League of Legends is about to kick off its first in-game season of 2025, and as is Riot tradition, there’s a big, flashy new trailer with some gorgeous animation to accompany it. Namely, he again collaborated with the Fortiche studio. Riot spent $250 million on make Arcane, and I’m very happy to report that the bet paid off.
In fact, the venture was so successful that New shows promised by Riot featuring Demacia, Noxus and Ionia. We know that Fortish is involved in creating this season’s Noxus-themed trailer. Very interesting because, well, just look at it.
This all seems too well thought out to be thrown away. Developing new designs takes time, meaning that smaller scale animation projects like trailers and the like will try to keep the scope of what they actually show relatively limited. Unless Fortiche is able to keep a cool head (which is quite possible), the sheer budget put into this trailer’s multiple locations makes me suspect that we’ve essentially just gotten a trailer for a new show disguised as an advertisement for a game.
There are also some new League of Legends champion redesigns here. The two most obvious are Darius and Trundle, who we see fighting a captive audience in Freljord, but I’m pretty sure the woman we see fighting with two blades is Katarina, the Noxian assassin facing off against the creepy Spider-Woman Elise. The magician with the golden collar at the end is most likely also LeBlanc, accompanied by Vladimir. All of this is to say that you don’t just redesign six iconic champions if you don’t plan to do anything with them.
Timing also makes sense. Arcane showrunner Christian Linke also stated back in November 2024 that the next show has been in development for about a year, which is plenty of time to finalize a set of character designs and sets for the trailer. I would be shocked if the design we see here changes much in the future.
Plus, it’s not just Mel showing us her character’s trajectory after the events of The Secret Season 2LeBlanc bluntly states that “Piltover was a lesson” before hinting at some prank by the Black Rose cabal. Guys, if I’m not watching the teaser for Fortish’s next League spin-off, I’m not even sure what I’m looking at.
Update: Riot has clarified that the new Elise and Katarina skins in this video are the Elise Black Rose Mask and Katarina Black Rose Prestigious Mask skins. Riot also announced today update from developers that LeBlanc will receive a visual update that will explain the new look. So, an impressive trailer for sure, but a preview of the upcoming Noxus show? Looks like it’s hat-eating time.