The Mighty Nein: Season One Review

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The Mighty Nein Lives Up to The Legend

Created By: Critical Role
Main Voice Actors: Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brein, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham, and Matt Mercer

The Legend of Vox Machina has been told, but it is far from Critical Role’s only adventure. The voice actors turned D&D party have run four major campaigns. Now comes their second quest and most famous: The Mighty Nein.

Taking place twenty years after Vox Machina’s finale, this series unites several outcasts who must stop a war between the Kryn Dynasty and the Dwendellian Empire. Can The Mighty Nein escape from Vox Machina’s shadow? Let’s find out.

The Good

Six + Nein = Good Time

The Mighty Nein party is not assembled when the series begins. The six members band together over several episodes to form their alliance.

Caleb Widowgast is an unlucky vagabond human wizard. He has lost the ability to cast magic, forcing him to scrounge and steal components for every spell he uses. Caleb is joined by Nott The Brave, an alcoholic goblin thief who all but adopts him.

Jester Lavorre is a mischievous cleric worshipping an invisible god called The Traveller. She is fleeing a vengeful noble who she publicly humiliated. Her bodyguard is Fjord, a half-orc warlock who miraculously survived his ship’s destruction. He promised Jester’s mother that he would protect her, but occasionally goes AWOL trying to find the source of his magic.

Beau is a cobalt soul monk, a kung-fu cop tasked with investigating a skirmish between the Empire and the Dynasty. She discovers a clue that brings her to a traveling circus. These five are joined by Mollymauk Tealeaf, a tiefling blood hunter and fortune teller whose circus was destroyed in a disaster. 

The Mighty Nein are dysfunctional at the best of times. Caleb and Beau butt heads over his mysterious connection to their enemies. Fjord and Mollymauk have no idea where their powers come from and Jester fears that she may be mad after The Traveller stops speaking with her. Nott is a wreck due to alcoholism and bigots harassing her. The six of them are flawed, but may save the world if they don’t kill each other first.

The War of Ash and Light

The world of Exandria has endured many threats, from The Chroma Conclave to Vecna-worshipping Remnants. Now dark forces rise again to challenge The Mighty Nein.

The Kryn Dynasty is a theocratic monarchy centered around a secretive magic called dunamancy. High-ranking Kryn are given the ability to reincarnate thanks to The Luxon Beacon, a sacred relic said to be a shard of their god. The Beacon is stolen in the first episode, putting the Dynasty on the warpath to reclaim their immortality.

The Dwendellian Empire is a xenophobic human-led monarchy. Their fragile peace with the Dynasty was shattered by accusations of stealing The Beacon. King Dwendal starts as a reasonable ruler, but quickly becomes an unknowing puppet king.

The Cerberus Academy is the power behind Dwendal’s throne. They are a coalition of archmages led by Royal Spymaster Trent Ikithon. He commands The Volstrucker, an indoctrinated army of magical assassins. Trent stole The Beacon with help from desperate Kryn spymaster Essek to uncover dunamancy’s secrets.

The Mighty Nein’s Reagent Rumble

All magic is not created equally in Dungeons and Dragons. An artificer is not a sorcerer is not a paladin. Adaptations often gloss over that fact, including The Legend of Vox Machina, but The Mighty Nein uses it to build better magical duels.

Magic in this series is never free. Every spell requires components to cast, from using dung for a fireball to swallowing maggots as fuel for poison breath. That helps non-magical fighters keep up because they can disarm casters who are preparing spells.

Some casters can skip the components by drawing from another source. Jester’s faith in The Traveller grants her cartoonish magic while Fjord’s patron forces him to seek artifacts in return for its power. The Volstruckers receive implants of solidified magic, allowing them to freely cast spells at the cost of slowly destroying their bodies.

Two homebrewed schools of magic are introduced. Molly’s blood hunter magic coats his swords in ice and allows him to track other’s blood, but requires self-harm. Other characters reveal that Molly is connected to an unseen figure named Lucien, who takes over his body whenever Molly is overwhelmed.

Dunamancy is more straightforward, focusing on potential and probability. A dunamancer can control gravity, souls, time, and fate. Trent once killed a legion by using The Beacon with minimal training. A master dunamancer using it would be godlike.

The Bad

The Orphanmaker

We fibbed earlier. There are seven members of The Mighty Nein, but one of them was underused by the show in season one.

Yasha Nydoorin is an Assimar Barbarian. She appears sporadically in the first several episodes, slaughtering both Kryn and Dwendellian soldiers. Several soldiers recognize her as “The Orphanmaker” and are terrified of Yasha.

Her character develops in later episodes, trying to spare soldiers before an unknown master forces her to kill them. Viewers see flashbacks to a woman that Yasha loved used as a weapon to manipulate her. She meets the party in the season finale’s closing minutes and begs for their help.

Yasha’s player/actor, Ashley Johnson, couldn’t join the campaign for several streams. The Mighty Nein gave her a bit more screentime to work with, but it feels off when she’s treated as a non-entity despite appearing with the others in the opening credits.

Typhros Tribulations

Critical Role always changes the plots adapted to screen to condense the original 550 hour web series. But they’ve never changed a major character as much as The Mighty Nein has.

Essek was introduced as a court wizard and the Nein’s handler while they worked with the Kryn Dynasty. He slowly revealed a lonely, awkward side and became an unofficial party member. That shocked audiences when Essek was revealed as The Beacon’s thief almost 300 hours into the campaign, driven by a need to prove himself by mastering dunamancy.

The animated series reveals Essek’s guilt in the second episode. Viewers also meet his mother Deitra, who lives with a degenerative magical condition called typhros. She can’t tell her past lives apart anymore and will be euthanized by the Dynasty if her malady is discovered. Essek stole the Beacon in exchange for Trent helping him find a cure.

Showrunner Matthew Mercer confirmed that this was always Essek’s backstory and that he couldn’t explore it in-game. But highlighting it and revealing him as the thief early completely changes his story. The Kryn who wanted power for his own sake and manipulated others has become a sympathetic anti-hero trying to save his mother’s life. It’s like rewriting Harry Potter with Severus Snape portrayed as Harry’s stern, but loving father figure.

The Verdict on The Mighty Nein

The Mighty Nein is an excellent spin-off. The new cast lives up to the old, war provides several factions for them to contend with, and the magic system is treated with more respect. Yasha was underutilized, and Essek’s changed role is questionable, but the show is worth your time.

Image courtesy of Prime. Copyright Amazon Content Services

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.