Needless to say: ***** MAJOR SPOILERS ALERT *****
Writing this after discussions with a friend on whether there was hope for "Powder" to still have a chance to come back over Jinx in a future season. Also after some thoughts I've shared in some Youtube video comments.
Powder: Pull towards Vi, her old sister anchor, but aversion to the painful memories.
Jinx: Pull towards Silco's encouragement and legitimate love, but aversion to... what exactly? Aversion to being on the "bad side"? Aversion to just disagreeing with Vi by being on Silco's side? I think there's more than that.
Notice also that Jinx attempts a murder/suicide at the end of that battle. Yet they both survive. If you listen very closely, it seems Ekko managed to kick the bomb away right before it explodes. From the distant view we get of the explosion, we can first hear what appears to be a sort of kick, and right afterwards comes the boom. This is consistent with Ekko getting most of the damage only in one of his legs, while also consistent with both Ekko and Jinx surviving the explosion, even if we last saw that bomb right next to both of them.
The fight between Ekko and Jinx seems to be therefore a beautiful metaphorical reconstruction of the eternal fight between good and evil, ying vs. yang. Ekko fighting Jinks is a firelight fighting a crow, light fighting darkness, and life fighting death.
But back to Jinx's dilemma, she is now at the tea-party with her captive "guests," still torn between the two chairs, between going "back to the light" as Powder, or "remaining on the dark side" as Jinx. And Vi starts naming all her old family members, we believe of course with the best intentions, in an attempt to possibly make Powder win over Jinx that way. But Vi does not know or understand that each of those memories is an insufferable wound in Powder's broken mind. They have become Powder's inner demons. As explained by Georgia Dow in her Therapist Reacts Youtube video, and as we can corroborate by just reading the scene quite literally: each of those names becomes an actual monster inside Powder's/Jinx's head, and she gets metaphorically smaller and smaller, and collapses right there under them, completely alone, incidentally, just as she was when Vi left her as Powder.
In all of this, Silco, who shortly before had been strangely quiet even when Cait had physically threatened to kill Jinx with a weapon (but that's maybe because he secretely knows that Jinx now has been made basically superhumanly fast and strong, so Jinx life was not really at risk there,) now hearing what Vi is saying, seeing Jinx and knowing how those words are hurting Jinx the worst, goes absolutely nuclear and beserk. He will not allow seeing Jinx getting hurt that way. Silco here does not seem to be simply selfishly fearing he would lose Jinx. At this point Silco clearly knows Jinx better than Vi, and he knows that Vi is hurting Jinx as badly as it is conceivably possible. So he goes so violently furious as to manage to release one of his arms in order to shoot Vi and stop her from hurting Jinx. But Jinx hears a click from there, and during her moments of crisis we know (even Silco knows) that she can fire absentmindedly at everything/anything, even her own team members. And so she goes into one of her rampages of careless shooting.
In the aftermath we see that Vi got a close shot on her shoulder, but that one seems to have come from Silco's weapon, since his weapon is shown smoking afterwards. Silco did manage to take a shot at Vi after all, yet we see that Vi is safe. Jinx comes back from her crisis, and we all including her realize then that Silco however got deadly hit several times. She runs to Silco and cries, she is so terribly sorry. But parental Silco in his very last breaths still only wants to reassure her that he would not have given her ever for anything to the Council, that he would not have betrayed her. And she did not even have to cry because she was perfect.
So while Powder accidentally killing her older family members made Vi slap her violently and call her a "jinx," what Mylo used to call her, the most hurtful thing her anchor older role-model sister could have called her in such circumstances before "abandoning" her, now Jinx in one of her blackouts kills Silco, her new loving parental figure, yet he did not complain at all. He only shows such unconditional love; he encourages her, and in spite of she even killing him, he tells her she is perfect.
What we see afterwards is that the redeemed Silco dies, Jinx somehow manages to bring herself up quite rapidly, then she meditates for some brief moments while breathing slowly. Vi in the background is telling her that everything is ok, but Jinx keeps processing something to herself... Then she goes slowly and with a destroyed expression in front of the Jinx chair to think for some additional silent moments... and then she finally sits on that one, the Jinx chair.
Clearly, it had not been Vi's or anyone else's choice but hers only. And after the catastrophic results of her crisis, she chose the Jinx chair. She chose the dark side.
What I think
happened is that Silco's dying words triggered and sealed the decision. Back to the opposing conflicts, in spite of the love from Vi, the aversion/push from the Powder conflict was way too strong and painful, those monstruous memories. While the pull from the Jinx conflict, that unconditional love from Silco in spite of what she had just done, became way too powerful. Jinx in a way must have realized she was indeed someone "whose creature is a crow," someone who brings about bad luck and death. In other words, she was an agent of chaos, effectively a jinx, and Mylo and Vi in their meanest moments had been right all along. But in spite of whatever unbearable repulsion she felt towards that in her Jinx conflict, in the eyes of loving and dying Silco she was perfect. Aversion/push from the Powder conflict, plus the powerful pull from those words from Silco, make Jinx win decisively, and Powder therefore dies.
As devastated as she comes out of that, Jinx accepts and embraces herself. She chooses to own it. Therefore she sits on the Jinx chair in fact as if it was a throne, even if a throne of the most desolated, darkest, sorrowful badassness. The rest is a farewell to Vi, almost a self elegy to Powder. And then the fully fledged Jinx is unleashed.
And a double tragedy stands from the council precisely approving the independence of Zaun in that very moment. There was going to be an independent Zaun even with the council still not having Jinx in prison... but Jinx intervenes right then jinxing everything, nailing the highest-profile possible act of domestic terrorism.
As I wrote in my previous post, Arcane is a masterpiece, and in several fronts at that I think, not just as an origins story. Such a powerful tragedy, arguably of a Shakespearean level, as some have already dared to say. For me it brings back a refreshed appreciation towards that old catharsis classical tragedies were supposed to make us feel. It is so painful, so sad and dark, yet also so incredibly well built and drawn, so beautiful. It's as if we are all Silco while Arcane is Jinx: Arcane killing us with pain, but we love her unconditionally, so beautiful, so perfect...
PS. Ultra condensed version of this entire post in six tweets.
