Critical Role’s New Podcast Goes Live

Midst, the new podcast project being re-released by Critical Role, has released its first episode. Yesterday, Critical Role released the first episode of its brand new “sci-fantasy space western” podcast on both YouTube and various podcast services. The new podcast, which is narrated by a trio of anonymous voice actors who aren’t members of the Critical Role cast is the first project to be released under Critical Role’s Metapigeon production banner. Midst isn’t set in Exandria nor is it a TTRPG podcast – this is a new project owned by Critical Role that marks the franchise’s expansion outside of Exandria. You can listen to the first episode down below: 

Technically, Midst isn’t entirely new – the podcast has existed since 2020 and even won a few podcast awards. However, the first two seasons of Midst were quietly scrubbed from podcast platforms last month after Critical Role announced their acquisition of the show and the episodes are being re-released under the Critical Role banner with remastered sound and animated videos. 

The good news is that Midst doesn’t appear to require the same time commitment as Critical Role. The first episode is about 15 minutes long and focuses on Lark, a loner living on a strange planet where night switches into day in the blink of the eye, hunting a weird and dangerous creature known as a blinding. Overhead hangs a large crystalline moon, which will eventually drop on the planet. The narration style, which is described as “semi-improvisational,” takes a little bit of getting used to but doesn’t detract much from the story once you get used to the steady stream of asides and narrators taking turns adding additional context to the story.

In addition to what appears to be a captivating story, Midst is also releasing “bonus material” in the forms of appendices that add some additional context. The first appendix can be found below and shows what a blinding looks like.

Two more of Midst will be released this week, with new episodes posted every subsequent Wednesday. A subscription is also available to get early access to episodes.