Longtime fans of Netflix animated series Arcane rejoiced when paramours Caitlyn and Vi got together for their first kiss, followed by their first time hooking up in Season 2. The League of Legends adaptation and fandom had been building up to this moment for years, even the better part of a decade. But apparently, the version viewers got to see was milquetoast compared to the original. When Vi kissed Caitlyn in Episode 8 and reaches down, the camera cuts to nothing.
Showrunner and co-creator Christian Linke confirmed this week that the original scene was much longer and more explicit. But the writers received pushback and were unable to include the scene as it would have raised the show’s age rating to M for mature. Now, Linke weighs in on the possibility of releasing the scene anyway.
“The main challenge was that it pushed our ratings into a place where it really threatened our rating,” Linke tells Inverse in a video interview. “I don’t know if we can actually release it, because if it’s still released by us...”
Arcane originally aired backed in 2021 and followed up a critically acclaimed first season with nine new episodes that dropped this month. As one of the most expensive animated shows in existence, Arcane has stretched the imagination for what a video game adaptation can be, mixing charcoal, watercolor, and inventive styles of animation together to tell an action-packed tale of heartbreak and ecstasy. That romance between Vi and Caitlyn happens to be Arcane’s beating heart, and thus a sex scene would be an appropriate reward for audiences who have been long awaiting this emotional payoff.
Linke appears to be contemplative. “It exists!” He offers, confirming that he still has a copy of the original. “I guess it just depends on whether or not they would nuke our ratings.”
From Inverse’s conversation with Linke, it sounds like he is receptive to the idea of eventually releasing a director’s cut version where we would get to see the original scene as it had been planned, but only if Arcane manages to keep its PG-13 rating in the process. It sounds like Linke thinks it could potentially be possible if the scene were released as a standalone clip elsewhere.
“So yeah, I don’t know,” Linke says. “Actually, I need to ask about that.”
