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The members of Vox Machina have been through a lot in Prime Video’s animated series The Legend of Vox Machina. Over two seasons, audiences have gotten used to seeing them hunt for magical Vestiges, pledge themselves to gods and magical objects, and intimately learn dragon biology. With season three, the show is aiming to do something different: namely, apply some pressure on the party after all they’ve been through thus far and seeing if (and how) they crack.
At a recent press event attended by io9, the Vox Machina cast talked about how they continue finding new ways to adapt material they basically know in their sleep at this point. While they’ve all been voice acting for decades, it’s another thing to do that and also adapt your own material. After multiple seasons, the cast find they’ve improved along the way, and that no two seasons are exactly the same. Sam Riegel, who voices Scanlan, said that if Matt Mercer “kept us on our toes” DMing the Critical Role actual play campaign, the show’s production was equally challenging in its own right.
© Titmouse/Critical Role/Prime Video It isn’t just that the animation and writing have become “more and more complicated,” said Riegel. The cast also have to balance how the original campaign actually played out versus when and how the show chooses to diverge and do its own thing. In some instances, it’s the cast directly making these calls on the page; Riegel and Travis Willingham (who plays Grog) wrote several episodes in the first two seasons, and now Marisha Ray (Keyleth) and Liam O’Brien (Vax) have penned some for season three. Other times, it means using the new medium as a reason to break what’s considered a Dungeons & Dragons rule: splitting the party.
Season one largely had the characters all together, but two and three have broken the gang up into smaller groups for multiple episodes, followed by a reunion during a climactic battle. As Willingham noted, keeping seven main characters on screen at all times can be an animation nightmare, so they took chances when possible to “thin out” the party. These frequent splits had additional uses, such as letting the show cover more ground at a quicker pace. (See: the team getting their respective Vestiges over two episodes rather than dozens, like in the actual play.) It also better served the characters and their internal conflicts; with the party down a person (or three) in combat, or even when someone’s going through it emotionally, the “tension and stress” can build to a point where they rise up or break down.
Those moments make for some of the most memorable scenes in every Critical Role campaign, and even in Vox Machina alone, there’s quite a lot of them. Yes, the cast holds those moments near and dear to their hearts, and they want to do right by the fans (and themselves) in that regard as much as possible. When asked, Mercer and Laura Bailey (Vex) said the team doesn’t really debate about what to bring in so much as have “impassioned” conversations about what they all feel should be retained for the adaptation. While breaking the season down, they look at those moments and figure if they should go “close to where they were originally, or [in] places where they fit now within the narrative we’ve constructed.”
©Titmouse/Critical Role/Prime Video Along with more seasons to continue Vox Machina, that narrative will expand with another show based on Critical Role’s Mighty Nein campaign. According to Willingham, that show will feel noticeably different from Vox, from the primary cast’s dynamics to showing audiences how they all meet and come together as a group. Riegel followed up by describing The Mighty Nein‘s animated adaptation, as tonally different than Vox, along with being “more dramatic and in-depth.” And unlike Vox Machina, who all know they’re generally good people just looking to make some gold, the eventual Mighty Nein team will also have to “figure out whether they’re the good guys or not,” according to Willingham.
If Vox Machina’s campaign eventually grew into itself, Mighty Nein’s is where the cast began to stride and Critical Role turned into what it is today. For that campaign, Willingham said the cast “all stretched and flexed our muscles with what those characters could be,” and they want to bring that over to its adaptation. But whichever of the two adventuring parties you prefer, Riegel is confident fans of one will also enjoy the other’s show. The two series may be set decades apart, but they’re in production side by side, and are meant to play off each other. In fact, everything from the franchise essentially feeds into the shows: Ray described how the Mighty Nein show could be influenced by its own campaign and Vox Machina, along with Bells Hells, the Actual Play’s third (and current) campaign.
By Ray’s own admission, it’s a “very bizarre” but unique structure they’ve found themselves in, and they’ve been able to make it work. To O’Brien, this was a natural route for things to go, since the post-Vox campaigns each had major story elements that were carried over from their predecessors. “Adjusting things in ancient [in-world] history off of things that happened last week [at the table] is a fun tightrope walk,” he said. “The longer we do this, the richer the world gets.”
There’s a lot on the Vox Machina cast’s plate, between the two shows, current campaign, and other projects. Even with that, there was a feeling of excitement and anticipation among them during the press event, and they were eager to see how audiences take to the new season and the changes that’ve been made. Early on in our discussion, Ray said the first two seasons were about “establishing the characters and who they are.” For season three? “Now,” she said, “it feels like we’re really able to fight with the weights off.”
Legend of Vox Machina’s third season premieres on Prime Video in weekly, three-episode blocks starting October 3.
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