The Legend of Vox Machina
It is an anomaly of anomalies: A television show that broke records before it was ever produced. A group of renowned voice actors (if you’ve watched cartoons, English-dubbed anime, or played video games in the past 20 years, you’ve heard their voices) decided to start streaming their weekly Dungeons & Dragons game. What resulted was a viewership on Twitch and YouTube that reached over one million per episode for Critical Role. Official D&D publications were based on their dungeon master, Matt Mercer’s, original campaign setting. When the idea came to create a one-hour animated special, they sought $750,000 on Kickstarter with a 45-day window. They broke $1M in the first hour and over $10M by the close. The result was adapting the one-hour special into a series. That is the origin of the Amazon Prime Original, The Legend of Vox Machina.
The opening episodes (three in all) introduce us to the world of Exandria, the characters, and their adventures in and around the city of Emon. We first meet the eponymous mercenary company during the classic D&D trope of a tavern brawl, which they arguably win but outright fail to properly pay for. Desperate for coin, they answer the call to adventure from Ye Olde Job Board in town looking for souls brave or foolhardy to track down a huge, lightning-breathing blue dragon cutting a swath of destruction throughout the land. There’s a lot more than meets the eye to this challenge, the dragon itself, and Emon’s High Council (voiced by Game of Thrones’ Indra Varma, Khary Payton of The Walking Dead, and Doctor Who’s David Tennant!) However, one of the twists is that Vox Machina is also greater than they seem and succeed (or merely survive) by improvisation and a little dumb luck.
Fans of the streaming games will notice some deviations from the original plots, but that’s to be expected for the sake of accessibility and brevity as multiple 3+ hour episodes of gameplay easily translate within a standard 25-minute episode. It’s those new to the player/actors of Critical Role and the story of Vox Machina who may need a little help navigating. The Exandria setting is high magic, grand level fantasy. There are sorcery-powered airships transporting our protagonists about the countryside and the party’s prim nobleman, Percy, carries pepperbox revolvers with enchanted bullets.
Those used to grim and gritty properties like Conan or The Last Kingdom may feel a bit lost. Legend of Korra fans will be right at home with the setting but, make no mistake about it, this is not Nickelodeon fare. After Vox’s healer Pike (Blindspot’s Ashley Johnson) seals up the arteries of hulking Goliath, Grog Strongjaw, he’s likely to down a barrel of ale and hit the brothels with lusty Gnomish bard, Scanlon. Scanlon focuses his magic spells via either a belt buckle or codpiece to obvious effect. Nudity, language, and graphic violence warnings more than apply and the end of episode three opens the door to a dark road for one of the party members.
One variation from the original two-year and 115 episode campaign/season is that Matt Mercer has stepped aside to let the denizens of Exandria be voiced by others (as he had played all other NPCs during actual gameplay). Voice acting legends like Stephen Root and Grey Griffin are heard along with the likes of Dominic Monaghan (LotR trilogy, Lost) and The Hound himself, Rory McCann. Mercer does appear often, however, as a recurring villain, and Easter egg hunters will find his animated doppelganger pop up occasionally.
The Legend of Vox Machina is the first animated D&D property since Saturday mornings in 1985 and the first non-video game property of any acclaim since then as well. As fun and interesting as the show seems, the real intrigue is in its origins and potential future. Financed by fans and with a plot largely written by committee improvisation, the appeal of community and self-ownership is in Vox Machina’s veins. Will any subsequent seasons require another transfusion via Kickstarter? Will we see similar projects go “mainstream” from streaming games to streaming services? Will the uptick in play since COVID-19 forced many to lockdown and a feature film currently in post-production lead to increased interest or potential burnout? Anyone can speculate on these factors but, with a perfect critic’s score as of press time, it likely won’t be any fault of the show when it comes time to find out.
