League of Legends Adding New Champion From Arcane in 2024

Riot Games has announced that a character from the Netflix animated series Arcane will be joining League of Legends later in 2024. For the most part, many of the main characters seen in Arcane have already been playable in League of Legends for quite some time. Champions such as Vi, Jinx, Jayce, Ekko, and Heimerdinger all played a large part in the Netflix series but were joined by new faces that hadn’t been seen in LoL previously. Now, Riot has confirmed that with Arcane Season 2 on the horizon, one of those major characters seen in the show’s first season will soon join the League roster. 

Detailed in a press release from Riot, it was confirmed that Ambessa Merdarda will come to League of Legends at an undetermined time this year. Ambessa hails from Noxus and is the mother of Mel, who is another one of the primary characters seen in Arcane. For the most part, Ambessa’s role in Arcane is much more minor compared to some others, but she plays a large part in how the show’s first season comes to an end. It’s assumed that she’ll again return in Arcane Season 2, although further details on this front haven’t been provided just yet. 

Outside of adding Ambessa Merdarda as a playable champion in League of Legends, Riot Games has confirmed that it will be doing a couple of other things to the ever-popular MOBA in 2024 that tie in with Arcane. Notably, an unnamed champion in LoL will be receiving a new visual and gameplay update (VGU) that will be tweaked “to better match their depiction in the show”. New skins associated with Arcane are also said to be hitting LoL at the same time that Ambessa Merdarda is released. 

Currently, it’s known that Season 2 of Arcane is set to launch on Netflix later this year in November 2024. With this in mind, there’s a good chance that Ambessa Merdarda and these other Arcane-inspired changes will hit League of Legends around this same time. In the near term, Riot also recently revealed Smolder, which is the first new champion coming to LoL in 2024. Smolder is set to go live in the PBE client for League of Legends next week on January 9 and will then be followed later in the year by Vastayan, who is described as a “solo-laning, mid-range mage”.