Arcane creators admit that the show was not meant to run five seasons. It was a joke which got out of control: 'Nothing more than tomfoolery.'

Arcane, a popular animated League of Legends series, has just launched its second and final season on Netflix. This has sparked rumours that the show originally had five seasons. The creators of the show have now clarified that this is not the case and that the idea was a joke that some people took too seriously.

The rumour started with a Variety article last week about Riot's broader entertainment goals, which claimed Arcane was "initially planned for a five-season story arc." Christian Linke and Alex Yee have now addressed this in a TechRadar interview. They claim that it was a misinterpreted comment made by former Riot Games Chief Executive Officer Nicolo Laurent many years ago.

Linke says that Arcane's story focusing on Vi & Jinx was conceived as two seasons the moment the pilot got the thumbs-up. Linke said that when they started to build out the story following the pilot, "we were like, 'Okay, this is going to be two season'". It was never intended to last five years.

The idea that it would last so long is a wind-up. Linke said, "I think we had a pilot or a few episode but we didn't have the green light to do a full-season." "Nicolo thought at the time it would be funny to pull me in a room and tell me 'Hey I know you haven’t had the greenlight yet, and I decided that I’m not going give it to you.' I sat down, looking very upset, and he said, "Because I am giving you the green light for five seasons!"

Linke says that they laughed about it, despite the fact that he was a bit discombobulated. "[The five-season rumour] is] almost the opposite from what people have interpreted," says Yee. "An animated series has a long development process, so it was a lot to ask [Riot] for just one season. We also said, "If you want another season to come out soon after this one, we have to start working on that while we finish the first." This five-season joke is their way of saying, "Hey, we'd like to give you plenty of runway for this."

Linke said, "Five seasons was nothing more than a bunch of nonsense on our part."

Linke also muddies the water ever-so slightly: "Yeah... then we said, 'okay it's going be two, and we'll then grow from there. So, there could be more? Yee says, "I think that we imagined ways it could go beyond that. But one more season was always the milestone we wanted to reach." Hmmm.

Arcane was a huge success for Riot. But it came at a price: the two seasons cost $250 million. This is a staggering amount for a cartoon. Riot's Chief Product Officer Marc Merrill said that season two was well received by fans. "We're more comfortable with the spending it took to deliver an show that was worth our players' time." The first three episodes are now available, and three more will be released on November 16. The series' final episodes will be released on November 23.