Full spoilers for Arcane season 1.

Hello, everyone. You stumbled upon one of my wordy texts, resulting from my brain's unstoppable need to delve into stuff. This time, we will be analyzing Silco's character and trying to pinpoint what he was trying to accomplish. Enjoy reading and please share your thoughts afterward. Cheers.

Introduction

Silco is one of the driving forces for the story and the conflicts within Piltover. He's portrayed as a villain and somewhat indirectly, as we don't get much of him just being, compared to the other main characters. I believe it's interesting to delve into what his objectives are and how he tried to accomplish them, his motivations and his behavior.

This topic is loosely related to my previous posts: The Arms Race and The Rocket Aftermath.

We don't know much about Silco, who he was and who he is. What we learn about him is from his confrontation with Vander, from his interactions with people in the undercity, from how him being in power changed the undercity, from a few personal scenes and from how he raised Jinx.

My main question is, as I watch and re-watch Jinx firing her rocket, did Silco want war? What did he work toward?

Note: I've purposefully changed or removed parts to avoid going too deep on Silco's character, to try to only focus on his objectives and the significance of Jinx's action.

Silco the insurgent / The dream of Zaun

First, Silco fought for the undercity, for his and Vander's vision, the nation of Zaun.

One area we have to speculate about is his early years and the first revolt, where the dream of Zaun may have originated. We know Vander was a leader, possibly the leader, and many followed him, perhaps Silco himself. Once the revolt was suppressed, Vander and Silco had a falling-out. In my mind, there are several possibilities:

• The expected: Vander being good and Silco being evil. Vander realized the cost of war and preferred to find another solution than fighting, while Silco would have argued to continue the revolt and for drastic measures. Vander stopped Silco, but avoided killing him, while Silco only became more enraged and fanatical.
• The reverse: Vander being evil and Silco being good. Vander lead them into war, until Silco opposed him and Vander almost killed him. From there, Vander became peaceful while Silco became hateful.
• The more nuanced approach: Vander and Silco being two leaders driven by the dream of Zaun. Vander decided to stop while Silco wanted to continue. They could have fought over many things: the leadership, the dream, the war, the means to fight, the children...

With Silco's ability to breathe as he is confronting the chembarons while poisoning the air, and with him exchanging with Finn on the undercity being an "enterprise", we can infer he is quite old and would have grown up and worked in horrible conditions, that the later generation did not experience. This would have been when and where he started forming his dreams of freedom and ideas of revolt.

When Silco captures Vander, he gives him a speech about their vision, about the nation of Zaun. Although they mention violence, hate and killing, Silco focuses on freedom, respect and opportunity as his objectives, that violence is necessary, that he is driven by their dream rather than by hate or pride. This is one important time where you would expect Silco to be truthful, meaning he at least believes what he is saying.

One notable line is Silco saying he just needs to make Piltover scared, implying it's about a show of force, not an open conflict. He knows how Piltover acts when the undercity revolts.

Silco the insurgent wished for freedom, respect and opportunity, not blood.

Silco the leader / The undercity's prosperity and misery

Then, Silco led the undercity, trying to achieve the dream of Zaun and prosperity.

After Vander dies, Silco takes over as the main force in the undercity. The evolution of the underground goes by during the time skip, and we see the changes: the Lanes, if not the whole undercity, are more advanced and lively, with industry capabilities for producing Shimmer and revenues from trading; they are starting to reach beyond Piltover and are unhampered by the enforcers, thanks to Silco having the sheriff, Marcus, in his pocket. My impression is that, in building his empire, Silco does make the undercity more prosperous and into a better position in regard to topside. This is the freedom, respect and opportunity Silco talked about.

However, Silco achieves that with his own way, which is not pretty: he rules like a crime lord, makes money from drug, exploits his own people, notably children, and hurt them by making them addicted to Shimmer. This is a contradiction in Silco's words: he speaks of freedom and independence, but enslaves his own people for what becomes his personal gain.

This is paralleled by how he handles Jinx. He truly believes he is right and wants to help her, at the same time he appears to manipulate her, deliberately or not, rather than really care for what she needs. He uses her as a malleable kid, talks about betrayal and rebirth. He makes Jinx into another one of him, either as a tool toward his goals or as an ally who can take over for him. He would have told her about his dream of Zaun (he mentions the sons and daughters of Zaun to her) and cultivated her hatred for Piltover.

After Vander betrayed him, and Silco was "reborn", he felt like the near death experience made him enlightened, and he developed a fatalistic and static worldview as well as a twisted mentality. He is convinced he is right and that he must do anything to achieve his ultimate vision, the nation of Zaun.

Silco the leader took power in the undercity and built his empire, prosperous but with people more crippled than ever, powerful but continually falling behind. He achieved some changes, got power for himself, and avoided open conflict with Piltover, but his old dream of Zaun feels far yet, even the one where he does it for his own ambition.

Silco the father / The dream just out of reach and the tragedy

Finally, Silco's dream and ambitions were overthrown by his love for Jinx.

As the situation degenerates between topside and the undercity, Silco's struggle for power and independence joins with his treatment of Jinx.

Silco yells at Jinx for killing enforcers, but then insists on her making a weapon, which would be the Hextech powered rocket launcher. He says that once they have that, topside will have no power over them. Building weapons for any reason can be warmongering, but Silco never explicitly wishes for war. Considering how he spoke to Vander and how he behaved once in control of the undercity, it seems like he truly just wants prosperity and independence, more than taking revenge or crushing Piltover.

When Silco and Jayce negotiate for peace, Silco demands free trade, amnesty, access to the Hexgates, sovereignty. He wants Zaun and he is suddenly very close to getting it. He appears ready to make concessions, by discarding Shimmer production and returning the gemstone, although his good faith in that could be questionable.

One thing Jayce says gets a reaction out of Silco: Jayce believes his side would annihilate the other. Silco does not look disdainful, or surprised. He quietly acknowledges that Jayce is right, because he was already aware and afraid. Zaun would have its people and Shimmer. Presumably Piltover would have Hextech weapons, an army, resources, allies, the Hexgates. If the undercity forced Piltover's hand, the result would be ugly but probably one-sided. That's the very reason Silco does not want war, only to put pressure on Piltover, and to strengthen his position, Zaun's position, by being a threat, not an enemy.

So Silco is about to get everything he ever wanted, from his own admission to himself and to Vander's statue just later. Only one thing prevents him from doing so: he would have to surrender Jinx, to give over his daughter. And he realizes he could never do it, that over time she became more important than his life dream.

Instead of the nation of Zaun becoming real, we get Jinx killing Silco, by instinct, to protect Vi. To exact vengeance for her and Silco, probably believing this is what Silco would have wanted, Jinx fires her rocket at Piltover. She likely kills most of the Council, which was in this very moment agreeing to peace and to Zaun's independence, making Silco's dream true for a second, before being obliterated by Jinx.

Silco the father had his dream, his one objective for decades, within his grasp. He would have discarded it all for the new center of his life: his daughter, Jinx, and his love for her.

Conclusion

The final moments make Silco, the main "villain" in Arcane, into a tragic character, like many others around him. He suffered under Piltover's rule, fought endlessly for a dream he believed to be right and what all his people wanted, got betrayed and almost died, stumbled upon a lost soul and tried to treat her as his daughter, he gave up his dream to keep her, and in the end Jinx betrayed him, killed him and destroyed his dream. Silco exerted himself for a cause he believes to be right, primarily for freedom, respect and opportunity, more than for war, hatred or vengeance. He proceeded toward this goal by doing awful things and did rise himself in power and in station, rather than the whole of his nation. In the end, he did not manage to accomplish his goal, except for making Jinx into someone broken like him.