When adapting hours and hours of actual play, the cast and crew of The Legend of Vox Machina had to make some changes. Some are hugely emotional arcs crafted from originally smaller moments, while others are a chance to pull in lore that evolved years after the original run.
And in the case of the season finale, it was a chance for one cast member to make amends for a spur-of-the-moment decision years ago.
[Ed. note: This post contains big spoilers for the end of season 3 of The Legend of Vox Machina, as well as spoilers for the Vox Machina Critical Role campaign.]
Most of the party members decide to part ways: Vex (Laura Bailey) and Percy (Taliesin Jaffe) will return to Whitestone to help rebuild; Vax (Liam O’Brien) will accompany Keyleth (Marisha Ray) on the next leg of her big spiritual journey; Scanlan (Sam Riegel) will join his daughter for a world tour; and Grog (Travis Willingham) and Pike (Ashley Johnson) will stick together and adventure some more.
It’s all pretty amicable, bittersweet but ultimately the result of characters just needing to be in different places after their big climatic battle.
However, the moment in the original campaign wasn’t nearly as peaceful — both in and out of character.
“My character in the original campaign had a big blow-up with the group,” says Riegel. “Over the arc of the season, it just didn’t seem right to end a season with Scanlan super pissed off at the rest of the group after what they had just gone through. It made sense in the campaign, because the campaign was ongoing.” He pauses and then makes a face, before adding, “And even in the campaign it didn’t make sense! Everybody at the table was mad at me for doing it.”
“Shocked!” Bailey interjects.
Tabletop role-playing is by nature improvisational, and because the story is going to keep on going, players can have their characters make big, drastic decisions like storming out on their parties. But a television show has a more finite scope, so it was important to keep the story contained.
“[It] just seemed like not a fun way to end,” Riegel says about the change. “If that’s the end of the series, not a fun way to end the series with one character mad at everybody else, roll credits. So we tried to meld and reshape that story into something that was a bittersweet goodbye rather than an angry goodbye with the hopes that we can still revisit that anger later in the series if we get more seasons.”
The season ends with a bunch of hooded cultists eerily chanting, so the newly-announced season 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina will definitely up the stakes. At least in the interim, we can take comfort in knowing that they’re parting on good terms.
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