When Caitlyn is looking at the Hexgate design, she zooms in and focuses on the vents. Then picks up Jinx’s broken monkey bomb and smirks.
The implication here is that they found the monkey bomb near the vents (as last we saw Jinx she blew it up) but no Jinx anywhere/no body hence Caitlyn suspecting that Jinx is alive and escaped through the vents.
The final shot of the show is an airship leaving Piltover (right after the Caitvi scene too) which is an ominous final shot but it’s a callback to Powder in EP1 saying that “one day she is going to ride one of those things” further supporting the theory that she escaped through the vents and left Piltover via that specific airship.
Trail of Shimmer
After the explosion, you see a singular pink line spark out from it. It is likely that it’s a trail of shimmer which is Jinx escaping/moving out of the region.
This is more evidence that Jinx left Piltover through the airship.
The Will To Walk Away
Amanda mentioned that this was the only time we see Silco talking to Jinx in this season and they wanted to make it a powerful scene that told you what the whole point of the series was. The message behind this in the context of Jinx choosing to walk away/leave Piltover to break the cycle of death is basically her leaving to turn a new page/making a fresh start.
And so far, this is all I’ve got and I truly believe Jinx is alive (maybe we’ll get it confirmed eventually or maybe we’ll find out in a spinoff).
If there is anymore evidence you’d like to add, please feel free to share.
What actually happened to Jayce and Viktor in the end? And why didn’t Ekko’s Z-drive destroy everything within its blast radius?
TL;DR: the only timeline that could have worked was the one where Viktor gives Jayce the Acceleration rune, where Ekko invents the Z-drive, and where Jayce saves Viktorand gets his partner back.
Something we’ve seen pointed out is that the world rune that worked in this timeline was the Acceleration rune, which has the function of transportation through time and space.
Ekko’s Z-drive was built by inverting Jayce’s Acceleration rune (this is important later).
We know from his experiments that the limit for reversing time is only 4 seconds. Any further back and it causes catastrophic harm to his surroundings. It’s implied that the further he overextends his Z-drive, the more disastrous the damage and radius of effect.
In the final battle against Viktor, we see Ekko overextend his Z-drive far beyond 4 seconds. Then, he yeets it at Viktor, whose mask is shattered from the impact.
We know that turning back time beyond 4 seconds causes catastrophic destruction of the surrounding areas: Jayce and Viktor, and perhaps countless others should have been caught up in the blast. But instead, we see something different:
Time stands still for a moment, courtesy of the boy who shattered time.
Now things happen all in a manner of seconds: In the astral plane, we see Viktor comment on the anomaly that Ekko has created.
It’s something that Viktor as smart as he is, couldn’t have conceived— leave it to Ekko (and lest I forget, Heimerdinger and alt-Jinx) to show them all up.
This is debatable, but I firmly believe that Viktor with his awareness of all time and space, could have escaped or even survived the explosion.
It’s only Jayce, the only person who could show him what he showed him, that gets through to him in the end and convinces him to give up his Glorious Evolution.
“In all timelines, only you can show me this”. Ekko is the catalyst but Jayce was the key.
Jayce returns the Acceleration rune to Viktor which kicks off a chain of events. The souls under Viktor’s control are freed from his grasp. Back in the real world, and back to the explosion, we see the following happening almost simultaneously:
The blast from the Z-drive extends from Viktor’s reach to Jayce’s
The Acceleration rune embedded in Jayce’s wrist starts to glow from being activated by Jayce and Viktor in the astral plane
Jayce and Viktor are absorbed into the gem and the gemstone blips out of existence
Recall that the Z-drive was created through an inversion of the Acceleration rune. To multiply something by its inverse, is to divide it by itself. The Acceleration rune multiplied by the Inversed Acceleration rune, cancels out the effect of the other: nullifying both the anomaly from the Z-drive but also the rune.
This explains why there was no larger explosion. Viktor and Jayce (who chose to stay) sacrificed themselves and took themselves out of the equation. Jayce and Viktor were the anomalies— just like the Z-drive should not have existed, neither should have Hextech.
Through all the timelines and permutations of runes that Viktor tried, the only combination that could have worked was in the timeline with the Acceleration rune. It couldn’t have worked if it was any other rune, if Ekko had never invented the Z-drive, or if Jayce had never convinced Viktor to give up his path of destruction, and got his partner back.
ALT
