Review: Vox Machina season 2 rolls a natural 20

Season 1 of Amazon’s animated series Vox Machina won our hearts with its clever plot, beloved band of unlikely heroes and hilarious dialogue. Season 2 of Vox Machina is almost here, and we have an early review!

(Fun fact: “Vox Machina” means “Voice Machine” in latin, which is a good way to describe the voice actors behind the scenes. The whole show is based on Critical Role, a long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by a group of veteran voice actors. Nice play on words. Anyway.)

In season 1, we saw Scanlan, Percy, Vex’ahlia, Vax’ildan, Keyleth, Grog, and Pike go from zeros to heroes after taking down a dragon, Brimscythe, and getting rid of the Briarwoods, a vampire and necromancer who murdered Percy’s family and took over the city. Ah, sweet victory…that is, until the Chroma Conclave — a group of five fearsome dragons — arrived in the city of Emon with fire and blood on their mind. Season 2 picks up after this cliffhanger.

Vox Machina season 2 has more humor, violence, emotion, everything

Season 2 takes the humor and emotion from season 1 and dials them up to 11. Even knowing about certain plot points from following the campaign eight years ago, the show still managed to make me cry at a few points, and scream with joy at a few others.

A fair warning, though: the second season does have some changes and additions to the original Critical Role campaign that ran from 2015 to 2017. I can see some fans being bothered by it, but my advice to viewers is just sit back and enjoy the way this tale unravels. There’s a lot of plot to cover, and the changes that were made put all the pieces of the puzzle together very nicely.

This season is more intense than the last as well, so much so that I’m going to drop a TRIGGER WARNING here for violence against children. There are one or two instances where children are killed, and it’s in plain view. It happens quickly, but it still happens. Overall, the gore and violence is a bit dialed up from season 1, but it’s not done in a distasteful way and it is expected. After all, this is Dungeons and Dragons.

What I didn’t expect, though, was how emotional this season made me feel. As I watched and rewatched episodes, I’d catch little details I hadn’t noticed before, or I’d find myself putting my hand over my chest and saying “Ouch…”. It will definitely make you feel something, even if you’re already familiar with the plot.

Vox Machina season 2 is truly wonderful. There’s an excellent balance between funny and serious moments, the dialogue is absolute perfection (I have entirely too many favorite lines jotted down), the story unravels very smoothly, the animation is spot on, and there are some good twists that will leave you like Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV. I liked it more than the first season.

So get your D&D group together, turn the lights down low, and catch the second season of Vox Machina on Prime Video this Friday, January 20.

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