The Mighty Nein Animated Series Teases Big Changes From Original Storyline
The Mighty Nein will tell a new story that's different to Critical Role fans.
The upcoming Mighty Nein animated series could be very different from what Critical Role fans expect. Today, EW revealed a new look at the upcoming season of The Legend of Vox Machina, the animated series based on Critical Role's first campaign. In the article, cast members and executive producers Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel also provided an update on The Mighty Nein, a separate animated series based on Critical Role's second campaign."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."
However, Willingham also added that the show would be different than the original storyline, which played out over the course of over 100 4+ hour-long D&D sessions streamed over the course of several years. After discussing several divergences that The Legend of Vox Machina has from the original stories, Willingham noted they took the same approach with their new show. "It's almost like [how] we took season 3 of [The Legend of Vox Machina] with that slight divergence from what was really more of a canonical telling and starting to experiment with changing the storyline up," Willingham adds. "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 Mighty Nein show will star a group of misfits who get caught up in escalating conflict between two countries on the great continent of Wildemount. The series will star Laura Bailey as tiefling cleric Jester Lavorre, Taliesin Jaffe as tiefling blood hunter Mollymauk "Molly" Tealeaf, Ashley Johnson as aasimar barbarian Yasha Nydoorin, Liam O'Brien as human wizard Caleb Widogast, Marisha Ray as human monk Beauregard "Beau" Lionett, Riegel as goblin rogue Nott the Brave, and Willingham as half-orc warlock Fjord.
No release date has been announced for The Mighty Nein, but its release is expected in 2025.