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The notorious Jinx: A deep dive into Zaun’s misunderstood agent of chaos
We take a close look at everything about Jinx in League of Legends and Arcane, including her tragic backstory and what awaits her in Season 2.
Jinx the mischievous, clinically insane criminal is one of League of Legends' most iconic champions, so it wasn’t a surprise to see her star in Riot Games’ first-ever show, Arcane.
The highly-rated Netflix series has made the chaotic Zaunite an even more beloved character as LoL fans finally gained an insight into her tragic backstory eight years after her original release in the game.
When it comes to the artist formerly known as Powder, there is so much to uncover and analyse. Fortunately for you, this article has all the information you could ever need, including the deepest parts of her backstory, Jinx’s character development in Arcane and what will happen to her next in Season 2.
01
Jinx’s backstory in Arcane
Jinx had a heartbreaking childhood
© Riot Games
Jinx was originally called Powder and was born in the impoverished underground city of Zaun, a waste basin feeding off scraps from the wealthy city of Piltover on the upper side of the river. There, she and her older sister Vi would become orphans at a young age after both of their parents were killed by Piltovan Enforcers during a failed uprising against Zaun’s oppressors.
The leader of that revolution, Vander, noticed the two petrified young girls caught up in the chaos of the battle and left to protect them while regretting his previous actions. He adopted the two sisters as well as two boys around Vi’s age, Mylo and Claggor. The group, led by the hot-headed Vi, would regularly get into trouble with Powder tagging along, but struggling to keep up with her older siblings.
The group attempted a heist on the apartment of Jayce Talis, but the plan went horribly wrong when Powder accidentally caused a huge explosion by dropping a powerful Hexgem. She would also later lose all of the loot by throwing it in the river while being pursued by another gang. The incident left residents of Piltover outraged and eager for justice, leading to Vander taking the blame to save Vi. However, when Enforcers were about to take him away, they were slaughtered by henchmen of Zaun crime lord Silco, who then captured Vander himself.
The kids decided to go and save Vander, but Vi ordered Powder to stay at home, leaving her alone and crying in their room. However, Powder realised the destructive capabilities of the Hexgems she'd kept hold of from the heist and created a deadly bomb using one. She uses the makeshift gadget to try and save Vi, but tragically ends up killing their entire adoptive family of Mylo, Claggor, and Vander.
Vi awakens and, after learning about the bomb, loses her temper with Powder, slapping her younger sister before walking away. This leaves Powder devastated and alone, feeling completely at fault and abandoned, until Silco finds her and takes her under his wing.
02
How did Powder become Jinx?
Powder’s trauma causes her to create a new persona
© Riot Games
After the bomb, Vi goes on a furious tirade and calls Powder a “jinx” just like Mylo did previously after their failed heist. Powder clearly took those comments to heart.
Riddled by trauma, Powder suffers from hallucinations as she regularly sees the dead bodies of Mylo and Claggor and hears their voices in her head. As she becomes more destructive during her time in Silco’s crime ring, she creates the moniker of Jinx for herself, with a giggly and bubbly exterior to hide her fears and internal suffering while further descending into violence and madness.
Jinx’s relationship with Vi
Jinx and Vi have a tragic story
© Riot Games
Powder and Vi were extremely close as children. Despite Powder continually messing up during their adventures, Vi would always take responsibility for her and was very protective of her younger sister. When the two used to play a game pretending to be monsters, Vi would accidentally go too far and scare Powder, but would then comfort her, saying “No monster’s gonna get you when I’m here.”
But unfortunately, that didn’t end up being the case, because following Powder’s bomb, Vi storms off and ends up being drugged and captured by Enforcers. Vi was stuck in prison for years, with Powder believing she'd abandoned her.
Years later, Caitlyn helps Vi out of jail to aid in her investigations into Silco, and Jinx finds this out through interrogating Sevika. Previously, she didn’t know whether her sister was alive or dead.
Jinx then steps onto a rooftop with a blue flare which Vi had given to her as a kid with the instruction to light it if she was ever in an emergency so Vi could find her.
This leads to an emotional reunion between the two, in which Vi explains where she had been and tries to reconcile with her sister. However, the happy mood soon turns sour when Jinx spots that Enforcer Caitlyn is with Vi. Jinx’s paranoia kicks in and she starts to believe this is all a ploy to arrest her.
The sisters’ reunion didn’t go to plan
© Riot Games
The broken trust further strains their relationship, despite Vi’s best efforts to help. Vi still cared for Jinx and wouldn’t listen to others who said her younger sister was too far gone to be saved. And deep down, Jinx still cares too.
At the end of Season 1, Jinx kidnaps Vi and presents two empty chairs labelled Powder and Jinx respectively as she battles with her identity crisis. Vi says they will still be sisters and can be together, but Silco says she’ll leave once she realises how much Jinx has changed.
Eventually, this all comes to a head and Jinx instinctively kills Silco to protect Vi. However, she's distraught at killing another adoptive parent and still doesn’t side with her sister, instead opting for the Jinx chair and accepting her fate before launching a giant rocket at the Piltover council.
03
How did Jinx become insane in Arcane?
Battling with her inner demons and Shimmer was too much for Jinx
© Riot Games
The trauma from both losing her parents at a young age and then accidentally killing her adoptive family breaks Jinx.
Already somewhat unstable from all the hallucinations and years of emotional torment following the tragic events of her childhood, helping with Silco’s criminal activities only makes her more sadistic to the point where Jinx enjoys being a criminal and shows zero remorse for her actions.
Then, after a brutal fight with the Firelights, Singed drugs Jinx with Shimmer to save her life which only drives her madder. While it caused her to become stronger and quicker, that came at the cost of her mental state deteriorating even further.
The reunion with Vi caused Jinx to become even more paranoid, believing that Enforcer Caitlyn is trying to steal her sister from her. This leads to Jinx eventually kidnapping Vi and tying her up as well as Caitlyn and her adoptive father Silco. She'd grown close to Silco, but overheard that he was offering to sell her out to Piltovan authorities to finally achieve his goal of making Zaun independent.
The timid and afraid Powder is still inside somewhere, which causes Jinx an inner struggle with her true identity. As discussed, she still cares for Vi, so much so that when Silco unties himself and tries to shoot her older sister, Jinx acts on instinct and impulsively kills him. However, she then accepts her fate as Jinx and continues her life of crime, leaving the sisters' relationship beyond reconciliation.
04
Jinx’s weapons in Arcane
Jinx creates her own unique weapons
© Riot Games
Even as a kid, Powder was very inventive. She wasn’t much of a fighter like her siblings, but she was a very clever inventor and was always tinkering with new gadgets that could help her when in trouble.
Despite losing her sanity and having no formal education, through creativity and constant experimentation Jinx became a genius inventor. She created many weapons for herself and was even able to reverse-engineer Hextech crystals to create even deadlier tools. Most of her weapons from LoL have featured in Arcane already, with the exception of her Zap pistol; though that may play a role in Season 2 judging by the trailer.
Pow-Pow is the name of the pink minigun she designed and built; it's her weapon of choice and has a high rate of fire.
She also creates bombs called Chompers with big chattering teeth inspired by her childhood designs that are pretty lethal and very difficult to disarm.
And finally, the star of the show is her iconic rocket launcher, Fishbones, which looks like a shark in yet another design based on her childhood drawings. Like the Chompers, its powered by Chemtech, but at the end of Season 1 Jinx empowers a rocket with Hextech to allow it to travel much further in order to reach the council meeting from all the way down in Zaun.
05
Jinx in League of Legends
Jinx is a violent menance in LoL
© Riot Games
In LoL, Jinx is an unhinged criminal intent on causing mayhem with an array of deadly weapons that she wields with glee.
In the game, she's played as a long-range AD Carry (marksmen), a role which typically needs time to grow strong and eventually become a team’s greatest weapon. Interestingly, ADCs are usually played in the bottom lane alongside another player controlling a Support champion whose job is to keep the ADC alive. The more you think about Jinx’s character arc in Arcane, the more fitting it seems that she requires help.
ADCs usually rely on auto-attacks by clicking rather than casting abilities for damage and Jinx is a rare case in that she has multiple types of autos by switching between the fast burst of Pow-Pow and the extra range and firepower of Fishbones.
Because of her sadistic nature and hatred of boredom, every time Jinx is involved in a kill she “gets excited” which causes her to run faster and possibly exceed her attack speed limit, allowing her to snowball the chaos and rip through enemies one after another.
And finally, just like in the ending of Season 1, Jinx’s ultimate is a giant rocket that will travel across the entire map unless it hits an enemy. It’s incredibly satisfying when you land a long-range kill.
Dig deeper into the world of League of Legends
06
Jinx’s League of Legends lore differences to Arcane
Jinx’s game lore provided surprisingly little backstory
© Riot Games
All LoL champions are released with rich lore to give fans a better idea of the characters they’re playing. However, you might be surprised at how different Jinx’s lore is to Arcane’s story.
In fact, before the release of Arcane we had absolutely no details on Jinx’s backstory. So much so that before the series, there hadn’t even been confirmation that Vi was her sister.
Despite this, theories had spread through the community of the two’s relationship. The in-game quote from Jinx, “You think I’m crazy? You should see my sister,” had sparked many people’s curiosity and that speculation was only fuelled further when the shopkeeper received a new voice line directed at Vi saying: “You look like your sister! Er, wait, I'm not supposed to talk about that…”
Jinx’s in-game lore only really covers her past in the first paragraph with citizens of Zaun remembering a sweet blue-haired girl that was always tinkering with inventions and had big ideas, but never quite fit in.
From there, her lore skips forward to Jinx becoming a legendary criminal who regularly sows anarchy in Piltover. What started as anonymous pranks on Piltovian residents rapidly escalated into dangerous shenanigans which Jinx eventually started marking with her own brand of childish graffiti to distance herself from rumours that she was paired with chem-punk gangs – she didn’t like others getting credit for her work.
Despite not revealing her relationship to Vi, the lore does mention a feud between the two thanks to Jinx’s biggest incident. Jinx defaced one of Piltover’s most secure vaults with more graffiti, this time with her intentions to rob the place and a very unflattering drawing of Vi.
Vi, along with Sheriff Caitlyn and other Enforcers arrived to guard the treasury in a bid to trap Jinx, but they had already been bested. Explosions and pandemonium could be heard from within the vault as Jinx had smuggled herself in via an oversized coin crate days earlier and was able to leave the place in ruins and escape before anybody could get inside.
Jinx attracted a lot of notoriety in Zaun as she became a constant annoyance for Piltover. Many were inspired by her antics and admired her for taking on Piltover’s elite, but others saw her as a dangerous lunatic who was only escalating the existing tensions between the two cities.
07
What’s next for Jinx in Arcane Season 2?
Season 1 was only a taste of the pandemonium Jinx will cause
© Riot Games
Interestingly, what we mentioned in the last paragraph about Zaun’s attitude towards Jinx is going to play a huge role in the second season of Arcane.
From the official trailer, it’s shown that Jinx is becoming a sign of hope for the people of Zaun following the death of Silco. As many feared, her actions will only escalate the tensions with Piltover and could lead to another revolt like the one that killed Jinx’s parents.
And in an ironic twist, it appears Vi will become a Piltovan Enforcer, becoming what she hated considering said Enforcers killed her parents.
With Vi finally accepting that Jinx is too far gone, but still burdened by guilt, the wheels are being set in motion to begin the constant cat-and-mouse between Jinx and Vi as the latter tries to capture and stop Jinx from snowballing her dangerous brand of chaos into an even bigger disaster.
Whether Vi is successful or not, you know there’s going to be mayhem when Jinx is involved.
