the scene is everything for them.
Usually I don’t script a lot of stuff, when it comes to things like that, but this one I was like, [laughing] And this moment and this moment and this moment. Because it was so much of their relationship and actions that we needed to get across. But I think to Fortiche’s credit, they always do the overboard version. They’re like, OK, Amanda, we hear you. Here’s seven versions of it. And I was like, I love it, but we only need one.
What were the things you were putting in the script, and how many of those made it to the screen?
Vi needed to be the first one to grab Caitlyn and kiss her, because she was answering the question finally of: What do I want with my life? She’s never asked that question or answered it in her life before, so that was important. But then I think — the tenderness, the playfulness, the softness, the hardness, the mix of those beats there between them, we needed all of that in order to understand how they felt about each other. And I think we had sort of seen the romantic part of their relationship before, and this was the culmination of all of those unsaid, subtextual things — again! But now they’re saying them through actions.
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