The Mighty Nein Animated Series to Debut on Prime Video on November 19th

The animated adaptation of Critical Role's second campaign is set to debut on Prime Video next month. Prime Video released some new information about The Mighty Nein animated series, including its release date of November 19th. Several new stills were revealed via Rolling Stone, as well as the reveal of several guest stars appearing in the animated show. Mark Strong will play Trent Ikithon, Ming-Na Wen will play Dairon, Anika Noni Rose will play Marion Lavorre, Alan Cumming will play Gustav Fletching, and Auliʻi Cravalho will play Toya.

The Mighty Nein is an adaptation of Critical Role's second campaign, which ran from 2018 through 2021. The campaign featured a group of misfit heroes who were drawn into a conflict between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty, with the group uncovering corruption and deceit in both countries.

One key difference to The Mighty Nein compared to the previous Critical Role animated series The Legend of Vox Machina is that episodes will run for over 40 minutes. The cast is describing the series as more of a drama than The Legend of Vox Machina.

 

[Reynard]

It seems like that death scene would translate very well to animation with no changes. In fact, both of the elements that made it feel weird in a gameplay context would be completely invisible in any realtime portrayal.

Feels like a good season break.

 

[Parmandur]

Feels like a good season break.

Based on how they paced through the game session to episode transition for Vox Machina, that would be juat about right. It was pretty early in the campaign, session 25 out of 141.

 

[Seramus]

For whatever it’s worth, my two cents on the matter is:
I think Matt’s call was perfectly reasonable. Taliesin made kind of an unforced error for sure, but in his defense, it was kinda what the class he was playing was built to do, and I kind of understand him wanting to play aggressively. And like you said, it had been a long game and everyone was tired.

Ashly Birch prioritized roleplaying in a way that was actively detrimental to her character’s effectiveness in combat, which in my opinion is fine when it only affects your character, but can become a problem when it affects other players’ characters, which it did here. But, I recognize that it isn’t my table, and as there were no hard feelings among the cast, I think it was perfectly acceptable. Moreover, the response from a lot of fans, particularly towards Birch, was completely inappropriate.

And I’ll say again that in the long term, it was hugely impactful on the overarching story. Any finger-pointing about whose fault it was, if any, falls ultimately flat in the face of that being a defining moment of the campaign. The goal of D&D is to have fun and create exciting, memorable stories, and in that moment they absolutely succeeded in doing so. That’s all that really matters at the end of the day.

Yeah, I think his call was entirely reasonable. There are other options on the table in a situation like that besides death, but death IS a reasonable option. It was that quintessential "Talk crap to the king three times" kind of moment, and you can even see Matt hesitate and almost go another direction. But then he seems to realize he's about to softball his response, and goes through with it.

Ashley Birch absolutely did not deserve the venom and death threats she got. That was unconscionable.

My only genuine regret is his death seemed to make the party extremely risk averse from there on out, but there was no way to anticipate that. I think it happens to a lot of DMs. It's happened to me.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

... make the party extremely risk averse from there on out, but there was no way to anticipate that. I think it happens to a lot of DMs. It's happened to me.

Yeah, we see that all the time in Shadowdark, both for good and for ill.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm just rewatching early Season 2 and am on episode 29, so the scene in question is pretty fresh in my mind.

Spoiler

Ashley Burch's RP decision isn't the reason he died. The party was in WAY over their heads and their plan was crap; her doing one round of attacks on Lorenzo intsead of attacking one his underlings, which is what she did do, was not going to make a difference. Mollymauk's death was a choice from Mercer, and I agree with it. The party had just killed one of Lorenzo's followers and letting them off compeltely scot free would have felt weird, especially with Taliesen handing it to him on a silver platter like that. Even with Mollymauk's death it kind of felt like Lorenzo let them off lightly.

On a personal level, I prefer Caduceus (one of my favourites) and often found Mollymauk a little obnoxious, so I was never that worked up about his death. From my perspective, it was addition by subtraction.

 

[jayoungr]

I get people feeling that way when it first happened, but in the long term it became such a significant thing for the overarching plot of the campaign…

The thing is that my friend was very attached to the character who died, and the character never came back.* She didn't care about the drama of the story if it didn't include her favorite character. We all know people who get like that with their entertainment, I'm sure.

*Even when the character "came back," it wasn't the original character.

ETA: To be crystal-clear, though, my friend was NOT one of the people sending death threats or anything like that.

 

[Seramus]

I'm just rewatching early Season 2

You may want to spoiler your post.

 

[Charlaquin]

The thing is that my friend was very attached to the character who died, and the character never came back.* She didn't care about the drama of the story if it didn't include her favorite character. We all know people who get like that with their entertainment, I'm sure.

*Even when the character "came back," it wasn't the original character.

ETA: To be crystal-clear, though, my friend was NOT one of the people sending death threats or anything like that.

I might be misremembering, but doesn’t he actually get resurrected as himself eventually, after a natural 00 on Divine Intervention followed by a natural 20 on a behind-the-screen follow-up roll? I mean, that’s at the very end of the campaign, so if your friend wasn’t interested if he wasn’t involved, that wouldn’t really make it better for her.

 

[Clint_L]

I might be misremembering, but doesn’t he actually get resurrected as himself eventually, after a natural 00 on Divine Intervention followed by a natural 20 on a behind-the-screen follow-up roll? I mean, that’s at the very end of the campaign, so if your friend wasn’t interested if he wasn’t involved, that wouldn’t really make it better for her.

Nope.

Spoiler

He gets resurrected as a new character named Kingston, who is very explicitly explained to be neither Mollymauk nor Lucien. Taliesen plays Kingston during one of their post-campaign live shows. Kingston is kind of a pill - he's sort of grumpy and snarky. I was glad that Taliesen chose instead to play Caduceus when the Nein reunited in Campaign 3.

 

[overgeeked]

I might be misremembering, but doesn’t he actually get resurrected as himself eventually, after a natural 00 on Divine Intervention followed by a natural 20 on a behind-the-screen follow-up roll? I mean, that’s at the very end of the campaign, so if your friend wasn’t interested if he wasn’t involved, that wouldn’t really make it better for her.

No. The body does get resurrected but it's a new personality. I think that was part of Taliesin's idea for the character. Personality changes every time he resurrects, if it happens. But the version we saw at the start of C2 was gone forever. Lucien was the original. Molly was the replacement. Lucien comes back. Finally it's Kingsley.