Viewers shouldn’t expect Arcane season 3, but that doesn’t mean the League of Legends story is over. Based on the tremendously popular League of Legends game, Arcane has wowed viewers over the course of its two seasons. It’s a stunning combination of skillful writing, incredibly beautiful animation, and deep characterization, making this one of the most unpredictable and exciting Netflix animated shows to date.

Arcane season 2 is now complete, with a staggering ending that saw many characters finally evolve into their League of Legends form as Champions of Runeterra. That ending felt surprisingly open-ended, though, and it was clearly setup for something more; “Our story isn’t over,” Caitlyn reassured viewers, and that felt very much like a promise. So what do we know about the future of Arcane?

Riot Don’t Plan To Release Arcane Season 3

There were only ever plans for two seasons

There were initially confusing reports that Riot intended to make a whopping five seasons of Arcane, but this was based on a misunderstanding; as League of Legends creator Marc Merill explained on Reddit, there were initially budget conversations about creating five seasons of shows in total. But Arcane was only ever intended to run for two seasons, with the story wrapping up so the franchise could head in other directions. That fits well with certain character deaths in Arcane season 2’s finale, which leave the story in a remarkably open-ended place.

Arcane Season 2 Is Setup For An Expanding League Of Legends Universe

There’s still so much more to come

The open-ended finale of Arcane season 2 is entirely appropriate, though, because there will be more stories set in the League of Legends universe. Indeed, this is implied by Merill’s own comments – he suggested budget conversations about five seasons of shows, after all. Speaking to Collider, Arcane co-creator Christian Linke confirmed the scale of Riot’s ambition:

“We’re currently developing a bunch of follow-up projects. Really, Arcane was always considered the first step , kind of like the trial by fire. You need to figure out, “Can we do this? Do we have the chops? Do we have the characters? Do we have the storytelling?” So, now we’re working on the follow-up projects and it’s really fun to start to look at some of the other characters and regions of our world.

Arcane season 2 introduced the Black Rose, which clearly seemed like setup for an increasing focus on Noxus – a vital part of the League of Legends world. Meanwhile, the threat of Hextech is far from resolved, because Jayce introduced it across the world when he created two-way Hexgates for trade with Piltover. It’s so very easy to see the story potential here.

But viewers may have to wait a while for more adventures set in the Arcane universe. There was a three-year gap between Arcane seasons 1 and 2, after all, and the creative team don’t seem to be in a rush to make more adventures. To return to Merill’s comments on Reddit:

“Just because that is our intent, doesn’t mean it’s easy or that we can pump these things out like a factory – just like making games that are worthy of players time / love is really hard, so too is telling great stories and making incredible shows / films (especially when we are building it from scratch for the first time).”

Still, as Ekko proved in Arcane season 2, all things are just a matter of time.