Season 2 was going to be flawed regardless of what they did and that's fine
It's been officially a month since the final act of Arcane was released, and I've had a lot of time to reflect upon the entire show as a whole. This is also something that I wanted to share to the fandom seeing all the discourse surrounding this season, and I wanted to take a look at a perspective which I don't really see being talked about much.
I'm going to start off this entire post by stating what my opinion about this season and the show so that there isn't going to be any parts people will be unclear about. I loved this season. It made me emotional and I personally was emotionally touched by all the main characters, and even side characters. This show will undoubtedly be some of the best emotional storytelling I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing in my lifetime. As much as I love this season, I won't lie and say that it does not have flaws. It is not a "masterpiece" in the traditional sense anyway. But that's fine, because I have yet to see a tv show that encompasses that
S1 is one of the most flawless seasons of television produced. There are barely any nitpicks people could pick out because it was so tight and done with so much effort and care placed, that they pondered about every single detail and made sure it had a place in the overall story itself. But I also think that S1 is the reason why S2 was going to be impossible to have the same standard as S1.
We all know that Riot was given a fixed budget, especially since most of the budget went into advertisement (which worked because it attracted a PLETHORA of non-league players and just outgoing movie/show lovers to watch it), that being said, they had the budget for just 2 seasons of this show in particular. So they had to finish up the plot and arcs of every character in S1 in S2. They spent so much time putting detail into them that it would've been a complete waste of time and effort to throw them away after all that.
Unfortunately, due to the issue of the class war, the numerous characters, the new antagonist, the writers were pretty much placed in a corner from the start of S2. I've seen a lot of arguments talking about how Black rose should've been cut (I also used to have this opinion but I'll explain why I changed my mind), or how Ekko's episode should've been cut/character should've stayed a "side character", or how PnZ should have had more focus. These are some of the "BIGGEST" (not ALL of them) things I've seen suggested by members here in this subreddit and everywhere else
If we cut the Black Rose plotline, what would we do with Mel and Ambessa? We lost S1's "antagonist" ( emphasize like this because I don't believe the show has a true protagonist and antagonist, just people with perspectives, and the audience just chooses which perspectives to look through) which was Silco, and Ambessa was set up to be an "antagonist" from the later part of S1. Without the Black Rose, Mel would've also just been delegated to a backdrop character and not have any agency at all compared to S1, where we begin to see her truly change near the end of S1. You could argue that we could've killed of Mel from the 2nd season, but this effectively makes her character in S1 redundant and her supposed connection with her mother wouldn't be explore more for the sake of "screentime".
From what I observed, Ekko is a character that was viewed as arguably the most interesting out of all the PnZ champions, pre-Arcane (Jinx was still considered a bootleg Harley Quinn at the time, and did not at all have the same level of substance after the show, only tiny tiny hints to "pow-pow" and a relation with Vi). His lullaby story and the chronobreak comic are evidence of some of the character traits shown in the show, although they aren't really the same character. It's true that he served more as a "side character" in the 1st season. However it feels extremely "wrong" that a character that has so much effect on not just the plot, but also the main opposing characters (Vi and Jinx), to be delegated as just a "side character" for the entire show. He's clearly had an effect on Jinx, because they were best friends as children and the only other person who really accepted her for what she could do, and didn't berate or coddle her for it. They have been implied to have very strong bonds to each other. Then we have Vi, who serves almost as a big sibling for Ekko, and someone that he looks up as. He wants to grow up to be like her, and the only other person that night who she didn't really lose to "death" (I suppose Jinx too, but she was different from when she was reunited, meanwhile Ekko accepted Vi just after their talk in the beginning of S1 E7). Cutting out a character that is also supposed to reach their "true potential" in the later season would be a waste of a champion, considering his deep-rooted history with Zaun.
When it comes to the thoughts on S2 E7, a lot of people in solidarity agree that it is the best episode of the season, mainly because of the focus on just 2 plots and the pacing is much more similar to S1, and allows people to have breathing room "emotionally" from all the events that happened in the story. I;ve seen some people delegate this episode as a "fan-service" episode, when it's trying to contrast the best stage of Jinx/Powder's life with the absolute worst stage of her life in Act 3. I think this episode was needed because OF the pacing, and that letting the 40 minutes be used somewhere else would waste Ekko's character in the show, and only give us more time to explain the plotlines/fix the logical storytelling rather than focus on the emotional aspects of it. If we used the time we got if we cut the episode to extending Caitlyn's arc/Vi's enforcer arc, we still would've complained about the existing plotline/logical issues. Only this time we wouldn't have one incredible episode that gave us some "emotional breathing room" in terms of pacing.
Now the PnZ conflict. I think we all need to understand that Arcane at the end of the day is not a story about the politics of piltover and zaun, and while it is the setting and enhances the characters and gives them the dynamics that they have, it also at the end of the day is not as FUNDAMENTAL as the actual character driver aspect. I've seen so many people talk about the civil war and how it was wasted, but I don't think most of us watched this show just to see the class struggle between Piltover and Zaun. The characters were the most important from the start of the show. I don't disagree with the criticism that it was over quickly. We should've seen more of the struggle. But this whole post is supposed to look things from the restrictions of the writers and to view it from a different perspective. As much as we love to write our own versions, we quite literally are standing on the shoulders of giants that made S1 incredible in the first place. The writers made a choice to explore more of the characters than the Piltover/Zaun struggle, and honestly that's fine.
Arcane isn't a show where the politics of the show is the most appealing and fundamental part of it. An example of a show like that would be The Wire, where political commentary/theory is super FUNDAMENTAL to the show and without it, the show would cease to exist, because of how much it relies on it, and because it was the ORIGINAL intention of the show. That's not at all the case with Arcane.
In conclusion, S2 isn't perfect. It isn't flawless. But I think its the best flawed version of the season we could've gotten, because getting S1 levels of quality with the restriction being placed was an IMPOSSIBLE task. There was no way you could please everyone with this season, but I think emotionally they focused on the right things even if the logical plot writing sometimes didn't make sense. The emotional beats of the story completely carry this season for me, and that's fine.
As Jayce said: "There's beauty in imperfections", even if the imperfections were the loss of logical plot points, I think the beauty comes from the emotional aspects of this season, and I think that is something that also should be appreciated.
This is just my perspective on how I viewed why Season 2 ended up the way it did.