First Episode of The Mighty Nein Available Now on YouTube

The first episode of The Mighty Nein, a new animated series based on Critical Role's second campaign, is available for free on YouTube. Prime Video posted the episode on YouTube in the early morning today, providing fans and newcomers alike with a free preview of its series ahead of its launch next week.

While set in the same world as The Legend of Vox Machina, The Mighty Nein is a standalone series and requires no previous knowledge of either Critical Role or The Legend of Vox Machina to enjoy. The first few episodes of the new show serve as a prequel to the events of Campaign 2, providing more concrete origin stories and what the characters were up to ahead of the events of the first episode of the campaign.

You can check out the new episode below until November 16th.

After an explosion at the border, Wildemount is on the brink of War. Beauregard Lionett investigates the scene of an explosion, uncovering a sinister scheme lurking in the shadows. Meanwhile, Caleb Widogast teams up with an unlikely ally to break into a magical pet shop.

 

[Parmandur]

I really enjoyed this first episode. I may be subscribing again to Amazon Prime for separate reasons, but this would be a nice bonus. I only ever watched three or four episodes of the campaign and I'm feeling like I am getting a good explanaition of the story elements as we go.

Yeah, they are adding in a ton to provide framing and context. In the actual campaign, each player had built an elaborate backsfory and there was an elaborate game of "backstory reveal chicken" where eberyody wanted to be the last one who revealed their dramatic secrets. This is rolling out the inffashion in a far more orderly fashion.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think it's interesting to show the Beacon but be mysterious about what it exactly does.

It costs $5.99/month to find out.

 

[Bagpuss]

And it's gone.

 

[overgeeked]

And it's gone.

It got north of 1.5 million views while it was up.

 

[Gorck]

Yeah, they are adding in a ton to provide framing and context. In the actual campaign, each player had built an elaborate backsfory and there was an elaborate game of "backstory reveal chicken" where eberyody wanted to be the last one who revealed their dramatic secrets. This is rolling out the inffashion in a far more orderly fashion.

Also, I got the impression at the beginning of Campaign 2, that the players had broken off into 3 separate groups and played “background sessions“ that got them up to at least level 2 at the start of the stream.

If memory serves me correctly, the groups were:
Mollymauk & Yasha
Nott & Calib
Beau, Jester, & Fjord

 

[OB1]

Boy, the long cold open sequence really underscores just how high magic parts of Exandria are, which isn't how I usually hear the setting described.

While I was happy to see Nott, the episode felt very serious without Jester.

It's in an interesting space for High vs Low magic. They are 1,000 years removed from completely Gonzo High Magic Civilization (flying cities, time travel, robots, god killing weapons), and are basically still in a post-post appocalypse setting from when the gods struck down the previous civilization for challenging them. But the time period of CR is trending back towards gonzo high magic, if still quite a while away from it. Importantly, the boarderlands of civilization are still wild in most of Exandria, and monsters come from the wilderness regularly to mess with the points of civilization.

 

[Parmandur]

Watched the second and third episodes last night. Really love how theybare building out the context for these characters and weaving a coherent narrative olwurh excellent foreshadowing (that was obviously not possible in the improvisation of the game)

 

[plecostomus]

After 4 episodes here's my non-CR-watching guesses so far as to everyone's class and subclass:

1. Jester - Trickery Cleric
2. Fjord - Fathomless Warlock
3. Caleb - Wizard...subclass no idea. I honestly thought he was a Sorcerer for some reason, until they very explicitly talked about him going to magic school. They also talked about his magic "requiring components" as if that was a Wizard-explicit thing. Kinda wish it was, but any class running off something DMs only sometimes enforce is not gonna be good, doubly so if it's already the most versatile caster.
4. Big Sword Lady - Could be Fighter or Barbarian, but her outfit has furs and she wears facepaint so I vote Berserker Barbarian. Keeping it classic. I vaguely recall she is looking for the Beacon or something from her 5 seconds of screentime.
5. Nott - Thief Rogue, only because the idea of Nott being anything more complicated than that seems absurd, and there's no Drunken Master Rogue.
6. Mollymauk - Bloodhunter. I actually asked my CR-watching friend and he confirmed this for me, and told me this class was originally made for Vin Diesel. I'm sure this class has subclasses but I don't know what they are, or anything about this class really. He licks blood off the ground and cuts open his own chest. Thought he was a Divination Wizard up until he started doing sword tricks (this might also be why I thought Caleb was a Sorcerer, because I thought only my DM is silly enough to allow a 2-Wizard party.)
7. Beauregard - Open Hand Monk since I haven't seen her use any supernatural looking abilities.

Bonus round: What species is Fjord? Currently I assume half-orc. At one point he gets confronted by some orcs and they tease him about not having tusks. I'm not sure what the color pattern is about, but someone at the circus had the same pattern, so it might just be how half-orcs look in this world? I thought I noticed some background characters who seemed to be mixes of multiple ancestries too. And a lion person, though maybe it's just an interpretation of tabaxi.

 

[Clint_L]

You got every class right, but only one of the subclasses - Jester is indeed a trickery cleric.

I also think Fjord's two-toned skin is wierd and distracting - I don't understand it. But yes, he is indeed a half-orc...who files his tusks down. It'll likely come up in the story.

 

[TheHand]

I’m a few episodes in and I’m really invested now in these characters and their story (I didn’t watch the CR games so I’m brand new to Mighty Nein). I like that this one feels more serious. Vox Machina was enjoyable, but sometimes it felt like it was trying too hard with the jokes.