Riot Games is ringing in the New Year with a fresh season of League of Legends — the first of three season launches that players will experience in 2025. In typical Riot fashion, there's a cinematic trailer to go along with it, but this year's video is a major step-up from its predecessors. For one thing, it's absolutely stunning — thanks, of course, to a lending hand from Fortiche, the animation studio that brought Arcane to life. But more importantly, the five-minute video is leaving fans of Netflix's Arcane hopeful that this Noxus-themed trailer doubles as an exciting prelude to another League of Legends show.
There's a couple of apparent nods to Arcane that make their way into the end of the new cinematic. One of the biggest moments in the trailer that merges series with game comes when Black Rose members Vladimir and LeBlanc discuss how they need to take "advantage of the opportunity that has washed up our shores," which we're assuming is a reference to Mel. LeBlanc also comments that "Piltover was a lesson," which Arcane viewers will recognize as the Runeterra region in which the original show takes place.
When the final season of Arcane wrapped, fans were eager to find out if other Runeterra regions would get some on-screen exposure. Christian Linke, creative director at Riot and the creator and showrunner of Arcane, confirmed these suspicions in an interview with League content creator Necrit shortly after the show concluded, revealing that Noxus, Ionia, and Demacia will receive their own spin-off series.
Now, upon the cinematic's release, fans can't help but connect the dots that this Noxus-themed season of League of Legends is perhaps a subtle hint towards the Noxus-themed spin-off they've been waiting for.
One Rioter on Reddit, dubbed RiotMiddler, has denied that the cinematic trailer is a set-up for a TV show: "Regarding the intent of the cinematic, our goal was to set up some themes for Noxus for the season and a plot line that'll be continued this year in game/around game materials (not a tv show to be clear)."
But, like, have you looked at it? It very well may be true that the intent of the cinematic is first and foremost to promote the new Noxus-based season of League of Legends — there's no actual show storyline that's teased, nor any official release date for a new show attached. We're just saying, it seems unlikely that Fortiche went through the trouble of creating new designs for characters like Elise, Katarina, Vladimir, Darius, LeBlanc, and Trundle with no intent of introducing them into a future series.
Show teaser or not, we're hyped for this new season of League of Legends, which goes live tomorrow, January 9. It's a pretty historic patch that ushers in a total Noxian makeover for the Rift, a handful of visual changes to the map, and even some novel targeting animations for the all-new Noxian War Turrets. Until Riot decides to release an official announcement about its next TV series, we'll be waiting with bated breath (and probably re-watching Arcane).
Katie Reul is a freelance journalist whose entertainment reporting has been featured in IGN and Variety.
