Vox Machina delves into its darkest chapter yet, but it will also have a few surprises in store for its most loyal fans
The fourth season of the animated series will allow us to explore the characters' emotions in greater depth, but not everything will be exactly the same as in the original role-playing game.
How do you condense months and months of a tabletop role-playing game into just six hours? It's a question every Critical Role fan asks themselves before watching the new season of The Legend of Vox Machina, or when watching the series on Prime Video, The Mighty Nein. However, we've now been able to put it directly to the series' creative team. We spoke to the entire Critical Role team in a series of interviews with its members, starting with half the cast comprising Marisha Ray, Matt Mercer, Ashley Johnson, and Travis Willingham, which you can find below.
The question isn't so much how to condense what fans already know will happen, but rather how to surprise them. Because what lies ahead for Vox Machina is a very dark chapter. Ashley Johnson, who plays the gnome cleric Pike Trickfoot, will shoulder much of that responsibility with a performance that, they hope, will thrill everyone.
"Scenes are gonna be different in the animated series because we can explore some of those emotions a little bit more than we did at the table, which you definitely see that in this season, at least in terms of Pike's journey and what she goes through."
To which her co-star Travis Willingham, who plays Pike's inseparable barbarian companion Grog Strongjaw, adds:
"I think a good way to say it is that even with an established fan base that knows what happened in the live stream of Vox Machina, our job is to try and make some twists and turns so that there are new things and things that will unsettle those expectations and still arrive with a satisfying bite at the apple once the season is over with.
"We are guilty of being quite fond of cliffhangers, so I'm sure there's no danger of that happening, but we certainly want to tee up the end game of this campaign, and I think everything will be just fine."
Don't miss the interview with the members of Critical Role, where we also speculate on the future of animation for the team, and whether there's more Vox Machina beyond the series.
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