Critical Role's Matt Mercer teases new perspectives in Mighty Nein TV show

Critical Role is the name given to a group of voice actors, headed up by game master Matt Mercer, who play Dungeons & Dragons campaigns on stream. They've become incredibly popular, recently selling out a live show at London's Wembley Arena and adapting their first campaign into a successful TV series on Amazon Prime Video: The Legend of Vox Machina.

Vox Machina was the first campaign Critical Role took part in. After that came The Mighty Nein, which ran from 2018 through 2021. The third campaign, Bells Hells, is ongoing. All three campaigns take place in the fantasy land of Exandria, although each member of the troupe plays new characters every time.

After the success of The Legend of Vox Machina, it's no surprise that Amazon has also ordered an animated series based on The Mighty Nein campaign. And since the show doesn't have to always stick to the perspectives of the party members, it can explore the story in ways the campaign couldn't. "We're heavy in development on Campaign Two's animated series right now, and it's coming along so well," Mercer told Business Insider. "And because it's in animated form, we get to see other perspectives of the narrative as opposed to just the Mighty Nein's journey."

"We'll see story threads that follow members of the Cerberus Assembly and Essek and the Dynasty. Things that we didn't get to see in the campaign, we now get to explore as part of the animated series."

In The Mighty Nein campaign, the Dwendalian Empire is at war with the Dynasty. Essek Thelyss is a time-binding wizard who became a fan favorite, but he was an NPC played by Mercer, not a player character inhabited by one of the cast. On a TV show, everyone is an NPC, so there's no limits on who we can spend time with.

We don't know when The Mighty Nein will make its debut on Amazon Prime Video, although it will probably be a while. Hopefully the third season of The Legend of Vox Machina will be along sooner, although we haven't heard many specifics on that front either. Anytime you wanna open up about that would be great, Amazon.

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