Timebomb

"I had a crush, until you started talking to the gun."

- Ekko to Jinx in League of Legends

Timebomb is the het ship between Ekko and Jinx from the League of Legends fandom.

Arcane
Ekko and Jinx were childhood friends in Zaun and were the two youngest among Vi and the others. As children, the two were close. But after Vander's death, the both of them went in very different directions. Jinx started working with Silco, who took her as a daughter, while Ekko funded the Firelights, being the leader of an inclusive and prosperous group, underground.

The first time Jinx and Ekko meet each other after the time skip is during one of Silco's Shimmer smuggling missions. Jinx was guarding the Shimmer when Ekko and the Firelights started attacking the flying ship, trying to take the Shimmer out. At that moment, Jinx attacked and killed many of Ekko's friends. The next time they meet, Ekko and the Firelights attack Jinx directly, while she's with Vi, and they take Vi and Caitlyn with them. After Ekko finds out that Vi is not working with Silco, he has a heart-to-heart talk with her about her sister. Ekko tells her that Powder is gone, and that all that it's left of her is Jinx. Of course Vi disagrees completely, saying she knows her sister. And in that moment, Ekko takes her to see a mural painted on the shelter, with portraits of "everyone we've lost", with Powder (young Jinx) painted among them, symbolizing that Powder is lost for him now. He turns to Vi and tells her that Jinx is now working with Silco not because she's forced to do so, but because she wants to.

The two used to play a paintball game as children where Powder shoots at Ekko at a distance and the latter dodges while running towards her. Ekko wins if he manageges to reach her without getting hit; and if he does get hit, Powder wins. A parallel to this game of theirs is made in the present when Ekko faces Jinx as an enemy when they meet at the bridge after Jinx's attack. Jinx starts with a scoff, calling Ekko "the boy savior". He starts swaying his stopwatch in his hand, wordlessly inviting Jinx to one last game together, Jinx laughs and plays along. While in their childhood memories, Jinx used to be the winner, this time, the game ends with Ekko winning thanks to him remembering her shooting pattern. When present day Ekko starts the timer on his stopwatch the music stops abruptly, along with their childhood memories, as Ekko nimbly dodges her shots while closing the distance between her and him. He ends up pinning Jinx down with a series of strikes. When he's about to give her the finishing blow, he stops and looks directly into Jinx's eyes, which are now a gray color, just like Powder's were, causing him to hesitate, & see his old friend in Jinx's face. Ekko's expression causes Jinx to stop struggling and she gives him a genuinely sorrowful smile, before detonating a chomper grenade right next to them in a attempt to take them both out at the same time."Oh, I feel like these characters could be in love now."

- Amanda Overton, referring to the animation from the Ekko and Jinx bridge fight on Arcane: Bridging the Rift

League of Legends
Ekko has a voice line when taunting Jinx saying that he had a crush on her, until she started talking to the gun.

Legends of Runeterra
Ekko has a voice line when Jinx is summoned onto the field as an ally, commenting that he misses her so much. And another one if she's summoned as an enemy where he will comment, "Powder I...never mind" in a somewhat anguished tone.

League of Legends
The ship is fairly popular in the League of Legends fandom due to the fact that in the game, Ekko used to have a crush on Powder before she went mad, changed her name to Jinx, and started talking to her guns. There is also a voice line in Legends of Runeterra where if Ekko and Jinx are summoned together as allies, Ekko will remark on how he "misses her so much".

Arcane
In the Arcane fandom the ship has found a new wave of steadily growing popularity despite some divisiveness from naysayers due to the two not having many moments together in the show, and when they do, they are fighting each other. The fandom support for the ship in the show mainly stems from them being formally close childhood friends who spent a lot of time together; which was one of the focal points in the music video for Arcane's theme song, "Enemy" by Imagine Dragon's & JID; and that the co-producers of Arcane confirmed it to be canon to the show. The ship was also strengthened in the fandom thanks to the tension between the two during the bridge fight and the exchange of expressions they gave to each other right before Jinx sets off the grenade in an attempt to kill both herself &, Ekko.

Right now any romantic feelings between the two have yet to have been seen, and is currently just speculation on the fandoms side, hoping that the two find a way to reconcile with each other; which might lead the way for such feelings to develop in later seasons of the show.

This ship has a large amount of artworks and fanfiction. And it currently has 750+ works on AO3 where they are either the main ship or heavily featured.

Fandom
FAN FICTION

TUMBLR

Trivia

 * Their ship name is a reference to Ekko's time manipulation abilities & Jinx's explosives,
 * They have some interactions in the game.
 * In LOR, when an ally Jinx arrives, Ekko's card says "Man, i miss you so much".
 * In LOL, Ekko says "Guns... Original" when he encounters Jinx.
 * In 'Tales of Runeterra: Pilltover' Ekko uses the hextech battery core Jinx stole to make a one-wheeled propulsion skateboard capable of flight.
 * Since Arcane's premier there have been various LoL marketing promos that feature Ekko & Jinx together both for the show and other avenues of the League of Legends IP.
 * Riot music showed the two together in the Music AU where they attended the Grammy's and the Billboard music awards.
 * During the 2022 Summer Star Gaurdian event the Official League of Legends Brazil Twitter account hosted a 1 day event where Star Guardian Jinx and Ekko took over (hacked) for there own AMA. The Brazilian voice actors for the character released a audio intro and outro playing as them complete with back and forth banter which continued during the entire AMA.
 * A dev diary video for Riot's upcoming League of Legends fighting game currently codenamed "Project L" showed updated gameplay in a vertical slice demo, that started with and heavily featured both Ekko and Jinx mimicking their duel from the bridge seen in Arcane and also being each others assist's during their matches