The new animated series will adapt the next Critical Role campaign, which takes place twenty years after «The Legend of Vox Machina».
The Critical Role team is preparing for the premiere of «Mighty Nein» — an animated adaptation of their second Dungeons & Dragons campaign. This is not the first experience for the authors: the debut series «The Legend of Vox Machina» was released in 2022, and now, three years later, the creators are confident that they know how to avoid past mistakes.
Turning a tabletop role-playing game into a full-fledged series turned out to be not easy. Critical Role co-founder and executive producer Travis Willingham noted in an interview with Polygon at New York Comic Con 2025 that the beauty of D&D lies in the «anarchy of the tabletop game» — the freedom of action that cannot be fully transferred to the screen. According to him, it was this experience that helped the team understand how to build an adaptation without losing the spirit of the original.
As a reminder, in 2019, Critical Role launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a 22-minute Vox Machina special. In just one hour, the project raised the required amount, and in one day — more than $4.3. The success turned the short film into a full-fledged series, the rights to which were acquired by Amazon Studios, ordering another 14 episodes. However, as Willingham admitted, work on the second season was too hasty.
«We didn't know if we would get a sequel after the second season, so we tried to fit everything in at once. This affected the rhythm. Now we have decided to act differently — not to rush and start with a “zero session”».
In Dungeons & Dragons, a «zero session» is understood as a meeting before the start of the campaign, when the host and players discuss the rules, boundaries, and backstories of the characters. In the context of the series, this means that «Mighty Nein» will develop more slowly, paying more attention to characters, atmosphere, and details.
Each episode of the new project lasts about 44 minutes — almost twice as long as the Vox Machina episodes. This gives the authors more space to reveal the plot and emotional scenes. It has already been confirmed that the series will feature new episodes that were previously only mentioned in live sessions, including the first meeting of Fjord and Jester.
At the same time, Critical Role co-founder Laura Bailey noted that it would still not be possible to preserve the entire volume of the campaign.
«In a three-year campaign with four- or five-hour sessions, there are too many events. But the reduction allows you to add depth to the moments that remain. We can make scenes more meaningful, even if they happen a little differently».
The premiere of the series «Mighty Nein» will take place on November 19, 2025, exclusively on Prime Video. The trailer is available at the following link.
