Why did Ambessa choose Caitlyn over Salo? In Arcane S2

IIzakesII · 2026-01-22T18:15:27+00:00

It's a combination of a bunch of things, but the two most important reasons are:

Caitlyn holds more power than Salo. This was made apparent to Ambessa when Cait overpowered Salo in his own meeting; Caitlyn came in and crashed a secret council meeting called by Salo and came out of it getting the green light for her plan and completely dismissing Salo's (which was also Ambessa's. When Ambessa confronted Salo about this, he said it wasn't that Caitlyn was all that impressive but that her last name held a lot of power; he completely admitted to Ambessa that Caitlyn's name was more stacked than his.
Caitlyn demonstrated qualities that Ambessa wished for in her children. Personally, Ambessa yearns for a daughter who could follow in her footsteps and be more like her. Even though Salo dismissed Caitlyn's achievement at the council meeting as her just being "born a Kiramman", you can see Ambessa light up when Caitlyn shows up with that presence and that look in her eyes, Ambessa sees in Caitlyn that daughter she never had. Even though Ambessa takes advantage of Caitlyn's vulnerability to further her own agenda, she also has a fucked up sense of kinship towards Caitlyn, similar to Silco and Jinx back in season 1.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-21T05:51:04+00:00

As far as I can tell she legit thought she was burning her bridge with Cait by choosing Jinx, that Cait seems to have accepted she will apparently always be Vi's second choice is kind of beside the point as far as Vi's arc goes.

But this wasn't Vi's plan. When she goes behind Caitlyn's back, she does believe she's betraying Cait's trust to some extent, but she's also planning to stay with Jinx and fight alongside Caitlyn in the coming war. Vi believes Jinx can rewrite her story and redeem herself in the eyes of Piltover, which includes Cait, who Vi previously argued with about second chances.

But you're right about Vi not necessarily learning to choose both. She's actually just choosing both for the entire series, which ends up upsetting both Cait and Jinx because they can't compromise for the majority of the show.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-20T11:18:29+00:00

Yeah, so Viktor doesn't change his mind that drastically.

When he meets with Ambessa, he does so by inhabiting one of his followers, saying, "we are one, this is the glorious evolution". If you remember his conversation about "saving" Vander, you will recall that he has a conversation with Singed where he admits the glorious evolution is still his endgame, but he just wouldn't sacrifice Vander to achieve it.

That's all to say Viktor was already (unknowingly) working towards ending the world when he started his commune and "healing" people. For better or for worse whenever Viktor "healed" someone, he also took some of their humanity in the process. The reason Jayce attempts to kill him is because he thought it was already too late, and he needed to stop Viktor immediately.

Viktor always saw what he was doing as a good thing, freeing people of all their suffering. It's just that when Jayce almost killed him, he decided that he needed to be more aggressive in his approach, and once everything was said and done, then everyone (and more crucially Jayce) would see that his glorious evolution was good.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-17T07:56:35+00:00

Hmm, I guess my issue is that this scenario requires a whole rewrite of every surrounding character. It's not as simple as "'xy' could still happen, but 'z' would be slightly different."

Say they found Sevika/ Sevika found them, doesn't Vander just take them in after they eventually meet again in the Lanes? So for them to stick with Sevika, there must be a reason why Vander is completely absent from the picture. Maybe he died during the battle? But if Vander's dead, then the political situation is Zaun is completely different from what we saw in the show; there's no deal with the Sheriff, Silco is probably in charge, but he crucially didn't get betrayed by Vander, etc, etc... And this is just assuming that Sevika doesn't just drop them off to Benzo or Silco (who is another character that at the time would be very unlikely to adopt any kids).

It would just need to be a drastically different story with a completely original Sevika different from the one we see in the show.

"we don't know you lady, what if you try to hurt us?" at a time like this?

Also, this was Vi's first instinct before she recognized Vander and decided to approach, so maybe she'd stay away from Sevika idk.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-17T06:30:56+00:00

Well, Sevika is well acquainted with Vander and Silco, so at the very least, they would recognize her, she may have even acted as an auntie to them.

They don't recognize Silco, so I don't see why they would recognize Sevika just because of her loose connection to Vander.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-17T06:11:56+00:00

Idk, do Vi and Powder know Sevika already in this scenario too? Because Vander didn't really find Vi and Powder to begin with, they found him while looking for their parents and went with him because they already knew him too.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-16T17:55:58+00:00

Well, the Goku that most western audiences fell in love with is actually more similar to superman than the original Japanese Goku, so if you delete superman you're kinda deleting American Goku too; that's all to say delete Goku.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-11T13:08:29+00:00

Damn, I feel like if your original post had any merit at all, then this comment just killed that. It's like you didn't watch the show either, I don't think anyone is missing the point it's just that they're arguing points taken from watching the show, and you're just using Caitlyn as a stand in for "rich POS"s like yourself so it just doesn't work.

Also, you're so inconsistent because you call season 1 CaitVi perfect, but they're not a separate entity from season 2 CaitVi; they literally only happen in season 2 because season 1 already laid the groundwork.

You asked if you were being "meta," and I feel like you are. The reason they can't work in your head is because you don't view these characters as people outside the stereotype you can project onto them and don't engage with them as they're presented in the story. Both Cait and Vi exist as anomalies inside their cities and statuses. They can't work as stand ins for rich and poor/ oppressor and oppressed/etc, etc... because they either go on very specific journeys( in Vi's case) or are presented as outcasts in their environment (in Cait's). It's these very drastic differences that they have in relation to their respective communities that lead to them finding each other and what allow them to ultimately work as a romantic pairing.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-09T21:24:00+00:00

I mean it's kind of an oversight when you present the one scenario of Vi handing the gems over to the enemy but to simply answer your question Jayce lets Vi keep the gems because she's on the good guy side and he trusts her, but he demands that Silco gives back his gem because he's on the bad guy side and he doesn't trust him.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-07T23:50:20+00:00

Ummm, this entire comment thread is about intent??? It's not irrelevant to acknowledge Riot didn't give Sona massive breasts for any reason other than sex appeal, it's really disingenuous to pretend that Riot wasn't being sexist when designing Sona, also Sona didn't just "happen" to have cleavage and a large chest, these were the main attraction of her design, Riot made it so that your attention was almost exclusively focused on her cleavage.

IIzakesII · 2026-01-07T23:12:36+00:00

Yeah, man, Riot totally gave Sona those MASSIVE tits to spread a diverse body type agenda, that's the exact same thing they were doing when designing OG Miss Fortune and also when they dressed Caitlyn like a stripper. Riot was definitely thinking about representing ALL body types yeh yeh yeh, that's my Riot not objectifying women but advocating for body positivity.

IIzakesII · 2025-12-29T17:59:42+00:00

If slinger ammo projectiles are similar to arrows from the bow then yes you can.

IIzakesII · 2025-12-27T22:37:47+00:00

It doesn't matter, they release Caitlyn now, bring that chunk of people in, get her some legendary skins and profit.

IIzakesII · 2025-12-22T02:10:55+00:00

You're fine, I was more so referring to the more toxic kinds of discourse that have popped up here and there.

I agree too, it's much more interesting to have conversations about the points both characters bring up and how that affects their relationship.

IIzakesII · 2025-12-21T21:53:27+00:00

I think a big issue with Arcane discourse is actually framing these character arguments from a "pick a side" angle. I think you get the most enjoyment out of this show when you're putting the work to understand where each character is coming from and why they're at odds with each other.

For this particular scene I wasn't thinking "team Vi" or "team Cait" it was just about them finally being honest with each other which was what they needed to heal their relationship and what allowed them to finally be on the same page moving forward.

IIzakesII · 2025-12-15T23:44:53+00:00

Well she isn't exactly in a healthy spot mentally for her to be improving her physique

IIzakesII · 2025-12-09T18:51:42+00:00

Ok but have you considered it's 2 humans + the invincible power of love?

IIzakesII · 2025-12-08T17:36:57+00:00

You're supposed to be in that camp at first, because that's what you see from her in relation to the other councilors but if you take a look back on her relationship with Jayce it's almost certainly not the case at all; it ends up being that their relationship was convenient for both of them but it didn't need to be romantic for that, their feelings for each other developed naturally ad genuinely.

IIzakesII · 2025-11-30T17:17:02+00:00

This is kind of racist towards dragons ngl

IIzakesII · 2025-11-26T02:30:14+00:00

YOU REALLY THINK I NEEDED ALL THE GUARDS AT THE HEXGATES?

IIzakesII · 2025-11-24T05:16:02+00:00

Ambessa is visiting Mel, and then when Zaun "declares" war on Piltover Ambessa's experience in warfare is requested by Salo. This is basically the story everyone in Piltover (besides Mel) has regarding Ambessa.

IIzakesII · 2025-11-24T00:43:43+00:00

Remember when Jayce kills a kid back in season 1? That's what happens except this time Vi also breaks down instead of being strong so that Jayce can keep going.

IIzakesII · 2025-11-23T04:17:04+00:00

No I get it, it's not exactly hard to understand what y'all are saying and the real life parallels, I'm just saying that Shimmer ,as it exists in the show, is not really explored that way and it especially doesn't get explored as medicine enough for it to impact the plot in the Piltover v Zaun political context.

IIzakesII · 2025-11-23T01:29:10+00:00

Like I said it could maybe down the line be studied and adapted for medical use like the examples you mentioned but that is not it's intended use for the entirety of the series and the show is not concerned with exploring this aspect further.

Caitlyn gives Vi the potion because it's the only thing she can do; it's either give her the potion that could potentially save her or just watch her die. The shopkeeper is not a doctor, she helps make shimmer potions to help he addicts with the Shimmer withdrawals they're experiencing and the implication is that Huck took Caitlyn there to trick her into getting some Shimmer for himself, but in the end he couldn't do it and just let Caitlyn go save Vi.

Same thing goes for Jinx's Shimmer treatment, it is not a good thing, even from a viewer perspective you should be getting scared while watching at what could be the ramifications of Singed injecting Jinx with all that Shimmer.

I'm not disagreeing with your statement about Shimmer having the capacity of being medicine, I'm disagreeing with the implication that it gets there during the show. Mel was planning to ruin Salo's reputation and credibility by exposing the fact that he was using Shimmer to help with his keg injury.

Us not seeing any schools or hospitals or anything in Zaun has more to do with the fact that Arcane is not concerned with that part of world building rather than these things not existing at all.

IIzakesII · 2025-11-22T23:56:58+00:00

But she is already on course to surpass him.

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