League of Legends Viktor Full Lore Breakdown

Where Jinx’s champion lore, does not change much with the addition of Arcane’s side-canon, Viktor’s changes tremendously. Not only is his origin story completely revamped, but also his connection to both Jayce and even Singed is explained.

Is League of Legends Viktor Evil?

Viktor is one of League of Legends’ best mid-lane champions. His cyborg body and in-game champion lore certainly portray him as a villain.

In essence, Viktor seeks to become a synergy between Skynet from the Terminator franchise and the Artificial Intelligence from I, Robot, to protect humanity from itself and give it, what he calls, glorious evolution. Even his extreme in-game scaling makes players all over hate his guts.

His official League of Legends lore, then, puts him in the role of a villain. However, if we dig deeper, Viktor’s life can be best explained by the adage “ The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

This can be best seen in one of his best skins, called Creator Viktor, where he has completely left his humanity behind, and embroiled Runeterra in a war for survival, going so far as to Siphon energies from a celestial being like Aurelion Sol.

What is Viktor’s Lore in Arcane?

In the Netflix show Arcane, one of Riot Games’ most recent ways of bringing the game to even non-gamers, Viktor has a sizable role. Since season 1 of Arcane, we see that Viktor is an orphan from the city of Zaun, who has risen through the ranks to Piltover’s Academy, with pure effort and idealism. He, however, still cares deeply about the suffering of the common people in Zaun and seeks to truly help them, in complete opposition to what he witnessed Singed doing when he was a child.

Where Arcane differs from League of Legends though, is in the fact that Jayce and Viktor discover Hextech. In the usual game lore, it’s Camille’s family, one of the game’s best top-lane champions, that does this. This research is what brings Jayce and Viktor close in the first place.

Due to Jayce’s embroilment in politics, Viktor spends many a night in research alone. This, coupled with his already ailing health makes Viktor terminally ill. It is in the process of trying to save himself that Viktor becomes a cyborg and discovers his calling of glorious evolution.

Are Viktor and Jayce enemies?

In League of Legends lore, the answer is a very simple “yes”. They are set as opposite sides of the same coin, where Jayce uses technology to better the world, and Viktor uses it to enforce his own ideals of glorious evolution upon it.

With the addition of Arcane, things are not as simple as that. We can see that Jayce is a brash and arrogant noble of Piltover, while Viktor is a withdrawn young man interested in science.

Where their ideals differ is in the fact that Viktor seeks to give science to the people, while Jayce, as can be seen in Arcane season 2, considers some technology to be too dangerous for everyone.

With Viktor on the cusp of death, and Jayce listening to Professor Heimerdinger and not developing research that can save his life, Viktor becomes disillusioned with the world, and it drives a rift between Jayce and Viktor.

Upon making a mistake and killing his assistant, he realizes that his human side is holding him back, and follows in the footsteps of Singed and even Professor Stanwick, known as Ziggs in League of Legends, and abandons all ethics in the pursuit of truth and starts down the path to becoming the Machine Herald.

With all that said, the ending of Arcane season 3 still shows Viktor and Jayce as friends, but the explosion brought by Jinx leaves us unaware of their fate.

Did Viktor Build Blitzcrank?

League of Legends has a habit of making some champions be the origin stories of others. The same goes for Viktor and one of the most iconic support champions, Blitzcrank. This is one of the oldest LoL champions, whose lore has been adjusted quite a few times. The latest iteration has Blitzcrank’s origin story be Viktor creating him.

One of the most important points of Blitzcrank's connection to Viktor lies in its origin story giving us a glimpse of Viktor’s life after Arcane. 

As the Netflix show ends on a cliffhanger, we do not know if Viktor and Jayce’s peace proposal for peace between Zaun and Piltover will be accepted. Blitzcrank’s origin story shows us that it did not and that Viktor was forced to leave Piltover and go back to his birth city of Zaun and live there, after the events of Arcane.

Now we can see that Viktor’s lore is one filled with uncertainties and various implications. From his idealistic rejection of all that his first mentor, Singed, stands for, he has turned a full circle and started down the same path. 

Furthermore, with Viktor’s story, we see that there are no true villain champions or characters in Arcane, but that the true villain is the system of government where the story takes place.

Viktor and Jayce’s relationship is the only one that did not completely break during Arcane, compared to that of characters such as Silco and Vander, and League of Legends sisters, the criminal Jinx, and Enforcer Vi. 

With the events of Arcane being a prequel to the main League of Legends universe though, it’s only a matter of time before that happens. Quite likely immediately after the show has ended.