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The story of the Zaun crime Lord Silco from Red Studios/Netflix's series Arcane.
Early Life
Not much is known about Silco's background. It is said that he and Vander were like brothers during their youth, and the two of them originally shared the same dream of liberating their people from Piltover's oppressive control, a goal that they were willing to go to great lengths to achieve. He and Vander were also close friends with a woman named Felicia. Some time later, Felicia told Vander and Silco about her pregnancy, as she was nervous about talking to her husband Connol about it and expressing concern about raising her daughter in the Uncercity. She told the two that they need to protect the Undercity not just for them, but for her daughter. Vander agrees with Felicia's sentiment and Silco led a toast using the words "blisters and bedrock". After sharing a toast, Vander suggests the name "Violet" for Felicia's daughter.
However, their happiest moments all changed when they launched an uprising against Piltover, which ultimately failed and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of their own people, including Felicia and Connol. After the uprising was over, Vander discovered Felicia's daughters Vi and Powder crying in grief over the sight of their dead parents and adopted them as his children. The remorse and sorrow that he felt over causing the deaths of so many innocent Zaunites also caused Vander to discard his gauntlets and lose his resolve to keep fighting for Zaun's freedom, much to Silco's chagrin.
Felicia's death drove a wedge between Vander and Silco, and eventually led Vander to attack Silco out of grief and attempt to drown him in Zaun's polluted rivers. Silco managed to fight Vander off with a knife and escape back into the underground, but nearly lost his left eye and suffered severe facial scarring as a result. This event severely traumatized Silco and radicalized him into becoming extremely ruthless in his quest for Zaun's freedom, to the point where he had no qualms with turning his own people into savage monsters in order to secure their independence from Piltover. In the years after the failing uprising and his falling-out with Vander, Silco used his skills to build a large criminal network in Zaun and eventually hired a rogue Piltovan alchemist called Singed to find a way to make the underground strong enough to fight against the Topsiders, which ultimately led to the creation of Shimmer.
Arcane
Getting Revenge
As Silco continued to build his criminal network over the years, many of the people who joined his cause were former members of Vander's crew who had lost faith in him over his passive approach towards Piltover. He also kept an eye on Vander's actions and waited patiently over the chance to strike back.
Several years later, Silco learned from Deckard, one of his teenage lackeys, that Vander's adoptive children had accidentally blown up a building in Piltover and that the Enforcers were searching all over the undercity for them. Realizing that this was his chance to get his revenge on Vander and seize control of the underground at the same time, Silco convinced Deckard to be the first human test subject for Shimmer. He also sought out a hotheaded rookie Enforcer named Marcus and told him the identities of the kids who had caused the explosion in Piltover.
Just as Silco had planned, Marcus was able to put enough pressure on Vander for the latter to give himself up to Piltover in place of his children. However, before Marcus and his boss, Sheriff Grayson, could take Vander with them to Piltover, Silco and Deckard ambushed them, killing Grayson and Benzo, Vander's second-in-command. When Marcus protested that this wasn't part of their deal, Silco tossed Marcus a bag of coins and then took Vander back to his hideout.
As he still respected Vander to an extent, Silco attempted to persuade his old friend to join him in the coming revolution against Piltover. However, Vander rejected the offer and told him that he wasn't the same person he used to be back when they were young. Enraged by this claim, Silco then tied Vander up and waited for his children to show up, knowing that they would eventually come to save him.
Eventually, Vi, Mylo, and Claggor arrived to rescue Vander, but realized too late that Silco had deliberately left him unguarded in order to trap them in. Although they nearly succeeded in breaking Vander out, a makeshift bomb made by Vi's sister, Powder, exploded before they could escape, destroying most of the building, killing Mylo and Claggor, and injuring Vander and Vi. Silco himself was nearly caught in the blast and only managed to avoid injury because Sevika pushed him out of the way just in time.
In a desperate attempt to defend Vi, Vander began fighting back against Silco's surviving henchmen himself with makeshift knuckles. Although he put up a good fight, he was ultimately overpowered by Deckard, who had empowered himself with Shimmer, and stabbed in the gut by Silco, who then tossed him into a pile of Shimmer vials. To Silco's surprise, Vander injected himself with a vial, drastically mutating his body and making him strong enough to easily strangle Deckard before he could get to Vi. He moved to kill Silco as well, but decided against it to save Vi.
Unwilling to allow Vander to get away, Silco pursued him with his remaining henchmen, only to find him seemingly dead, Vi nowhere to be found, and Powder in the middle of an emotional breakdown on the street. Unaware that Vi had momentarily abandoned Powder for unintentionally killing their foster father, Silco approached Powder and asked her where her sister was. Much to his surprise, Powder then jumped into his arms and told him that Vi had left her and was no longer her sister anymore. Realizing that Powder had been betrayed by Vi just like Vander had betrayed him, Silco sympathized with her situation, embraced her, and took her in under his care.
Rise to Power
With Vander dead, Silco quickly replaced his former friend as the undercity's next leader. He also built a massive criminal empire by selling Shimmer to his own people, brought the chem-barons together to manage his factories, and took over the Last Drop, Vander's former bar, which he transformed into a nightclub and his personal headquarters.
Despite having reneged on his deal with Marcus, the two of them remained in contact, with Marcus eventually replacing Grayson as Sheriff and acting as Silco's spy in Piltover. As a result, any investigations into Silco came up clean and never revealed any of his crimes, causing the Topsiders to believe that he was a legitimate industrialist and allowing him to regularly smuggle Shimmer to countries all over the world without ever having to worry about getting caught.
Meanwhile, Powder eventually became one of Silco's most feared and trusted subordinates. Having renamed her Jinx, Silco trained her in various ways until she grew into a skilled fighter and a gifted inventor, allowing her to create and design all kinds of weapons and gadgets to serve his cause. Most of Silco's crew became wary of Powder due to her mental instability, but even when they openly criticized her, Silco protected her and kept her by his side. In time, he came to greatly value her for her abilities and love her as his own daughter.
Troubled Reign
On the 200th anniversary of Piltover's founding, almost a decade after he adopted Powder, one of Silco's Shimmer shipments was sabotaged by the Firelights. Although Jinx killed most of the gangsters with her grenades, the Firelights still succeeded in destroying the shipment, leading Silco to deem the operation as a failure. However, instead of blaming Jinx for losing control, he gave her a pass after hearing her side of the story, telling her to take some time off to work on her gadgetry, and berated Sevika instead for failing to stop the Firelights from disrupting their business operations.
Feeling guilty for having failed Silco, Jinx decided to make it up to him by stealing a Hextech gemstone and several research papers from Jayce and Viktor’s lab in Piltover. During the heist, she cooked up a trap with her grenades to distract anyone who happened to be nearby, which killed six Enforcers and blew up a building. Although Silco was initially enraged to find out that Jinx had killed a bunch of Topsiders for seemingly no good reason and left him with even more of a mess to fix, he later approved of her actions when she showed him the gemstone and couldn't help but be impressed by her success.
Shortly after Jinx's attack on Piltover, Silco was visited by Marcus, who expressed his frustration with the deaths of his officers and urged Silco to give Jinx up, claiming that he would be doing Silco a favor by turning her over to Piltover. However, Silco sharply denied his request and suggested that he blame the Firelights for the attack instead. He then handed Marcus a bag of coins to give to the families of the Enforcers who were killed by Jinx, prompting the latter to take his leave.
Sometime later, Silco was visited by Marcus again, who revealed that Jayce had been given a seat on Piltover's ruling council and was currently investigating all the political corruption that existed in the upper city. When Marcus expressed his concern that they would both be caught if Jayce continued with his investigation, Silco handed him one of Jinx's grenades as "evidence" that the Firelights had been involved in the bombing and dared him to pull the pin if he wanted out of their arrangement.
Although Marcus decided against pulling the pin and left the room without complaint, Silco noticed that he was starting to question his loyalties and told Jinx, who had overheard their entire conversation from the rafters of his office, that she needed to weaponize the Hextech gemstone as soon as possible. When Jinx told him that she couldn’t do it due to the trauma she suffered from her last experience with the gemstone, Silco decided to take her out to the river where Vander nearly drowned him and told her how being betrayed by the man he once saw as a brother made him stronger than he ever was before. He advised Jinx to follow his example by letting Powder die, which he believed would make her strong enough to overcome her pain, and then baptized her in the water, encouraging her to let go of her past so that she could focus on fighting for Zaun's future.
Dealing With Dissent
Not long after his trip to the river with Jinx, Silco learned from Sevika that Vi was somehow still alive and had returned to Zaun to search for her sister, much to his surprise and shock. Realizing that Marcus had lied to him about murdering Vi, Silco came to his home and ordered him to finish the job, threatening to kill his young daughter Ren if he refused or failed.
After a great deal of searching, Silco eventually found Vi and Caitlyn, her Enforcer friend, hiding out in the slums of Zaun, having bribed the locals with Shimmer to get their exact location. He then tossed several vials to the local addicts and ordered them to attack Vi and Caitlyn, but was foiled when Vi managed to knock over a giant neon sign, causing it to crash down on Silco and take out his henchmen. Frustrated at having failed to kill Vi, Silco returned to his office to find out that Jinx had tied Sevika up and learned the truth about her sister’s return, much to his shock and horror.
After releasing her from her restraints, Sevika informed Silco that a blockade had been set up between Piltover and Zaun, and that trade between the two cities had slowed down to a halt. Dismissing her concerns, Silco headed out to go find Jinx, but was convinced not to by Sevika, who told him that Jinx would come back to him when she was ready and suggested that he instead attend an unscheduled assembly with the chem-barons, who were displeased with how the blockade had caused a substantial dip in their profits.
During the assembly, the chem-barons accused Silco of failing to rein Jinx in, as it was her attacks that caused the blockade in the first place, and suggested giving back the gemstone to the Topsiders in hopes of resuming their businesses with Piltover. When Finn, one of the chem-barons, mocked Silco’s dream of liberating Zaun from Piltover’s control when he wasn't even capable of controlling his own daughter, Silco decided to teach them a lesson by having Sevika gas the room with the Grey. As Sevika passed masks around the room so that the chem-barons wouldn’t suffocate, Silco told them how the Grey used to plague the underground when he was young and berated them for their complacent mindsets and clear disinterest in attaining true freedom from Topside. After the chem-barons decided to back down, Silco left the room, having made his point.
Later, after returning to his office, Silco was confronted by Jinx, who repeatedly stabbed him with his eye injection syringe and angrily accused him of lying to her about her sister’s death. Silco replied that he didn’t know that Vi survived, as Marcus was the one who lied to him about her in the first place, and that he wanted to protect her from further trauma. When Jinx wasn’t persuaded by his words, Silco reminded her of how he was the one who took her in after her sister abandoned her and that in the end, he was her only true family. He then convinced Jinx to finish weaponizing the gemstone and emphasized its importance by telling her that he needed her more than ever, prompting a tearful Jinx to give him a proper injection and leave the room.
After Jinx's bloody confrontation with Ekko on the Bridge of Progress, Silco arrived on the bridge to find her gravely wounded from her own grenade and clenching the gemstone in one hand. Worried for her life, he took her to Singed and ordered him to operate on her. When Singed warned him of the possibility that she wouldn’t survive the treatment, Silco refused to give up on Jinx and stated that he couldn’t let her die. Singed understood this sentiment, as he once had a daughter himself, and then rendered Silco unconscious with a chemical injection so that he wouldn’t interfere with the surgery. Silco later woke up to find out that Jinx was gone, with Singed in the middle of cleaning up his tools. Grabbing a knife, he shoved Singed up against a nearby wall and demanded to know what he did to Jinx; Singed responded by stating that he did what was asked of him and saved her life.
Offer for Independence
After Jayce’s assault on one of his Shimmer factories, Silco arrived at the destroyed compound with Renni, Finn, and Sevika to inspect the damage the Topsiders had done and discovered that the boy that Jayce accidentally killed was Renni’s son. When Renni angrily demanded to know if he was planning on taking revenge on the Topsiders for murdering her son, Silco replied that she should’ve been glad that her son was fortunate enough to die for the cause, which only angered her further.
Later, while reading through a letter sent to him by Jayce, Silco was confronted in his office by Finn, Renni, and Sevika. When the two chem-barons made it clear that they were here to kill him, Silco lectured them about their lack of loyalty to their fellow Zaunites and insulted them as spoiled brats who took all they had for granted. His speech about loyalty was enough to convince Sevika to take his side, who killed Finn by slitting his throat. After maliciously mocking Renni for siding with Finn by claiming that he would have had her son killed for this if he wasn’t already dead, Silco ordered her to get out, commended Sevika for not falling for Finn’s offers, and went right back to reading his letter.
Silco later met Jayce at the waterfront and after learning that the latter only wanted to negotiate because he didn’t want to be responsible for a Zaunite genocide, he laid out his terms for peace, which included free trade routes, blanket amnesty, sovereignty, and unrestricted access to the Hexgates. Jayce accepted his demands without much complaint, provided that Silco agreed to shut down his remaining Shimmer factories, return the gemstone, and hand Jinx over to Piltover so that she could be punished for her crimes. Although Silco was completely fine with Jayce’s first two conditions, he was horrified by his third and last condition, and attempted to get Jayce to change his mind by claiming that Jinx had only launched those attacks on his orders. Unfortunately, Jayce was not persuaded by his words and made it clear that this was a one-time offer, leaving Silco with the impossible decision of choosing between his dream and his daughter.
It was at that point that Silco finally came to understand why Vander had abandoned their dream of freedom for his family and took the time to drink out his frustrations at a statue of Vander that was built in the Lanes. However, he failed to notice that Jinx was hiding behind the statue and had overheard every word he said about Jayce’s offer. Having come to the misconception that he was planning on betraying her to the Topsiders for his dream of independence, she knocked him out and dragged him back to his original hideout where they first met almost a decade ago.
Silco later woke up to find out that Jinx had tied him up along with Vi and Caitlyn, and brought them together to have a “tea party” of sorts. After failing to convince Vi to kill Caitlyn, Jinx ungaged Silco, who told her that Vi would only betray her again in the end and that he never had any intention of selling her out to Piltover, as he regarded her as his daughter and would prefer to burn Topside to the ground than to hand her over to them. His words moved Jinx emotionally, but before he could convince her to free him from his restraints, Caitlyn broke free from her ropes and threatened to kill Jinx with Pow-Pow if she didn’t drop her pistol first. After putting the gun down and feigning surrender, Jinx then charged at Caitlyn with inhuman speed and punched her in the face before she could react in time to defend herself, knocking her out cold and taking back Pow-Pow from her hands.
Death
Silco then told Jinx to finish Caitlyn off, but before she could move in for the kill, Vi pleaded with Jinx to remember their late loved ones in the hopes that she would spare Caitlyn and revert back to her old self as Powder. This caused Jinx to suffer a mental breakdown and have twisted, monstrous hallucinations of Mylo, Claggor, Vander, and her late parents. Realizing that Vi was hurting Jinx, Silco managed to wrestle one arm free of his restraints, grab Jinx's pistol, and aim it at Vi. Unfortunately, the sound of her pistol being cocked was enough to set Jinx off and caused her to start firing wildly with Pow-Pow, punching several holes through Vi's chair and fatally shooting Silco in the chest.
Horrified by what she’d done, Jinx ran over to Silco, cupped his face in her hands, and started crying upon realizing that he was beyond saving. Despite the fact that he was dying, Silco did not blame her for accidentally murdering him and softly reassured her that he never would have given her up to Topside for anything. He then tried to comfort her, telling her not to cry and that she was perfect the way she was, shortly before his heart gave out and he passed away in her arms.
With no need to deal with Vi and Caitlyn now that Silco was dead, Jinx abandoned her old identity as Powder and headed out to the edge of the harbor with the gemstone in hand, where it was revealed that she had successfully weaponized the gemstone through Fishbones, her signature rocket launcher. With tears still streaming down her cheeks, Jinx then fired Fishbones at Piltover’s council building in honor of Silco’s memory, destroying the upper half of the building and killing nearly half of the councilors inside, including Hoskel, Bolbok, and Caitlyn's mother Cassandra.
Legacy
| “ | Oh, it's a hell of a place. It says something about the late Marcus that he found imprisoning your sister to be a greater mercy than killing her. [...] A spark of rebellion still burns inside that husk, I see. No. Killing is a cycle. One that started long before Vander and me. And it will continue, long after the two of you. […] We build our own prisons. Bars forged of oaths, codes, commitments. Walls of self-doubt and accepted limitation. We inhabit these cells, these identities, and call them "us." I thought I could break free by eliminating those I deemed my jailors. But... Jinx... I think the cycle only ends when you find the will to walk away. | „ |
| ~ A hallucination of Silco talking to Jinx within her cell. |
Silco’s unexpected death suddenly left Zaun without a leader, creating a power vacuum and prompting the chem-barons to fight each other for control of the Lanes. This plunged the undercity into anarchy and ultimately resulted in the destruction of the chem-barons altogether, as they were either killed by their own reckless decisions or hunted down by Caitlyn as part of her mission to eliminate the rest of Silco's followers.
Knowing how much the location meant to Silco personally, Jinx buried him in the same river that he baptized her in, with his body sinking to the bottom. She continued to mourn his death for the next few weeks and spent most of that time aimlessly wandering around the undercity until she met Isha, a young girl with whom she formed an emotional bond and eventually adopted as her baby sister.
After Isha later tragically sacrificed herself to save her from being killed by Warwick, Jinx lost hope in her life and surrendered herself to the Enforcers. While wasting away in her prison cell out of grief for Isha's death, she had a vivid hallucination of Silco, who explained to her that killing was a cycle that predated him and Vander, and would outlast her and Vi, and that the only way to exit the cycle entirely was to walk away. He also told her that people tended to build their own prisons in the form of their assumed identities, and used himself as an example of that by claiming that his war against Piltover was motivated by his desire to break free of the prison he had unconsciously created for himself. This hallucinated version of Silco then disappeared when Vi suddenly arrived at Jinx's cell, having swiped the keys from the guards in order to break her out.