Arcane has a lot of characters, and it isn’t always obvious right away who is who, who betrays whom and why they don’t care. This overview sorts them out for you. For every major character you’ll find what drives them, how they fit into the story and, above all, which playable champion in League of Legends they represent. That bridge between the show and the game is exactly what a standard character list won’t give you: if someone from Arcane has hooked you, the table below shows you who to try in the game itself.
Before you read on, expect some spoilers about what happens to certain characters in the show. Otherwise a “who is who” overview wouldn’t make sense.
Overview: Arcane character → in-game champion
This table is a quick overview. You’ll find details on each character in the sections below it.
| Character in Arcane | Champion in League of Legends | Why they matter |
|---|---|---|
| Vi | Vi | A street fighter from Zaun with hextech gauntlets, one of the two main heroines. |
| Jinx (Powder) | Jinx | Vi’s sister and the other main heroine, an unstable weapons inventor obsessed with chaos. |
| Caitlyn | Caitlyn | A precise sharpshooter and the sheriff of Piltover, Vi’s ally and partner. |
| Jayce Talis | Jayce | Inventor of the hextech hammer who goes from scientist to politician. |
| Viktor | Viktor | Jayce’s collaborator, obsessed with freeing people from suffering, who gradually turns half machine. |
| Heimerdinger | Heimerdinger | A yordle inventor and one of the founders of Piltover, a mentor to the younger characters. |
| Ekko | Ekko | Vi and Jinx’s childhood friend, leader of the Zaunite group the Firelights, able to manipulate time. |
| Mel Medarda | Mel | A member of Piltover’s Council with Noxian roots, added to the game in January 2025. |
| Ambessa Medarda | Ambessa | A Noxian general and Mel’s mother, added to the game in November 2024. |
| Renata Glasc | Renata Glasc | A Zaunite chem-baroness with ambitions that reach into Piltover. |
| Warwick | Warwick | A beastly creature the show reveals to be a transformed Vander. |
| Singed | Singed | A Zaunite chemist and scientist experimenting on the edge of ethics. |
| Silco | – (not a playable champion) | Zaun’s crime boss, Jinx’s adoptive father and the main driving force of the first season’s conflict. |
| Vander | – (not playable as Vander) | A father figure to Vi and Jinx whose fate is tied to Warwick. |
| Sevika | – (not a playable champion) | Silco’s right hand, who takes over leadership of his faction in Zaun after his death. |
Vi and Jinx: the sisters who hold the story together
Vi and Jinx (Powder as a child) are sisters from Zaun’s underbelly who end up on opposite sides of the barricade after one tragic night. Vi is an impulsive fighter who spends most of the first season serving time in prison and then teams up with Piltover’s enforcers to stop what her sister has become. In the game, Vi is a melee fighter with huge hextech gauntlets that can punch through walls, which is exactly what you’d expect from a character with her temperament.
Jinx is the former Powder, raised by Silco after Vander’s death and shaped into an unstable but brilliant weapons inventor. In the game, Jinx is a ranged marksman with a streak of madness: she swaps weapons on the fly, and her ultimate can decide a whole teamfight with a single rocket. The relationship between Vi and Jinx is the emotional backbone of the entire show, and we cover it in more depth in a separate article on Jinx and her journey from Powder and in the article on Vi and Caitlyn.
Caitlyn: a sheriff between two worlds
Caitlyn grows up in one of Piltover’s most influential families, but instead of a comfortable life in politics she chooses to work as an investigator. That very investigation leads her to Vi and, over time, into a relationship with her. In the game, Caitlyn is a sniper with enormous range, a champion who takes opponents down before they can even get close. That matches quite precisely how she keeps her distance in the show and observes before stepping in.
Jayce and Viktor: the price of progress
Jayce Talis is an inventor who, together with Viktor, discovers a way to stabilize magical energy (hextech) and make it available to ordinary people. The discovery turns him into Piltover’s star and eventually a member of the Council, but power comes with compromises that gradually pull him away from the scientific purity of his original work. In the game, Jayce fights in melee or at range depending on whether his weapon is in hammer or cannon form, a mechanic that points straight back to his hextech invention from the show.
Viktor is Jayce’s collaborator who, because of his own illness, looks to science for a way to free people from suffering. In the second season, that obsession grows into transforming his own body with hextech technology. In the game, Viktor is a mage whose abilities revolve around reshaping his surroundings with metal and energy, a direct reference to what he becomes over the course of the show. We break down the whole Jayce–Viktor relationship, including where their ambition takes them, in the article on Viktor and Jayce.
Heimerdinger: Piltover’s voice of reason
Heimerdinger is a yordle inventor and one of Piltover’s founders. In the show he acts as a mentor to the younger characters and as a voice of caution against how fast Jayce wants to push progress. In the game he’s a mage and support who builds turrets on the battlefield, a playful but dangerous champion fully in the spirit of his role in the show: he looks harmless until you underestimate him.
Ekko: the boy who mastered time
Ekko grows up alongside Vi and Jinx in Zaun, but later splits from them and founds his own group, the Firelights, which protects Zaun’s streets in its own way. In the second season he also brings technology that lets him manipulate time. That’s exactly the ability his playable version has in the game, where Ekko is an assassin who can rewind a few seconds and replay a fight differently.
Mel and Ambessa Medarda: Noxus enters the game
Mel Medarda is a member of Piltover’s Council with roots in Noxus, one of the most aggressive regions of Runeterra, and the second season shows how much her family ties shape the politics of both cities. In the first season she’s more of a quiet player in the background who keeps pace with Jayce and helps him find his way in Piltover’s politics, but once her mother arrives she becomes one of the key figures of the whole conflict. She arrived in the game as a playable mage in January 2025.
Her mother Ambessa is a Noxian general who brings her own military agenda to Piltover and Zaun and turns a local conflict into part of a much wider power game. In Runeterra’s story, Noxus has long been expanding at the expense of neighboring regions, and Ambessa sees the events in Piltover and Zaun as an opportunity, not someone else’s problem. She has been playable in the game since November 2024 as a melee fighter built around an aggressive, straightforward playstyle.
Renata Glasc, Warwick and Singed: Zaun in all its shades of gray
Renata Glasc is a Zaunite chem-baroness who builds her influence on the chemtech trade and gradually reaches for influence in Piltover too. In the game she’s a support who can briefly “take over” an enemy champion and turn them against their own side. That ability fits quite precisely how she manipulates the people around her in the story, whether they’re business partners or political rivals.
Singed is a Zaunite chemist operating on the edge of ethics, and his experiments have far more consequences in the show than it seems at first glance. Among other things, he’s behind the transformation that produces Warwick. In the game, Singed is a tank and a mage at the same time: he leaves a poison trail behind him and flings opponents across the map, which is only slightly less terrifying than what he does in his Zaunite lab in the show.
In the game, Warwick is a beastly jungle hunter who goes after the enemies with the lowest health and can track them across the whole map by scent. The second season of the show reveals that he’s a transformed Vander, the father figure of Vi and Jinx’s childhood. For both sisters, this is one of the hardest revelations of the entire second season, because they have to come to terms with the fact that the creature attacking them is also a person they once loved.
Silco, Vander and Sevika: faces of Zaun without a champion
Not every important Arcane character has a playable counterpart in the game. Silco, Zaun’s crime boss and Jinx’s adoptive father, is probably the most striking example. He’s one of the most popular characters in the entire show, yet he never became a playable champion (he did at least appear as a character in Teamfight Tactics, Riot’s companion strategy game). Vander, the father figure to both sisters, isn’t playable as himself either; his story continues only indirectly, through Warwick. Sevika, Silco’s right hand and the new head of his faction after his death, is among the characters fans most want to see playable in the game, but so far that hasn’t happened.
Supporting characters who are easy to forget
Around the main cast there are also a few supporting characters without whom the second season wouldn’t make sense. Cassandra Kiramman is Caitlyn’s mother and a member of Piltover’s Council, and their relationship is the source of some of the conflict over which path Caitlyn chooses in her life. Grayson is Piltover’s sheriff and Caitlyn’s mentor from the enforcer academy, who taught her discipline before she became Vi’s partner. Elora is Mel Medarda’s assistant who, in the second season, helps her dig into what Ambessa is hiding, and she ultimately pays a high price for it. Isha is a mute Zaunite orphan whom Jinx takes under her wing in the second season and who gives her a reason to act differently than before. None of these characters has a playable champion in the game, but all of them are essential for Piltover’s politics and Zaun’s emotional side to work in the second season.
FAQ
Champion strength changes with every game patch, so any definitive answer won’t last long. Instead of a current ranking, follow the official patch notes on leagueoflegends.com, where Riot adjusts balance regularly.
The show doesn’t have one clear villain. The first season is driven mostly by Silco and Jinx’s instability, and the second season adds Ambessa Medarda with her own political agenda. Most characters in Arcane sit in a gray zone rather than being purely good or evil.
Riot Games hasn’t given an official reason, but it’s common that not every standout character from the show automatically becomes a playable champion. Creating a new champion is a much longer process than writing a character into a show.
Yes, Mel is Ambessa Medarda’s daughter, one of the key family relationships that drive the political storyline of the second season.
Yes. The second season confirms that the creature Zaun knows as Warwick is the result of Singed’s experiments on Vander’s dead body.
Jinx is voiced by Ella Purnell and Vi by Hailee Steinfeld. You’ll find more about the show’s cast and creators in the u003ca href=u0022/arcane-pruvodce/u0022u003emain Arcane guideu003c/au003e.
Riot Games has gradually added characters from the show as playable champions in the past (most recently Ambessa and Mel), so it’s likely they’ll continue with other popular names from the show. However, they haven’t officially confirmed any specific plans.
Sevika is Silco’s right hand in Zaun who takes over leadership of his faction after his death. Although fans rank her among the most wanted candidates for a new champion, Riot Games hasn’t introduced her as playable yet.
The game itself usually doesn’t go into detail about the champions’ families; that’s what the show adds. Caitlyn’s mother Cassandra Kiramman and her mentor Grayson are characters exclusive to the show and don’t have playable champions.
Information verified as of 14 August 2026. This character overview is based on both seasons of Arcane and the state of playable League of Legends champions as of that date. Continue to the main guide to the Arcane series, the deep dive on Vi and Caitlyn or Viktor and Jayce, or browse the overview of all League of Legends champions. You’ll find all our content on the game and the show in the League of Legends section.