What Ekko from Arcane Taught Me About God
Christianity and Modern Entertainment
It’s been half a year since Season 2 of Arcane: League of Legends ended, and I still can’t stop thinking about it. The animation, the drama, the characters - there is a beauty interwoven through every frame and arc.
Created by an American team and a French animation studio, the show carries values inherent to the Western tradition - values that stem from Ancient Greece and Christianity such as bravery, sacrifice, glory, and love.
But is Christianity present in all aspects of the story?
This might seem like a silly question, but as someone who is overjoyed when Jesus appears subtly through storytelling, it’s a question I long to have an answer for.
And honestly, I’m not sure every part of Arcane truly reveals Christ’s nature.
However, there is one character of the show I’ve seen glimmers of Jesus in - and his name is Ekko.
If you’re willing, I want to show you certain traits of Jesus that illuminated the whole of Ekko’s life, and maybe in the process we can learn something about the ways God whispers to us today through secular media.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
If you haven’t seen Arcane yet, go watch it. I promise you it’s worth your time.
The Boy Savior
Ekko is a young man from the slums of Zaun, the sister city of Piltover in Arcane. Thrust into leadership after a thug murdered his adoptive father, Ekko shepherded Zaunite orphans from the grasp of addiction and poverty brought by the mind-altering liquid ‘shimmer’. Now he leads a rebel group called the Firelights against the drug empire that ruined his life.
Does he sound like Jesus just from that description? Not exactly.
But one thing Jesus is known for in the Bible is being a savior. And in Season One, Episode 7 of Arcane, Ekko earns his famous nickname - the Boy Savior.
Eh, eh? See where this is going? *French chuckle*
To protect the people he now calls family, he has to face down Jinx, a childhood friend who sided with the drug empire. The following clip is that confrontation and also my favorite scene in the whole series.
So Jinx seared that nickname into Ekko’s conscience, and that clearly angered him.
Did that come with a burden? Did he think about it in the cold watches of the night, his mind replaying each detail, haunted by his failed chance to save Jinx? Did the label she threw at him lurk over his soul like a tiger in a hunting crouch, ready to spring with claws unsheathed to tear apart her prey?
Did Jesus think of his destiny like that?
The night before his crucifixion, he prayed on the Mount of Olives. The Gospel of Luke records him asking God the Father to restrain the wrath our sin would bring onto him in mere hours.
And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. - Luke 22:44
The Lord suffered. Doctors recognize what Jesus experienced as hematohidrosis - a rare condition where capillaries explode because of overwhelming stress. Before he was crucified, Jesus was anxious enough to sweat blood, yet still he chose to drink the cup of the Father’s wrath. One may ask why he chose to sacrifice himself, but that is a question for another day.
Perhaps the Savior is more human than we tend to think.
The Price of Sacrifice
Imagine this. A crippled beggar/mad scientist from the undercity transforms into a messianic figure after fusing his body with magic crystals and vows to eradicate free will by controlling people’s minds. That is Season 2 of Arcane.
I know, suspend your disbelief for a second.
At the very last moment when the cripple is about to finish his mission, Ekko swoops in on his hoverboard and blows him up with an overclocked time machine.
Sounds like a bit much? Yeah, it is. Season Two is weird. But in a good way. So Ekko saves the whole of Piltover and Zaun from evolving into Zen-like zombies. Hooray!
But what is so unique, so fundamental, so crucial to the story is this - he left a perfect world to save a shattered one.
In a previous episode, Ekko gets warped to a different universe where most of his family is still alive, Piltover and Zaun are united and at peace, and he even has a girlfriend. This is the best possible universe we see in Arcane. It’s what Ekko had been aiming towards for years - the perfect world. This is his heaven.
Contrast that with the universe another character gets warped to - one where the scientist won. Dark clouds and disease swamp the land. Piltover and Zaun lie in shambles. Bodies litter the streets in their ‘corrected’ mindless states. All the people Ekko had been fighting for are dead. This is his hell.
But his universe - the one where existence stumbles on in pain, brokenness, and depravity; the one where the chances of hope, beauty, and peace for all of Zaun and Piltover are fading - is still in danger. This is his own reality, a conglomeration of good and evil. This is his earth.
So Ekko invented a time machine to go back to his universe and save it. He sacrificed his own desires for the good of those who needed him. Yet he didn’t have to; he had everything he ever wanted in that pristine world.
And that is what Jesus did.
In prison, Saint Paul wrote to the church in Philippi about the nature of Christ.
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-11
According to Paul, Jesus is God, and he chose to walk among us, feel our sufferings, and die a death he never deserved. God left his glory and became flesh so that he might receive greater glory, and in doing so, honor the Father.
Now, Ekko isn’t Jesus. And he isn’t God. He can’t even come close to how great Jesus is. But he did sacrifice a wonderful life for others so they could be free. Is that not what Jesus did, too?
Both suffered. Both experienced pain and betrayal. Both felt grief, loss, and anxiety for outcomes they couldn’t control. Yet both gave up Perfection so that those they loved might be saved.
Perhaps the Savior is more godly than we like to acknowledge.
God and Media
So where is God in modern entertainment?
Well, he’s everywhere.
Jesus’s life and nature bleed through Ekko’s actions in Arcane. Brief scenes illuminate who God is in strange ways, humanizing and deifying a fictional character and the God who walked the streets of Jerusalem two millennia ago.
As it turns out, Christianity is not evident in every part of the show, but Christ manages to shine through anyway.
God used Arcane to deepen my understanding of and connection with him. He might use that show or others like it to draw you near to him. That is how he whispers to us through entertainment today. If we tune our ears, focus our eyes, and steady our hearts, I believe we’ll start to notice him in everything, leading us closer and closer to the Light of the World.