This page is about Jinx, one of the characters in the main Arcane universe. For the alternate universe version of this character, please see Jinx/Alternate Universe.
I thought...maybe you could love me like you used to, even though I'm... different. But you changed too... So, here's to the new us.
Jinx, born Powder, is one of the main protagonists in Arcane. She is the unpredictable, ingenious, and chaotic little sister of Vi and adoptive daughter to Silco. Throughout the show she is disturbed with feelings of abandonment from her sister, along with the manipulation she faced from Silco as she tries to determine what her true sense of self is.
Powder was born to Felicia and Connol, she was the younger sister of Violet. Growing up, Powder had a good relationship with Vi and her parents. However, when her parents died during a riot turned battle on the bridge between Piltover and Zaun, she and Vi were the only people left in their family. After the battle, Vander found the two siblings where he adopted them and raised them as his own, alongside Mylo and Claggor.[3]
The heist
A few years later, Vi, Powder, Claggor, and Mylo venture into Piltover after getting a tip from Ekko regarding a Piltover citizen whom he had followed after he shopped at Benzo's. After finding the apartment, the kids looted the place where Powder discovers a box full of blue crystals. However, Vi hears Jayce and Caitlyn's footsteps. This makes Vi signal everyone to leave. But in the rush, Powder drops one of the blue crystals, setting off an explosion that blows up half the building. This notifies the enforcers and sends the kids on a chase through Piltover.
The aftermath
After the kids evade the enforcers, they return to Zaun with their stolen goods. They are stopped by a street gang led by Deckard, who demands they hand the bag over. Not willing to go down without a fight, Vi, Claggor, and Mylo take on the rival gang and leave the goods with Powder. Midway, Powder is chased by one of the gang members who notices the stolen supplies. She is cornered at the docks, where she tries to attack him with Mouser, though it sputters out and fails. Left with no other option, she throws the bag of goods away, where they land in the ocean as Powder manages to escape for good.
Later, Mylo yells at Powder for losing the stolen goods and claims, "She jinxes every job," though Vi silences him. Back at The Last Drop, Vander reprimands the group for the trouble they caused in Piltover while Vi argues back, claiming that Piltover has plenty while they have nothing.[3]
Laying low
While laying low, the group hangs out in a run-down arcade that seems to be their go-to hangout spot. Mylo berates Powder for being unable to fix a target practice range; instead, she activates it and plays the range herself, showing off with her excellent aim. As the four are playing, enforcers who are searching the Undercity for the ones responsible for the explosion enter the arcade through a broken window. With Ekko's help, the kids manage to escape once again.
Later, several Zaunites gather at the Last Drop. Powder, Ekko, Mylo, Vi, and Claggor stand by a corner and watch as several residents, including Sevika, claim they want to fight back, but Vander reminds them that violence is not the answer and that they "just have to stand together". The kids wonder why Vander still chooses peace, and Ekko informs them that Vander has a deal with the enforcers.
While lounging in the basement of the Last Drop, Vander signals the group that enforcers have arrived again. They hide in the rafters, but Powder struggles to hang on. Luckily, she manages to keep from falling, and only after the enforcer leaves the basement does she let go. She decides to make more bombs, naming one "Whisker," and she shows them to Vi, who encourages her.
Rescuing Vander
When Vi returns to the Last Drop, letting the group know what she saw, they begin to plan a rescue for Vander. Powder wants to join, but Vi refuses, telling her she's not ready and giving her a flare before leaving with Mylo and Claggor. Afterwards, Powder has a breakdown. In the midst of it, the Hextech crystals she'd swiped from the penthouse spill from her bag. Realizing these crystals are what caused the explosion, she realizes that she can help her siblings.
Powder then makes her way to the warehouse with a monkey bomb loaded with Hextech crystals. She releases it through the window, and, for the first time, her bomb works, releasing a massive explosion. It successfully kills several of Silco's goons, as well as disintegrating Sevika's right arm and blowing Dr. Reveck’s lab up with him inside. However, the explosion also inadvertently killed Mylo and Claggor, as well as injuring Vander and Vi. Powder, unaware of what she's done, proudly makes her way to where Vi and Vander are, only to find Vander dead from a Shimmer overdose, and Vi in anguish upon realizing that her adoptive father and brothers are dead. After realizing what Powder had done, in her anguish and pain, Vi punches Powder in the face, calling her a "jinx" before storming off and leaving her sobbing.
Silco finds Powder still sobbing and alone and adopts her.[4]
Progress Day
Seven years later, on a day now known as Progress Day, a shipment of Shimmer is ambushed by the Firelights, a vigilante group from the Undercity. Powder, now known as Jinx, emerges and fights back mercilessly with her now very effective explosives. Deadly in combat, she easily takes down multiple Firelights until one of them is unmasked. Upon seeing the girl's pink hair, Jinx hallucinates Vi's face on the girl, causing her to freeze before she realizes it isn't her sister, and she shoots the girl without hesitation. The remaining Firelights flee, and Jinx fires on them, putting her own group in danger as they're in the line of fire.
Later, Silco, with whom Jinx has a complex father-daughter relationship, encourages Jinx to work on her inventions, excuses her blunders, and is shown to genuinely care for her. Her hideout, built over the fissures, allows her time and space to work on her inventions. However, the decorations in her hideout reflect her mindset being stuck in the past—she keeps Vi's rabbit from childhood and even made a copy, keeping one in a box and nailing the other to the wall above her desk. She also keeps Claggor's goggles, along with a life-sized doll of Mylo, who often appears to her in hallucinations.
After her explosive reaction on the airship, Silco suggests to Jinx that she take time to collect herself, frustrating her. In an effort to prove herself, she breaks into the Piltover Council building, stealing a refined Hextech crystal and creating a diversion by starting a fire in a pavilion to lure Enforcers into a trap filled with explosives. Six Enforcers are killed, with a seventh being injured.
Despite Silco's initial frustration, the benefits the crystal promises outweigh the risks to his business, and he is quick to forgive.
Searching for Vi
When she finds out from Sevika that her sister is alive and, in the lanes, searching for her, she uses the flare Vi had given her in an attempt to find her. Despite her doubts, Vi shows up, and the pair are reunited. When Caitlyn appears, Jinx turns on the pair, questioning Vi's motivation for returning until the Firelights ambush the trio, and a fight ensues, leading to Vi and Caitlyn being taken and Jinx being left alone yet again.
The Boy Savior
Searching for both Vi and the hextech gemstone, Jinx watches from on high as her swarm of explosive mechanical butterflies explodes across a barricaded bridge Topside, killing the team of Enforcers, including Marcus. Jinx comes face to face with her sister and Caitlyn and fires at them from almost point-blank range, stopped by Ekko intercepting and knocking her back. Ekko faces off against Jinx, allowing Cait and Vi to escape while the two fight. Despite the pair being evenly matched, Ekko pins her down, and Jinx lets off a grenade, dislocating Ekko's leg and nearly killing her. Silco carries the severely injured Jinx to Singed, begging him to save her. The doctor injects her with Shimmer, enhancing her strength and speed and ultimately saving her despite the demanding and extremely painful process. This also changes her eyes into a bright pink that occasionally glows.
The Tea Party
Jinx knocks out and captures Vi, bringing her to what remains of the warehouse where the events of Episode 3 took place, and Jinx reveals she has set up a twisted tea party, with Caitlyn and Silco both tied up and gagged at the table. Jinx begs Vi to kill Caitlyn, which she refuses. Jinx then turns on Caitlyn herself, sparing her only because of Vi's pleas. This leads to Cait firing on her, and Jinx retaliates by knocking her out. Silco and Vi each try to convince her to either spare or kill Caitlyn, and in her overwhelm, she shoots and kills Silco. Breaking down at her own actions, she takes Fishbones, powered by the Hextech gemstone, and fires a missile at the Piltover council; leading to the death of three councilors: Cassandra Kiramman, Irius Bolbok, and Torman Hoskel.
Fate
At the end of the battle against Viktor’s soldiers and Noxus, Jinx throws herself from the Piltovan Hexgate in an effort to kill Warwick. She detonates one of her monkey bombs mid-fall, sacrificing herself so that Vi can live. However, after the battle, Caitlyn can be seen holding the head of Jinx’s bomb and inspecting the Hexgate’s ventilation blueprints, implying that Jinx may have found a way to survive the blast.
Characteristics
Personality
As a little girl, Powder was shy and sweet, but clumsy and prone to making mistakes. This, paired with a case of middle child syndrome, sparked irritation from her older "brother" Mylo, who referred to her as a jinx. She greatly admired her older sister Vi (her only biological family) and saw her as a role model and an almost parental figure. While not as physically capable as Vi, she was very creative and spent much of her spare time making different kinds of inventions, mostly bombs and other small explosives. However, they were predictably unreliable and were only effective later in her teens. She showed how skilled she was with a gun, beating her best friend, Ekko, and her brother, Mylo, on various occasions. Despite her general timid, quiet nature, Powder was shown on multiple occasions to have extremely strong emotional reactions, especially when faced with the possibility of abandonment, screaming, and crying with accompanying hallucinations and self-harming behavior, something her character retains later in the series.
After witnessing the death of her family and her sister's abandonment, Powder adopted the identity of Jinx possessing a frightening combination of warmth, psychosis, and sadism. Jinx is incredibly mentally unstable and has become unpredictable and remorseless as a teen, showing no mercy towards her opponents or anything she perceives as a threat. She is incredibly smart, both in her combat and her weapon-making abilities. Like her younger self, Jinx has extremely strong emotions, only strengthened by her guilt, which she copes with using violence and often self-harm. Despite her outward appearance of a "manic pixie nightmare girl," her innocent, bubbly attitude is a conscious front used to manipulate the people around her. Along with her wild, ruthless nature, we also see her being vulnerable and childlike in her actions, a contrast between Jinx and Powder, who are separate identities (as a result of both her childhood trauma and likely borderline personality disorder), and we see many times where her actions remind us, she is a child trapped in the body of a teen. She is left alone to deal with her guilt from the traumatic events leading to the deaths of her brothers and Vander and her resentment towards Vi, who she believes abandoned her, something drilled into her by Silco to cement her loyalty to him.
Appearance
Jinx is rather pale, which could be attributed to the lack of sunlight in the lanes, as her skin was rosier when she was younger. She also has slightly sharp, sickly facial features. There are constant dark circles under her eyes, noticeable tear burns, and she has dull purple lips. Her eyes are a silvery powder blue with darker flecks. However, they change to a pink/red violet hue (due to Shimmer) that is seen for the first time when she kidnaps Caitlyn. Her eyes always glow right before her speed and/or strength are activated.
Her bright blue hair is styled in two long blue braids with a sharp side bang styled on her left. The braids fall down her back and reach her ankles; both braids are decorated with bullet casings in both silver and gold and engraved with her drawings. She has a widow's peak and a few short strands of hair hanging loosely around her face.
Jinx has small breasts, muscular arms, a small waist, and rather wide hips. She has tattoos on the right side of her body, depicting clouds similar to the ones caused by both the warehouse explosion[4] and also the flare that is given to her by Vi, which she uses after finding out her sister is alive.[5] The tattoos are drawn in pale blue, with darker blue outlines, and cover her arm, shoulder, and stomach on the right-hand side. After her transformation from the Shimmer, the tattoos are faded and scarred from the injection and her body's reaction to the drug.
Her attire consists of a dark brown leather crop top with a piece of thin off-white cloth running through four eyelets to form an X in the center of her chest. The front and back of the crop top are connected at the base with a thin belt and at the top with a circular neckline that splits into a choker. She wears low-waisted, vertically striped pants in shades of purple/pink, torn unevenly at the bottom and shorter on the right side. She also wears arm warmers, one black and the other black on the upper half, while the lower half matches the pink/purple of her pants. Additionally, she has a studded belt of three individual sections: the one around her waist, the two that loop from the back to connect to the belt on the right side, and the hem of her pants on the left. She also has a pocket on her right hip for explosives and a gun holster on her left. She is seen wearing a large band-aid on her upper left calf, which covers the wound she is seen patching herself with a staple gun after the fight with the Firelights.[6] Finally, she wears a pair of loose, worn combat boots to which she's added magenta laces and extra metal elements on the toes and heels, both silver and gold.
Jinx's appearance while in prison
Upon being arrested by Caitlyn, Jinx's hair is undone. The ropes in her top as well as her boots, gloves, belt and choker have all been confiscated, presumably to avoid the possibility of her committing suicide. After escaping, Jinx cuts her hair into a messy bob cut before her suicide attempt which is stopped by Ekko. During her time with Ekko and the Firelights, Jinx has another haircut which is mostly a buzzcut outside of a fringe that resembles her sister's haircut. She also dons a new outfit that consists of a shark hood, chest wraps, black pants and the return of her choker, gloves and boots, Jinx's appearance becomes very similar to her sister's. Unlike her usual outfit, her boots are laced up this time. Both her and Ekko's outfits are covered in paint, likely from painting each other. The colors of the paints used to paint the markings are her own, the same ones she used to paint during the battle with Vi and Cait, and in her hideout, especially when Isha appeared there. The green is also her own, and is different from the Firelights' color, being less saturated (the color markings are visible on the airship).
Jinx is also assumed to be ambidextrous. She prefers to shoot with her left hand but also uses her right hand as a seemingly dominant hand in many other scenes.
As a child, her blue hair was shorter and styled in a single braid that fell just below her shoulders, and roughly chopped, chin-length bangs held in place with a collection of small metal hair clips. Her attire consisted of a dark blue shirt (which seems to be her shirt from when she was a baby presented at the start of Episode 1 over a pink/purple T-shirt with darker vertical stripes (the same fabric as her pants in the later episodes), brown shorts over purple leggings and brown ankle boots. She wears a blue skirt with a wide section in the front, a belt and pockets for bombs and extra parts, and dark arm and leg warmers.
Abilities
Jinx utilizing her shimmer enhanced speed
Accuracy: Jinx is seen to be an excellent shot. She can outshoot Mylo in the training simulator and beat Ekko when the two played together. She tends to prefer handguns such as pistols but is also seen using a type of Gatling gun.
Inventions: while she was under the name of Powder, she struggled with building working inventions. As she grew older, she became more adept at inventing weaponry, specifically bombs. It's implied that she made most of the weapons used by Silco's gang.[7]
Shimmer Enhanced Physicality: Thanks to the use of Shimmer, Jinx now possesses various superhuman attributes at the cost of her already shaky mental health. Most notably, superhuman strength, durability, agility, and an efficient healing factor. It especially affects her speed, allowing her to use flash step to dodge attacks in battle.
Trivia
Jinx’s nose is slightly crooked, which presumably happened after Vi punched Powder in the face after she told Vi that she had created the bomb that killed the rest of her adoptive family.
Jinx having an overwhelming amount of hallucinations
Jinx has an unspecified mental illness and trauma disorder. She feels trapped in a world distorted by her anxieties, which causes her to become irrational, amplified by Silco’s influence.
Jinx is popularly assumed to suffer from borderline personality disorder (BPD) by the community. BPD is a disorder characterized by a great fear of abandonment, intense and unstable emotions, erratic and impulsive behavior, and paranoia, and it can also lead to psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions.
Jinx suffers from PTSD from the event that killed her family and her sister abandoning her. Alongside this, she experiences survivor's guilt. These traumas have greatly amplified her struggles and likely are the main cause of her psychosis.
During the explosion in the Hexgate, a purple stripe can be seen moving away from the explosion, alluding to the possibility that Jinx’s Shimmer-induced speed might have carried her away from the blast.
The last scene of the show is of an airship, calling back to the pilot episode when Powder exclaimed, “One day, I’m going to ride in one of those things.”[3][8]
The very final frame of the series finale is an inscription reading “The End” in the art style of Jinx, appearing after the scene with the airship.
After her Shimmer surgery, her tears are tainted pink with the drug.
Jinx’s exact eye color is called Violet Red with a HEX code of #C71585.
