The Legend of Vox Machina is a chance for the cast of Critical Role to revamp their first campaign. Sometimes that means characters who weren’t present for certain events now get to play bigger roles. Other times that means pulling in lore and mythology of Exandria that didn’t get fleshed out till after Vox Machina concluded its first run in 2017.
In the case of the most recent episodes, that means turning a small gameplay hiccup into a huge emotional moment. And the cast was all for it.
[Ed. note: This post contains massive spoilers for the newest episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina, as well as spoilers for the Vox Machina Critical Role campaign.]
The seventh episode of The Legend of Vox Machina ends with gunslinger Percy de Rolo (Taliesin Jaffe) offering mercy to the devious Anna Ripley (Kelly Hu). And instead of taking it, she shoots him in the chest and he falls dead.
There’s a similar moment in the campaign, but the rest of the party is able to quickly rush Percy to a temple and resurrect him. However, in the show, it looks like he’s going to stay dead.
“In the campaign, we were able to bring him back very quickly, but I think that can be something that loses its gravity if you’re constantly able to revive somebody who has died over and over again,” explains Laura Bailey, the voice of half-elf ranger Vex’ahlia. “So in order to make us sit with it and experience that grief, I think it needed to be extended.”
“And give it consequence,” adds Jaffe. “There are definitely consequences left over.”
There’s no shortage of ways to bring back a fallen companion in Dungeons & Dragons. But while having a resurrection option is a great way to not totally lose morale when facing a tough enemy while playing with your friends around the table, in a television show, an easy revival cheapens the ever-increasing stakes.
“We wanted death to feel consequential,” says Travis Willingham, who plays barbarian Grog and also writes for the show. “We wanted it to have weight, otherwise it would just feel flighty and not a big deal if a character goes down. And so this was really a time to get a gut check about what is important around these characters and really how fragile they can be and how temporary some of this stuff is, if you’re not careful.”
Percy’s death sends an emotional shock wave throughout the entire party. And unlike other heavy moments throughout the show, which they had played through some version of before during the actual play campaign, this plotline was new and particularly raw. Since Vex’ahlia and Percy have a romantic relationship — which they finally acted on this season — Bailey found the grieving to be particularly satisfying to dig into, draining as it was.
“We’d leave the sessions and then just feel terrible the rest of the day, but I think it was necessary,” says Bailey. “We started out the entire series and [Vex] is very standoffish, closed off from the get-go. That’s how it was in the campaign as well. She was harsh as a person because she felt she needed to be. But I wanted to make sure in the series that we got to explore why she was like that and really get to see those walls coming down. And through her grief and her regret of being closed off and not letting him know what he meant to her, she was able to grow as a person. I don’t think she would’ve gotten there had it not been for the trauma.”
There was one person who didn’t face a huge emotional challenge, however.
“It was easy on my end,” says Jaffe.
“You just close your eyes,” Bailey adds.
New episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina drop every Thursday.
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