The Mighty Nein finale proves its already better than Legend of Vox Machina

With The Mighty Nein season 1 complete (and streaming in its entirety on Prime Video), the spinoff series has already surpassed The Legend of Vox Machina. At this point, if you’re looking to get into Critical Role’s animated shows, you should just skip straight to The Mighty Nein.

After just eight episodes, The Mighty Nein has still barely scratched the surface of the Critical Role campaign that inspired it, which consists of 141 multi-hour episodes. However, unlike with Vox Machina, Critical Role has taken a far more measured approach in setting up the building blocks of the world of Exandria in The Mighty Nein. We know enough about the world, the interplay of politics and fractured communities, and even how magic is used by different individuals, to make it feel narratively and tonally compelling and cohesive.

While the two shows take place in the same world, they did not have the same beginnings. Critical Role’s first foray into making an animated series came in the form of a 2019 Kickstarter campaign to fund a 22-minute special titled The Legend of Vox Machina. After Critical Role raised a record-breaking $11.3 million (enough for an entire 1-episode season) Amazon quickly acquired the streaming rights and commissioned two full seasons. However, nobody knew if the series would continue beyond that, leaving Critical Role to wrangle hundreds of hours of D&D gameplay into 24 episodes. The show has since been renewed through season 5, with season 4 coming in 2026.

It’s no wonder then, that Vox Machina throws its viewers quickly into the world of Tal’Dorei with little to no explanation. Unlike The Mighty Nein, whose characters get detailed backstories before they meet up and become adventurers, the adventurers of Vox Machina already know one another in episode 1, and their relationships are established almost immediately with minimal emotional build-up. Keyleth (Marisha Ray) and Vax’s (Liam O’Brien) romance burns hot so fast that it’s only in later seasons we get to see it properly simmer and develop. In comparison, Fjord (Travis Willingham) and Jester’s (Laura Bailey) burgeoning romance in The Mighty Nein still hasn’t gone beyond obvious mutual pining.

With episodes at a little under half an hour, Vox Machina moves at a breakneck speed and never looks back to see if you’re keeping up. By the time season 2 ended, the characters still lacked the depth of the original actual-play campaign. It also meant that there were plenty of tonal inconsistencies throughout. One moment, our heroes are probing a dragon’s anal glands. The next, someone is getting slaughtered. This peeters out in later seasons of Vox Machina, which also gives its characters more room to breathe, but it creates a fundamental tonal dissonance that’s impossible to ignore.

The Mighty Nein doesn’t suffer from any of these problems. Even when Jester is drawing penises on holy statues, you never lose the sense that this is a more mature and grittier show, one that’s willing to allow its characters to tackle the mental and physical ramifications of what they go through. The immaturity of some characters, like Jester and Nott has more to do with actual character traits (like Jester being sheltered as a young girl and Nott’s self-hatred fuelling her alcoholism), rather than Critical Role just trying to cram in as many fart and poop jokes as possible.

The Mighty Nein’s careful pacing also allows for a season finale that doesn’t feel as though it needs to wrap up every unanswered question. While it does give us some answers to mull over as we wait for season 2, it also leaves a lot unsaid and plenty of questions unanswered. Thankfully, with a season 2 already confirmed by executive producer and cast member Travis Willingham, Critical Role has plenty of room to resolve those loose threads as the story continues.

---

The Mighty Nein season 1 is available to watch now on Prime Video.