Just as season one showed that these adaptations could be successful (even Emmy-worthy), Secret surprised us again after Netflix announced that the second season would be the show’s last. Already.

The news was announced in June 2024 along with the first trailer for season two, five months prior Arcane’s return to streaming. Critics and fans alike loved the first season, especially the animation, superbly created by Paris-based studio Fortiche, so the news came as a shock.

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However, this isn’t just a case of Netflix canceling a show in its prime: it turns out that the plan was always to finish Secret after just two seasons.

To talk to Amount, co-creator Christian Linke revealed that Secret marks “the beginning of our greater storytelling journey and partnership with the wonderful animation studio that is Fortiche”.

He continued: “From the very beginning, since we started working on this project, we had a very specific end in mind, meaning the story of Secret ending with this second season. But Secret is just the first of many stories we want to tell in Runeterra.”

In an age where more and more shows are being canceled after ending on a cliffhanger, or ending up ending way too early, it’s rare and refreshing to hear that the end of Secret is the ending the creators always intended—and the ending fans deserve.

In a new chat with CinemaBlendLinke further expanded on the reasoning behind this decision, explaining that “We always had a specific story in mind.”

“Look, you could have stretched it, I’m sure. But for us, it was always just the way we started with this in mind. I think there’s also a personal angle to it as creatives. We’ve all seen the tv shows, where it’s clear the writers have run out of juice. How inspired can you be about the same thing, how long it’s been nine years for us, with these characters we’re like, this is what we had in mind .”

He added: “This is the story that we had in our heads that we want to tell. It’s irresponsible to stretch this to the point where it feels like we can’t even do it justice. I think that was a big part of it. We don’t want to overdo it.”

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As good as it is to hear, some fans may be confused by this as Amount previously reported it Secret was originally planned to develop as a five-season arc. Rumors have suggested that the cost of each individual episode, totaling $250 million to produce and market, may have played a role in the show’s abrupt end as well.

In responseArcane co-creators Christian Linke and Alex Yee cleared up the speculation in an interview with TechRadar, with Linke confirming that five seasons was “never the plan”.

“When we started building out the story after the pilot, that’s when we were like, ‘Okay, it’s going to be two seasons.’ The plan was never for it to last five seasons.”

It turns out that these rumors may have come thanks to a direct comment from former Riot Games boss Nicolo Laurent:

“We had the pilot or a few episodes, but we still hadn’t gotten the go-ahead for a full season. Then Nicolo thought it would be really fun to pull me into a room and say, ‘Hey, I know you hasn’t been greenlit yet , and I decided I wasn’t going to give it to you. I sat there looking pretty upset before he added “Because I’m giving you the green light for five seasons!’. We both laughed…”

Yee added that these were words of encouragement rather than an official commitment for five full seasons:

“Making an animated series — it has such a long development pipeline that it was a lot for us to ask them (Riot’s management team) to trust us with one season. But we also said, ‘If you want another season to come soon after that, we have to start working on that while we finish the first one’. So, that five-season joke was their way of saying, ‘Hey, we want to give you a lot of runway with this.’

Five seasons of Secret was never in the cards then, but that doesn’t mean the world depicted in this show is over. Aside from the games this story is based on, Linke’s original comments made when Arcane’s the ending was first announced suggesting that there is much more to come.

So if”Secret is just the first of many stories we want to tell in Runeterra,” what comes next Secret itself ends?

Given the success of this first League of Legends story, it seems likely that future projects will also be animated by Fortiche in a similar fashion, thereby maintaining a cohesive vision for this expanding universe.

Story-wise, nothing has been confirmed yet, but with a wealth of source material to pull from for inspiration, it won’t be long until legendary stories like “The Harrowing Of The Shadow Isles” and “The Ruined King” hit Netflix. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another three whole years for the franchise to return like we did for Secret season two.

Secret Seasons one and two are now streaming on Netflix.

After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, covering everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.

In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ narration as assistant TV editor and later as acting TV editor.

David has spoken on several LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation, and in 2020 he created the interview series Rainbow Crew, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera through video content and long reads.

In addition, David has interviewed all your favorites including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King and more – not to mention countless Drag Race legends.

As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications, including Empire Online, Radio TimesINTO, Highsnobiety, Den of GeekThe digital fix and Sight & Sound.

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