Vox Machina creators preview changes coming in season 3 (and in The Mighty Nein show)

The third season of The Legend of Vox Machina is coming down the bend, and it's going to be a big one. This season will end the Chroma Conclave arc, which finds our band of misfit heroes facing down a conspiracy of dragons, and launch the franchise to new heights. "Season 3 is going to leave a mark," star Travis Willingham (Grog) told Entertainment Weekly. "It is going to test individual characters; it's going to test relationships, both familial and of a romantic variety; but it's also going to start to show the lines of division in this tight-knit family that is really starting to feel the pressure of the world and things even beyond the realm of Exandria. This is the first season where not everything is going to be the same at the end in the way that it started."

The Legend of Vox Machina is an animated adaptation of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign put on by Critical Role, a troupe of voice actors who have become world-famous for playing D&D for the masses. A few seasons in, it sounds like Willingham and his fellow cast and crew members are getting the confidence to go off the beaten path a bit. According to star Sam Riegel (Scanlan), characters who weren't part of the original D&D campaign will show up in the third season, and jaws will "hit the floor when they do."

The characters, who also include the druid Keyleth (Marisha Ray), the gnome cleric Pike (Ashley Johnson), the gunslinger Percy (Taliesin Jaffe), and the half-elf twins Vex'ahlia (Laura Bailey) and Vax'ildan (Liam O'Brien), will range further afield geographically as well. "We knew we were going to get far, far away from Emon and Whitestone," Willingham said, referring to the two main locations for seasons 1 and 2. "Our characters are definitely going to be using their passports, not just to leave the land, but in some cases leaving the realm. It's been amazing watching [animation studio] Titmouse try to adapt to the madness that we write."

It's interesting to contemplate what changes could be in store, but this will still be a climax to the series as we've known it up to now, with lots of characters — good and bad — returning. "You feel like there are three dragons and those are the bad guys, but that is definitely not the case," Willingham said. "Yes, there are three dragons and, yes, they are bad guys, but they are not the only ones. There are villains, both familiar and brand new, that will rear their heads and continue to menace our characters through the whole season — and possibly beyond."

The Mighty Nein show is "a complete departure" from the original Critical Role campaign

By "beyond," Willingham may be referring to The Mighty Nein, another animated Critical Role series that will adapt an entirely different campaign, with the cast from Vox Machina coming back to voice new characters. "It's so good," Willingham said. "We're deep in production. Everything is moving along smoothly. We could say really buzz-worthy things like 'it's bigger,' 'it's badder,' 'it's better.' It's just been an incredible thing to work on, but I think 2025 is going to hold all sorts of beautiful little nuggets that we'll finally be able to share with the world."

Critical Role already has a big presence online and on tour, and these Prime Video shows are just expanding the empire. "[The Mighty Nein is] really tonally different from Vox Machina, and I can't wait for the audience to get their first glimpse," Riegal said.

And while the story of Vox Machina has stayed pretty true to the original campaign up to this point, it sounds like the Critical Role team is going to start making changes to The Mighty Nein campaign right out of the gate. "It's almost like [how] we took season 3 of LVM with that slight divergence from what was really more of a canonical telling and starting to experiment with changing the storyline up," Willingham said. "The Mighty Nein is from the get-go a complete departure. You're still going to get the things you love and the story moments, but the way we've gone about it is a totally different approach and we think one that people will love. We're going to be sounding the alarm very early in that you're coming into the characters that you love, but a totally new story."

The Legend of Vox Machina will return for its third season on Prime Video on October 3, with episodes releasing three at a time every week. And it sounds like The Mighty Nein is on tap for 2025.

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