It’s often mind-boggling to remember that Critical Role started as a good old-fashioned Dungeons & Dragons game among friends. Creator Matthew Mercer and his gaggle of voice acting pals’ behemoth campaigns have spawned a multimedia fantasy empire, progressing from wildly popular weekly Twitch livestreams to novels, comics, a nonprofit, and now, multiple animated series on Amazon Prime.
Whereas the first Critical Role show, The Legend of Vox Machina, draws from the events of the team’s first campaign, their latest venture, The Mighty Nein, tackles their second. Set decades after the events of Vox Machina — which returns for a fourth season in 2026 — this series, premiering on Prime Video Nov. 19, succeeds in laying the groundwork for a darker, more sprawling fantasy epic whose familiar D&D contours of ragtag teamwork and improvisational discovery remain intact.
Mighty Nein’s first season is bookended between heists. In a thrilling opening scene, a shadowy band of thieves steal a powerful arcane relic known as “The Beacon” from the Kryn Dynasty. This relic contains countless past lives and has the power to reshape reality, so who better to ultimately set things right before the realm devolves into complete ruin than an offbeat band of misfits?
From the jump, The Mighty Nein benefits from a foundational confidence that Critical Role wasn’t initially afforded the first time around. After struggling to sell a series adaptation in Hollywood, the team launched a Kickstarter in hopes of producing a 22-minute special, only to raise a whopping $11.3 million. Even after Amazon Prime came knocking, Critical Role’s key players later admitted to feeling pressure to cram as much of Vox Machina’s sweeping story into Season 2 as possible in case the show wasn’t renewed.
Premiering years after Vox Machina established itself as a crowd-pleaser, The Mighty Nein has the newfound luxury of time (and not just because its episodes clock in at 45 to 50 minutes apiece, rather than 20 to 30). For (mostly) better or worse, the show’s first season often feels like a “session zero” — a D&D session that takes place before the start of a campaign, where Dungeon Masters and players discuss character backstories, expectations, and boundaries before kicking things off.
Over the course of the season, we get to know Caleb Widogast (Liam O’Brien), a scruffy human wizard hoping to scrounge up enough materials to get back to casting magic and taking revenge upon his former mentor; Nott the Brave (Sam Riegel), an alcoholic, crossbow-wielding goblin rogue; Fjord Stone (Travis Willingham), a half-orc sailor who gains mysterious magical powers after surviving a shipwreck; Mollymauk “Molly” Tealeaf (Taliesin Jaffe), a tiefling blood hunter and carnival worker with a penchant for tarot cards; Jester Lavorre (Laura Bailey), a spunky tiefling cleric whose imaginary best friend is a literal god; and hot-headed rookie monk Beau (Marisha Ray), who strikes out on her own after discovering that her superiors are in bed with the conniving Dwendalian Empire.
The Mighty Nein’s comparatively slower pace means that our core characters have time to breathe on their own and form satisfying, lived-in one-on-one relationships before getting tossed into an ensemble. The fact that they aren’t immediately thrown together in a “warlocks, monks, and goblins walk into a tavern”-style set-up also gives newcomers and Critical Role devotees proper time to enjoy exploring different corners of the world of Exandria, Game of Thrones-style.
Famed animation studio Titmouse — which also works on Vox Machina — handles The Mighty Nein’s colorful, anime-style animation, offering a much-needed reprieve from the desaturated, underlit, green screen-heavy visuals plaguing so many live-action fantasy shows nowadays. Given the series’ grittier political intrigue, the violence rendered onscreen shifts from the quip-laden, jaunty exploits of Vox Machina into colder, more calculated territory.
That’s not to say that The Mighty Nein’s leisurely pace doesn’t have its shortcomings. This approach also means that by the time the gang are finally in the same room, half the season is over; by the time they’re ready to get to work, the eight-episode season is already at a close.
The original campaign clocked in at a meaty 141 episodes spread across three years. The series adaptation has seasons’ worth of material to explore, and in the long run, pausing to examine who these characters are and why they (and the realm) need their messy, ramshackle found family so badly will pay off in dividends. In the meantime, though, longtime fans may find the first season’s scant episode count unsatisfying. Conversely, while the late-stage introduction of the Mighty Nein’s seventh member marks a huge reveal for Critical Role devotees, newcomers will likely be perplexed as to why this constitutes a season-ending cliffhanger.
On the whole, The Mighty Nein is far less interested in viewer hand-holding than its predecessor, which opened with a primer on Exandrian lore. Luckily, D&D’s well-worn fantasy tropes make the show’s plot beats easy enough to parse, even if first-time watchers might have to jot down a few notes. That Critical Role and its counterparts are now popular enough to trust mainstream audiences to invest in its fantastical quirks says a lot about how much nerd culture has evolved, particularly in the internet age.
It’s a fitting coincidence that The Mighty Nein is premiering mere days before the final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, another pop culture juggernaut credited with introducing D&D to a new generation. With that tale winding to a close, tabletop fantasy lovers can take comfort in knowing that, condensed as it may be, The Mighty Nein marks the start of yet another promising adventure.
