Comparing Jesus Christ to the villain of Arcane is a weird step, but hear me out.

Netflix’s Arcane: League of Legends might be the best thing to ever happen to television. It’s a beautifully-animated epic tragedy about power, class, and the hard, painful road to goodness.

But it’s also about a reckless, dangerous, sacrificial love that’s quite familiar to the Christian’s ears. How odd that it should appear in the show’s main villain: Silco.

MAJOR SPIOLERS for Arcane ahead. If you haven’t seen it…dude, why?! It’s amazing! Go!

SEMI-BRIEF SUMMARY

Arcane takes place in the city of Piltover, a place of scientific progress for all mankind. Yet just across the bridge is the Undercity, a filthy place of poverty, fear, and neglect. Silco is a man who’s had enough of Piltover’s harsh lordship, and wants independence for the Undercity. And he’ll use every violent tool in his book, not only against Piltover, but anybody who betrays his trust.

But suddenly, he meets a little girl named Powder. This girl wants nothing more than to be helpful to those she loves, but inadvertently causes disaster every time. A jinx. When she accidentally kills her friends and father figure, the girl’s sister, Vi, leaves in fury. Silco feels the pain of betrayal, having once been betrayed himself. And so, he takes her in as his own, and she takes the name Jinx.

As she grows up, Silco uses Jinx’s destructive capabilities as a weapon, but Jinx is a loose cannon, mentally unstable after all her trauma. A psychopath with no regard for human life, Jinx gets more and more reckless, following her own whims rather than Silco’s instructions. She wants to make him happy, but can’t seem to do it.

Despite this, Silco’s plans thrive. In the final episode, Silco meets with one of Piltover’s counselors and demands the Undercity’s independence in exchange for peace between the two peoples. And they agree. All at once, Silco has the very thing he’s dreamed of for so long.

But there’s a catch: hand over Jinx. She’s too dangerous, and Piltover won’t trust Silco as long as she’s alive.

“A thousand times I’ve imagined this moment,” he muses. “Never like this. All we ever wanted. The boy didn’t even haggle. And what do I lose but problems?” Silco knows Jinx is a threat to everything she touches, knows that he is on the cusp of victory.

But he can’t do it.

In the final scene, Powder/Jinx has kidnapped both Silco and her sister, Vi, trying to figure out which of them is the real traitor at gunpoint. As Vi tries to lovingly rescue Powder from her own madness, Silco retorts, “Her name is Jinx!” Then he says to her,

“The topsiders offered me everything. Independence, a seat at the table. All in return for you. They can all burn. Everyone betrays us, Jinx. […] It’s only us. You’re my daughter. I’ll never forsake you.”

Unfortunately, Jinx’s mind unravels faster and faster. When Silco tries to kill Vi, Jinx panics and shoots him. Yet even then, full of bullet holes and bleeding out, Silco’s dying words are, “I never would have given you to them. Not for anything. Don’t cry. You’re perfect.”

Make no mistake: Silco is a bad man. He wants independence for the Undercity, but he cows its people with narcotics and violence. He would be a tyrant. Yet in this moment, when he is the only person in the world who loves Jinx at the very depths of her depravity, I can’t help seeing a peek behind the veil.

MAD LOVE

…while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 8:5b)

Can you actually fathom what it’s like to love somebody at their worst? To be bleeding from the bullets they shot into you and say, “I wouldn’t give you up for anything”?

When Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:34) who was he talking about? He was on the cross, so it had to have been the Pharisees who conspired against him, the Romans who drove the nails into him, the crowd that mocked him, or the disciples who abandoned them. Either way, Jesus forgave his murderers while they were in the act of murdering him.

Can we do that?

Please! We throw a temper tantrum when people vote differently than we do! When they act in a way that discomforts us, we cry persecution rather than embrace them! We push them away just for being gay, Republican, black, Mormon, trans, Pentecostal, Baptist, rich, lazy, old, a lousy tipper—anything and everything we can use to push people away, we do it because we don’t dare take the bullets in our own bodies.

And I do not judge. I’m one of them. I cannot be what Christ wants me to be, loving through my own blood. I want to be, I’ve tried to be, but I’m a screw-up, sabotaging everything I touch.

I am a Jinx.

O retched man that I am! (Rom 7:24).

But the craziest part? It doesn’t matter. Satan offered him the kingdoms of this world, but Jesus said no. “You’re my child. I’ll never forsake you.”

He could have stayed in Heaven. Could have chosen his kingdom and nuked the entire human project. But he chose to throw all his comforts aside so that we could shoot holes in him. Because he can’t stay away from us.

Isn’t that sick? Isn’t that twisted, messed up, ridiculous, stupid, toxic, and wrong?

God save me, isn’t it beautiful?

PERFECTION

When Silco first took his offer to the counselor, and the counselor demanded Jinx, Silco barely hesitated before saying, “Count her sins towards me.” The counselor didn’t listen. God did.

Of course, Silco wasn’t a perfect sacrifice. Jesus was. He was the sinless one whose blood paid for the debts of sin every human ever owed, past and future. And he did it for free.

Yes, there is change. Yes, there is growth. Yes, there is healing, all this must be done. But the greatest paradox of Christianity, the grand, cosmic irony of it all, is that we only change, grow, or heal when Jesus has already cupped our face in his hands, smiled through his own blood, and said, “You’re perfect.”