The Legend of Vox Machina‘s third season offers unexpected twists for Exandrian newcomers and longtime Critical Role fans alike, featuring some pivotal deviations from the original streamed version of Vox Machina’s Chroma Conclave arc.
The Legend of Vox Machina Season 3 Made Some Major Changes in Adapting Critical Role’s First Campaign
Change is bound to happen when adapting 100s of hours worth of Dungeons & Dragons storytelling into half-hour episodes of streaming television, but Seasons 1 and 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina stayed fairly true to the key moments and beats of Critical Role‘s first campaign. While tweaks to the main campaign and its characters were apparent in previous seasons, Season 3 enters uncharted territory. Here’s a look at some of the moments that caught even longtime Critters off-guard throughout the season.
Flashbacks to Pre-Stream Moments
Flashbacks of Kima and Allura’s adventuring days, Anna Ripley’s childhood run-in with Trent Ikithon, and the party’s meet no-so-cute with Percy De Rolo broaden the scope of The Legend of Vox Machina beyond the confines of the story originally told at Critical Role‘s table. While Talesin Jaffe’s pre-stream entry as Percy is familiar lore to Critters, adapting it to screen amplifies the emotional beats of the animated series’ narrative. Kima and Allura and Anna’s flashbacks add similar flavor to Season 3’s storytelling, simultaneously expanding upon Exandria’s pre-campaign lore and teeing up a future Mighty Nein nemesis, respectively.
Speaking of the Mighty Nein, Travis Willingham has teased that the animated adaptation of Critical Role‘s second campaign will likewise see some major changes from stream to screen (via Paste). Since the first teaser for the upcoming series features the initial meeting of Fjord and Jester, it’s likely this elaboration of pre-stream stories will continue into the Mighty Nein animated series.
The Timeline of Percy and Vex’s Romance
The rearrangement of Percy and Vex’s romance strongly demonstrates The Legend of Vox Machina‘s approach to change and adaptation. All the key moments in their love story, including their first sexual encounter, the infamous bathtub scene, and Vex’s influential resurrection monologue, remain intact from the stream; they have just been pieced together slightly differently. Instead of consummating their romantic friction after Percy’s death and resurrection, Season 3 shows the pair begin a friends-with-benefits situation prior to the gunslinger’s death, thus forcing Vex to confront her guarded nature through a slightly adjusted narrative lens.
Percy’s death itself is protracted in the animated series, teasing fans with the notion of perma-death tortuously between new episode drops.
The choice to overlap Percy and Vex’s dynamic with Keyleth and Vax’s, rather than explore them sequentially, enrichens the party’s core couples through the use of juxtaposition. While Keyleth and Vax’s romantic timeline isn’t rearranged as thoroughly as Percy and Vex’s, their core moments are mapped alongside the latter couple’s contrasting narrative. This leads to amusing moments like Percy and Vex’s sex scene being intercut with Keyleth and Vex’s extreme angst and beautiful ones like Vex realizing the importance of opening himself up to Keyleth after witnessing his twin sister’s regrets after Percy’s death.
Kashaw’s Shocking Death
Vox Machina’s core romances weren’t the only ones with Season 3 refreshes, and retroactively, Critters should’ve known they were in for trouble the moment Kashaw Vesh and Zahra Hydris share a kiss in “Thordak’s Throne,” wildly accelerating their slow burn friends-to-lovers storyline from Critical Role‘s original stream. A guest player character in Critical Role‘s inaugural campaign, Kashaw is portrayed on both the stream and The Legend of Vox Machina by Boy Meets World‘s Will Friedle. Though the cleric went on to have children with Zahra post-Campaign 1 and even appeared recently in Exandria on the Critical Role‘s spin-off podcast The Re-Slayer’s Take, Kashaw shockingly dies at the hands of Thordak in The Legend of Vox Machina‘s third season.
The retcon of Kashaw’s death serves many purposes; the first simply being that it packs a surprise for existing fans of the original iteration of Critical Role’s story. However, in a larger narrative sense, the death of a beloved ally solidifies the stakes of both the Thordak battle and Vax’s mantle as the Raven Queen’s champion. After Kash passes, the tremendous emotional weight of Vax’s newfound responsibility is demonstrated as the Raven Queen towers over his fallen friend in a tableaux visible to him alone.
Related: Who Is Dohla in The Legend of Vox Machina?
Pike’s Crisis of Faith
Due to scheduling conflicts, Ashley Johnson missed large swaths of Critical Role‘s first and second campaigns. This leaves advantageous wiggle room in adapting both Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein to screen, as granting Johnson’s characters a second chance to play a more complex and fleshed-out role in the story. Pike Trickfoot’s Season 3 story exercises particular forethought and long-term planning as her shaken faith in the Everlight helps cast dispersions on the efficacy of the gods as early as The Legend of Vox Machina. As Campaign 3’s Bells Hells weigh the morality of destroying Exandria’s pantheon in Critical Role‘s current story, Pike’s newfound complications lay a clear groundwork for themes that could be explored on a similar scale should Bells Hells receive their own animated adventure down the line.
Furthermore, a crucial player from Exandria’s ancient past is the one to sow the seeds of religious doubt in Pike’s mind. Luis Carazo’s Zerxus Ilerez, introduced in 2022’s prequel miniseries Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, was not yet a character who existed in Critical Role‘s canon at the time of Campaign 1. But the First Knight of Avalir’s inclusion in The Legend of Vox Machina provides more than just fan service for Calamity devotees, it streamlines the original “Vox Machina Go to Hell” story arc, retooling it to service Pike’s character development.
A Bard’s Lament (Reprise)
It seems that The Legend of Vox Machina viewers will never hear Scanlan Shorthalt’s showstopping accusation “What’s my mother’s name?!?” That’s because one of the most significant deviations between Critical Role‘s first campaign and its animated counterpart is the softening of an iconic Scanlan arc that culminates in “A Bard’s Lament.” While Scanlan’s relationship with his daughter Kaylie partially motivated his departure from the adventuring party, his drug addiction and embitterment about being taken for granted likewise played a role in the original stream. Though Sam Riegel’s performance in “A Bard’s Lament” is one of the most iconic in Critical Role history, The Legend of Vox Machina does Scanlan’s character development a great service by rooting his parting decision in love as opposed to addiction and resentment.
In the original Vox Machina campaign, these legendary events followed Scalan’s death and subsequent resurrection. Rather than dying, Scanlan falls into a comatose state that is broken by Kaylie in the homestretch of The Legend of Vox Machina‘s third season. Similar to the tweaks made to “Vox Machina Go To Hell,” this choice to temper the original tone of “A Bard’s Lament” streamlines The Legend of Vox Machina’s storytelling and stays focused on the show’s preliminary themes of love and family (both of the found and biological varieties).
The Legend of Vox Machina Season 3 is streaming now on Prime Video.
Published: Oct 24, 2024 07:26 am