In the seventh episode of The Legend of Vox Machina, "Cloak and Dagger," steampunk gunslinger Percy faces off with someone from his past, the devious Anna Ripley. After a shootout, he offers her mercy. Instead of taking it, she shoots him in the chest, killing him.
Vox Machina is based on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the troupe of voice actors from Critical Role, and Percy's death also happens in the campaign. However, in that instance, the rest of the team rushes Percy to a temple and revives him, something you can do in D&D. On the show, his death is less fleeting.
“In the campaign, we were able to bring him back very quickly, but I think that can be something that loses its gravity if you’re constantly able to revive somebody who has died over and over again,” Vox Machina star Laura Bailey (Vex’ahlia) told Polygon. “So in order to make us sit with it and experience that grief, I think it needed to be extended.”
Travis Willingham, who voices the barbarian Grog and who also writes for the show, agreed. “We wanted death to feel consequential,” he said. “We wanted it to have weight, otherwise it would just feel flighty and not a big deal if a character goes down. And so this was really a time to get a gut check about what is important around these characters and really how fragile they can be and how temporary some of this stuff is, if you’re not careful.”
Will Percy be revived on The Legend of Vox Machina?
Amazon releases three episodes of Vox Machina at a time, which means fans got to watch two more following the episode where Percy died. We've already seen consequences, particular for Vex’ahlia, who was in a romantic relationship with Percy.
"Everyone doesn't really know how to deal with this," star Taliesin Jaffe, who plays Percy, told Entertainment Weekly. "Everyone is mourning this moment of mortality and not coming together the way they should. The back half is a lot of figuring out how a family reacts to tragedy. The right death in a family can mean that no one ever talks to each other ever again. Just suddenly some gravity vanishes and there's a whole bunch of people who were linked who suddenly aren't. Sometimes it's the opposite, and that really is the question."
So everyone is broken up about this, onscreen and off. But will this last? Is Percy coming back? Like we said, he's revived in the original D&D campaign, but whether he stays dead on The Legend of Vox Machina remains an open question.
Based on Laura Bailey saying they wanted the aftermath of Percy's death to feel "extended," I suspect he'll be back sooner or later. But we'll have to keep watching to be sure; Amazon will drop the final trio of episodes from Vox Machina season 3 next Thursday, October 24. It's unclear at this point whether the show will get a fourth season, but Amazon is adapting another D&D campaign from Critical Role into an animated series:
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