After four years, two of the most requested Fortnite skins are finally back on the menu, but fans are screaming for more

"It's been 3,000 years…" is an iconic gif I hope has been posted in response to the official announcement that a stack of fan-favorite Fortnite skins have returned after years on the bench. Having missed the chance to make their mark in the brightly-colored recreation of Springfield in one of the best battle royale games of the lot, you can, at the very least, have Jinx and Vi, the problematic Piltover personas from Arcane, bring their chaotic energy back to Fortnite around Hawkins, Indiana, where there are stranger things afoot than Homer Simpson drunkenly pottering around in his underwear.

The return of the Arcane Fortnite skins is, apparently, a pretty big deal. Big enough, even, for the co-founder of Riot Games, Marc Merrill, to star in a brief live-action skit announcing the drop on the game's Twitter. Marc scratches out another day on the "Days Since Arcane Skins in Fortnite" calendar on the wall of a largely white room (with a plant friend, yay) before getting a ping on his phone letting him know that, after 1,393 days without them, the skins would return the following day - November 29, 2025. And that's good given that November 30 was already scratched off in what I hope was simply collateral damage with the November 23 space.

While one commenter decrees, "this is literally the best thing you've done in the last two years" (come on, now), it's clearly not enough for some. "Can we get new edit styles of Jinx and Vi…?" asks another. They're still in their season 1 styles, but they do now come with cool Lego versions for the appropriate modes. But what about the rest of the Arcane crew? Orianna? Warwick would be cool. Caitlyn? The one with the rifle? Come on, Epic.

Others even took the chance to cry out for characters that never even appeared in the show. Being hyper-focused on the Arcane crew is understandable. The show reached an entirely different audience. But that hasn't stopped some wishing for characters like Ahri and Nidalee to drop from the bus, and even Tristana arriving as a sidekick. We get it, she's tiny. But if they can stuff shorties like Bart, Lisa, and even Rick and Morty's stumpier namesake into mechs, can't we get our little bandle gunner in a war machine? Corki could have set her up with a sweet rig. Yes, yes, he's yet to make his Arcane debut, too, but let me dream for my first ADC main, ok?

Anyway, the return of these new skins has, of course, stirred up some casual commentary and rumormongering. Why now, after all this time, are they back? Well, demand could be the one and only factor in the equation. But timing is key, and we only have to look at the Riot Games YouTube channel to get an idea of what's going on.

It was around a year ago now that the story of Arcane concluded on Netflix. For the past couple of weeks, the team has marked the anniversary of the end with a little docuseries detailing the creation and legacy of the show episode by episode. Could the return of the skins be a lead-in to an incoming announcement? It's possible, sure. But the signs aren't all there just yet. It really could just be an anniversary celebration for the sake of it. We know that character-focused spin-offs of the Arcane crew are in the works, though, so sure, maybe something new is on the horizon.

And perhaps we have good reason to believe something is afoot. After all, the arrival of Arcane Season 2 wasn't enough to will the Arcane skins back into the Fortnite shop. Jinx arrived with Season 1 back in 2021, with the Vi skin debuting as the first season petered out. Earlier this year, Marc chimed in on discussions to let eager players know that the skins wouldn't be returning "in the foreseeable future."

Turns out he can only see seven months down the line, as some of Fortnite's biggest skins are now back on the menu. Grab them while you can. If we're going off the current track record, who knows if they'll be back for a third time.