There’s never been a shortage of action and emotion in The Legend of Vox Machina, Prime Video’s hit adult animated fantasy series adapted from the web series Critical Role and their first tabletop campaign. But Season 4, which debuts June 3 with three episodes, begins with something different: a separated found family. And as the penultimate season (one more is officially on the way), kicks off, it’s clear the stage is being set for an epic endgame — one that brings the storylines of the past three seasons into focus.
“Every season before this, the season has started with a group together — uh oh, big, bad thing happens, go fight it. And I think to prepare us for this final arc, the last chapter of the story, we wanted to bring it back to what people, I think, really care about in the show, which is these characters and their relationship to each other,” says executive producer Sam Riegel, who voices bard gnome Scanlan Shorthalt.
He adds that even though the first few episodes contain all the things we’ve come to know and love in the series — adventure, humor, danger — “we wanted to make sure that everyone, all the characters, got to sort of express how they’re feeling, what their goals are, what they want out of life, what they’re regretting, what they’re hoping for. And so when we get into the action and the drama, of which there’s tons, everything is grounded in that hope or that desire to come back together as a team and repair things that they may regret. We wanted to start them separate, start them on their own journeys before reconnecting them and sending them on their final journey together.”
The seriousness of that final journey is what brings the group back together from their disparate adventures: barbarian Grog (Travis Willingham) and his buddy, gnome Pike (Ashley Johnson), have been off on their own adventures; half-elf Vax (Liam O’Brien) and druid Keyleth (Marisha Ray) have been on a quest to complete Keyleth’s leadership journey; and half-elf Vex (Laura Bailey and gunslinger Percy (Taliesin Jaffe) have settled in Percy’s home of Whitestone, along with Vex’s faithful bear, Trinket.
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“He was running the daycare at Whitestone,” confirms executive producer Willingham of Vex’s companion. “He’s gotten some positive and negative reviews lately, but mostly from slobber stains and from bringing kids things from the woods doing his best.”
“He should have been learning to animate himself,” jokes Riegel, “because that would’ve really helped.”
Another difference at the start of Season 4: the absence of Scanlan alongside the group. Last seen seeking a quieter life with his daughter Kaylie (voiced by Aisling Franciosi), his lack of presence opens the door for the addition of dashing fan-favorite human Taryon Darrington (voiced by Wayne Brady) and his mechanical scribe Doty, whose appearances have been a much anticipated one for Critters familiar with the Vox Machina campaign. And despite the group’s best efforts, “Tary” and Doty waste no time in making themselves honorary members.
“I’m really excited for the fans, new and old, to be annoyed with, and then fall in love with, Taryon Darrington, and get a glimpse of his backstory, where he came from,” says Riegel. “There’s also some characters coming up that will be familiar to our audience, but a shock when they are revealed.”
“It’s a great way to introduce some new landscapes, some new settings, and also to, I think, introduce the audience into what Vox Machina is experiencing as the season begins,” adds Willingham, teasing, “I hope we don’t see Scanlan again, just because Grog is really enjoying being the most handsome member of Vox Machina while he is gone. But he does miss his friend, and certainly, I think, Pike does as well.”
Prime Video
Speaking of Pike, as a faithful follower of her deity (The Everlight), the cleric saw her beliefs tested last season as she discovered newfound confidence in her abilities. In Season 4, fans can expect to see more of that journey. “There’s some new territory for characters that we haven’t seen in the previous three seasons, and I think watching Pike walk through the coals of a variety of different emotions is probably the most rewarding for me,” Willingham says. “We know Pike to be this very altruistic, optimistic, hopeful, healing individual, and she is just as human as anyone else. And she’s going to wrestle with some temptations, some demons, some doubts, and some things that are in some cases of her own creation and in some cases not. They’re from outside sources. And I think her journey is one that fans are really going to enjoy.”
Lucky fans in attendance at last summer’s San Diego Comic-Con got a sneak peek at a heist-inspired episode airing this season, written by cast members Ray and O’Brien. Its events aren’t things that were part of the original campaign — but they’re just as fun and memorable.
“It’s a bit of a departure stylistically from the rest of the series,” admits Riegel. “I think we were looking at Season 4, but also the last two seasons, Season 4 and 5, and trying to figure out what’s missing. We know we’ve got dark brooding dread coming. We know that we’ve got deep character moments, we’ve got personal journeys. What don’t we have that we need? And I think it was just — we need some fun. We need to see these characters break into a place and have a heist. We haven’t been able to do that yet because every season, including this, there’s so much that we have to pack in that we have to sometimes remind ourselves, hey, let’s have some fun with these fun characters. And Marisha and Liam just killed it.”
The plot inclusion also proved timely, as the Cobalt Soul — the place which Vox Machina attempts to infiltrate — plays a large part in a main character’s backstory in Prime Video’s animated series The Mighty Nein, which debuted last year. “It was a great chance to see the inner workings of the Cobalt Soul — what does it look like in a non-Beauregard Lionett Mighty Nein style — and also just the mixing up of roles and responsibilities,” says Willingham. “Seeing Percy and Keyleth have to be on that real technical side of things, and then Pike getting some new hardware that she’s never had before was also a lot of fun.”
Prime Video
With so much behind them and so much still ahead, what are the creators looking forward to fans seeing?
“The scale of the story is something we’ve been so proud of — having five chromatic dragons out there in the world was already a massive undertaking from an animation perspective, but now, we’re really leveling up and moving into other dimensions, other planes, really the size and scope of the story that the brilliant Matthew Mercer was weaving for us at the time,” says Willingham. “We’ve really taken to task the responsibility of putting it on a screen in the way that makes sense. And that’s a large undertaking. It’s a big deal, not just not reusing sets or worlds or play settings, but continuing to continue to expand and grow and take the story to places it’s never been before. And I think we find a lot of enjoyment in knowing that everything that we add on in Season 4 and going forward in Season 5 will just be slapping more clay on the statue that is Exandria through both [The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein]. And so we look at it as an opportunity to reveal more and more of this complex world that we have that’s dark and scary, but also a lot of fun.”
“I think the big thing that we’re trying to set up is that Vox Machina is going to slowly realize that there are different fates at stake here. There’s the fate of each member’s individual journey as individual people. There’s the fate of Vox Machina as a team, a family together, a unit. And then there’s, of course, the fate of Exandria as a whole,” says Riegel. “And I think over the course of this season, they’re going to realize that some of those fates are in conflict with each other and they’re going to have to figure out which ones are most important to them.”
The Legend of Vox Machina, Season 4 Premiere, Wednesday, June 3, Prime Video
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