Vi and Caitlyn: Piltover, Zaun and what lies between them

Vi and Caitlyn are the pair Arcane uses to show the central theme of the whole series: Piltover and Zaun are two worlds that barely meet, even though they share a border. One grew up on the streets of the undercity, the other in one of the richest families above it. We’ll cover who both characters are, how their relationship develops over the series, what the contrast between Piltover and Zaun represents, and where Vi and Caitlyn stand in League of Legends itself. Just like with Jinx, the story makes sense even if you’ve never played a single match. We explain the game context as we go, not as something you need to know beforehand.

Who is Vi

Vi (full name Violet) is one of the two main characters of Arcane, voiced in the series by Hailee Steinfeld. She grew up in Zaun as the older of two sisters. The younger one is Powder, later known as Jinx. After their parents die, they are raised by Vander, a former fighter who looks out for a group of homeless kids in the undercity and keeps them fed through petty theft and survival on the edge of the law.

Vi is impulsive, tough and used to solving problems with her fists. Literally, because her signature gear is a pair of giant hextech gauntlets, which Powder even helps her build in the series. The turning point of her life comes in the third episode of season one, when a failed mission kills Vander and two of the other siblings, Claggor and Mylo, and Vi, in anger and despair, leaves a terrified Powder at the ruins. For her part in that job she spends years in Stillwater Hold, where she becomes an even harder and more guarded fighter.

After her release she finds out that the sister she knew has turned into Jinx, an unpredictable and dangerous ally of the Zaunite crime lord Silco. Much of the rest of the series is about Vi coming to terms with losing the sister she loved and with who Powder has become over those years. It’s during this period, while searching for Jinx and building alliances across the border between the cities, that she grows close to Caitlyn.

Who is Caitlyn

Caitlyn Kiramman, on the other hand, is the daughter of one of Piltover’s most influential families, voiced in the series by Katie Leung. She grew up in wealth and order, but without naivety. Her parents, hextech artificers themselves and members of the influential Kiramman clan, raised her with a strong sense of justice even in the middle of a comfortable life. That life cracks badly when she comes home one day to find the house ransacked and her parents kidnapped. Instead of waiting for someone else, she starts investigating on her own, relying on her talent for observation and her hunting skills, and eventually becomes a private investigator and later the sheriff of all of Piltover.

While Vi solves problems with force, Caitlyn is above all a sharpshooter and a strategist: she thinks, plans and notices details others miss. In the series they first meet when Caitlyn is investigating an underground network tied to shimmer and Vi is looking for a lead on her sister. Both realize their goals point in the same direction. This combination of Vi’s drive and Caitlyn’s precision is the foundation of their partnership, which gradually turns into something more over the course of the series. Caitlyn’s ability to notice small things others overlook runs through the whole series just as it does in the game, whether it’s a clue about her parents’ kidnappers or, later, a trail leading to Jinx.

Piltover and Zaun as two worlds

Arcane builds its entire world on a single image. Up top is gleaming, orderly Piltover, a city of progress, science and hextech technology, funded and run by a handful of influential clans. Below is Zaun, an industrial undercity shrouded in toxic fumes, where everything that doesn’t “fit” Piltover ends up: poverty, crime, but also people who never got a chance to succeed in the city above. Zaun is formally subject to Piltover, but it lives by its own rules, which nobody up top cares about until the problem starts spilling back upward.

Seen through this divide, Vi and Caitlyn are complete opposites, and the series never lets you forget it. Vi knows what it’s like when the system above writes you off. Caitlyn believes in institutions that have given Vi every reason not to trust them, not least because Vi’s parents died at the hands of Piltover’s enforcers. When Caitlyn tries in season two to convince Vi to join the enforcers and help track down Jinx, they clash on exactly this point: Vi refuses, and a bitter argument breaks out between them.

The relationship between Vi and Caitlyn works as a bridge between both worlds. Not because it erases the differences, but because it shows you can cross them, even when it hurts.

Vi and Caitlyn’s relationship

Vi and Caitlyn first meet in season one, when they start out on opposite sides: Caitlyn as the future sheriff, Vi as a former prisoner from Zaun whom nobody on either side of the border trusts. Still, they decide to work together, because both need the same thing: to get into Zaun and find the answers they don’t have. Gradually distrust turns into cooperation, and cooperation into an intimacy that becomes one of the most closely followed relationships in the entire series.

In season two their relationship moves much further, but not without complications. Caitlyn offers Vi a place among the enforcers so they can hunt for Jinx systematically. For Vi, though, that’s unacceptable, because the enforcers are the ones who killed her parents. The dispute over this offer drives them apart for a while. Even so, they gradually find their way back to each other, and the series gives their relationship a clearly romantic dimension. It peaks in episode eight of season two with a scene in a prison cell where, after everything that divided them, the two finally make clear where they stand. It’s one of the most quoted moments of the whole series.

Creators Christian Linke and Alex Yee described their intent to tell the story of Vi and Caitlyn as organic and true to how they themselves see the characters, not as a fan-service add-on. The relationship remains one of the main emotional pillars of season two, alongside Vi’s relationship with her sister Jinx.

Vi and Caitlyn in League of Legends

Both characters existed as playable champions long before Arcane, but the series fleshed out their lore considerably. If you’ve never played the game, you might be surprised how closely both characters’ in-game roles match the way they behave in the series. Riot built Arcane on the existing design, not the other way around.

• Vi is a fighter in the game, played in the jungle or top lane and built around giant hextech gauntlets, the very same ones she wears in the series. In the game lore she’s described as “the Piltover Enforcer”, a former Zaunite criminal who put her skills to use on the side of the law. Vi has been in the game since 2012, years before she got her own story in the series.
• Caitlyn is a marksman in the game, played as the ADC (the ranged carry in the bot lane), with a long-range rifle and traps she uses to control the map and slow enemies down. In the game lore she’s “the Sheriff of Piltover”, and the focus on precision and long-range combat she also shows in the series fits.

The main difference is the same as with the other characters in the series: the game gives them a combat style and a short lore text, while Arcane gives them motivation, a childhood and relationships that explain why they fight the way they do and why they care about each other. On top of that, Vi and Caitlyn’s relationship didn’t feature in the older game lore at all. It’s purely the series’ contribution, and it only made its way back into the game thanks to the show’s success. Caitlyn, by the way, is one of the oldest champions in the game: she joined League of Legends back in January 2011, a year and a half before Vi.

Why this duo works

In Arcane, Vi and Caitlyn aren’t just a romantic subplot next to the main story with Jinx. They are the two characters through which the series shows that Piltover and Zaun aren’t just a backdrop, but genuinely different worlds with different rules for survival. The fact that Vi and Caitlyn manage to find common ground despite where each of them comes from is one of the reasons the story grabs viewers who have never played the game just as strongly as those who spend hundreds of hours in Runeterra.

At the same time, the pair also works as a pure storytelling device. Thanks to them, in every scene you have someone through whom you can follow both sides of the conflict at once. When Caitlyn stands on the side of the law and Vi on the side of those the law has hurt, the series doesn’t have to explain why both of them are right. It’s enough to watch the two of them trying to find their way to each other. That’s why Vi and Caitlyn’s relationship works even for viewers who don’t care about the world of League of Legends: it’s not primarily about lore, but about two people who were divided by the system and still chose to stay together.

FAQ

Information verified as of 11 August 2026. If you want to know how the rest of Arcane’s story unfolds, read our complete guide to the series. You can read about Vi’s sister and her transformation into Jinx in Jinx: from Powder to Runeterra’s most famous character. An overview of all characters and their in-game counterparts is in All Arcane characters and their counterparts in the game. To learn more about the world the series takes place in, see Runeterra: how the world and its regions work. You’ll find the full list of the game’s champions on the All LoL champions page, and the rest of our content on the game and the series in the League of Legends section.