The Legend of Vox Machina season 3 is set to premiere on October 3rd. It’s been two years since we left our protagonists in a bit of a pickle. With everything at stake, our heroes face the remnants of the Chroma Conclave. Spreading like wildfire across Tal’Dorei, our band of misfits must rise to the occasion, battling their inner (and outer) demons. In a press conference, we sit down with the cast who tease what’s to come in this latest season.
Last We Left Off in The Legend of Vox Machina
When it comes to fighting dragons, sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend. For those familiar with the original campaign, there will still be some surprises, says, Matthew Mercer:
They managed to fell one of their numbers, but others exist. There’s a possible dubious conversation with one of them, an impossible alliance. The search for these vestiges means defeating the Conclave part of it leads them, indeed, to hell. That was part of the campaign to a degree, we’ve been able to expand upon in some unique and surprising ways. We’ve gotten to even spotlight some of the non-Vox Machina characters of the world a little more and spend more time with them to a degree.
Travis Willingham chimes in:
I think part of it, as we were considering story beats and moments and how we wanted the show to approach this culmination with the Chroma Conclave, we’re always looking for ways to improve or economize or maybe put a new shine on some moments now that we have this second chance of telling them. But we’re also trying to tee up things down the road, not just in this show, but also in The Mighty Nein. We’ve had years and years of gameplay since these episodes were played the very first time. And so we’re always trying to go back and seed things early if we can and provide something new for our audience that thinks they know what to expect. If we can unsettle them just a little bit, we hope to level the playing field in terms of who’s viewing what.
Season 3 ups the ante. Leaving audiences to wonder how Vox Machina is getting out of this one unscathed. With Thordak (voiced by the late, great, Lance Reddick) at the heart of Emon, Voragal (Liam O’Brian), and Raishan (Cree Summer), the odds are not in their favor. Desperate to finish off the dragons once and for all, the party is lead straight to hell for a vestige. No, really.
Finding Light In The Dark
Despite the gloom and imminent doom, there is always hope. For fans of Critical Role’s stream, the first campaign was sprinkled with romance. Most notably between Vex’ahlia (Laura Bailey) and Percy (Taliesin Jaffe) as well as Keyleth (Marisha Ray) and Vax’ildan (Liam O’Brian). While the first two seasons bread crumbed these these relationships, we finally get to see them come to fruition, teases Taliesin Jaffe:
It’s rare in an animated series, it’s rare in television, in general, to see what feels like a real relationship. And that’s something I’m really proud of. What we’re doing feels (at least to me) a lot more honest in the sorts of things that people talk about and deal with especially in stressful relationships.
Coming Full Circle
From their humble beginnings on the Geek and Sundry YouTube Channel to helping catapult Dungeons and Dragons to the mainstream, the cast is still pinching themselves. Now, Critical Role is already teeing up for the next adventure with The Mighty Nein animated series in the works, along with their 10th anniversary in 2025. The self-proclaimed “nerdy-ass voice actors,” could have never dreamed their game of D&D would turn into a global sensation, landing them right back in the recording booth, says Travis Willingham:
We grew up on animation and cartoons. We’re huge fans of voiceover performers throughout the decades. And so to be able to take this from the table of our living room into a studio and then to have all of these years worth of performances and moments and memories shared with our audience, but then produced for the screen in this way and have music added to it and sound effects and be able to have these incredible nerd-tastic conversations around what magic looks like and what the vestiges can be and how we want to portray these larger aspects of Exandria. That’s what we live for. It’s really not work. It’s just playtime every single day. And as Liam alluded to, when we get to come together and do these things together, there’s a small check-in that just kind of happens between all of us where we can see in each other’s eyes like, none of this makes sense. What an amazing ride. And it just feels like we’re some of the luckiest people to be able to do it.
The Legend of Vox Machina begins airing October 3rd on Prime Video.
