Diving into Darkness: A Review of The Mighty Nein’s First Season in Critical Role

The Mighty Nein aren’t exactly mighty — not at first, anyway — and they number less than nine for that matter too. Yet the fandom behind this rogue party of seven is very mighty indeed, as it is for pretty much everything created by Critical Role these days.

Ten years into their reign, the Dungeons & Dragons troupe are back with a second animated series based on their tabletop escapades. Set twenty years after The Legend of Vox Machina, The Mighty Nein campaign introduces a whole new team who are very different from the stars of Prime Video‘s hit show, even if they’re voiced by the same actors.

While The Mighty Nein also embody various fantasy archetypes, they don’t play nice with it. For every quirky character like Jester Lavorre, a prankster who conjures pink hammers and the occasional dildo to fight with, there’s also a homeless fire wizard who smells like shit and isn’t afraid to burn his enemies to ash. Beau, a detective monk from the Cobalt Soul isn’t kidding when she says, “This group is fucking wild,” as they fight off a giant demonic toad.

The Legend of Vox Machina isn’t afraid to get dark when it needs to — who can forget that season three death!? — and it’s pretty horny for that matter too, but Critical Role’s first animated venture is almost a child-friendly romp in comparison to where The Mighty Nein will take you.

In one particularly distressing series of flashbacks, a character we’ve been rooting for casually melts a man’s skull in half and forces another to disembowel himself. Loveable rogues these are not. Well, not all the time. Characters like the horny tarot reader Molly swish in with a swashbuckling charm and the rest of the team are still plenty of fun to be around too, even if they aren’t outright heroes like Vox Machina.

It takes a little while longer for The Mighty Nein to figure out how to have fun with each other. The introduction of each cast member is staggered over the first half of this season, so some bond quickly while others inherently distrust or even dislike one another. These tensions are mirrored by wider conflict between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty, which drives the broader narrative of the season that brings everyone together.

In both cases, the result is messy at times. That’s especially true of the team’s search for a powerful arcane relic known as The Beacon, which appears in fits and starts, often in the form of cutaways to other shady characters who are infinitely less interesting than our main players. The world of Exandria feels more expansive here as a result but sometimes The Mighty Nein gets tangled up in its ambition, juggling too many character arcs and origin stories at once.

Even with a slightly longer runtime – each episode clocks in at around 40+ minutes – it’s still not enough to craft a clear, direct through line that brings all these moving parts together. It’s telling that the best episode is essentially one long dive into the past which is far more focused in its plotting.

Vox Machina was more streamlined in that regard, delivering a much tighter pace. But it would have been dull for The Mighty Nein simply to repeat what came before, and there’s something to be said for how it prioritises character-driven developments between various pairings within the group at large. That lengthier episode runtime also allows for new scenes that depict events that happened “off-screen” in the original table-top campaign.

Crucially, The Mighty Nein excels in all the ways you’d expect a Critical Role adaptation to excel in. Celebrity guest stars including Alan Cumming, Mark Strong and Anika Noni Rose impress, but it’s the original voice cast who will have you rooting for our “heroes,” no matter how morally dubious they can be.

Special shout out to Sam Riegel who brings heartfelt pathos and humour to an alcoholic goblin named Nott the Brave, just as he did for Vox Machina’s raunchy gnome Scanlan. Candid lines like “Aren’t you a bit old to smell like shit?” will have you laughing suddenly out of nowhere with that signature Critical Role humour, while threads of queerness organically woven throughout further reinforce this as another outsider story, the kind this team does best.

In a first-look interview with EW, showrunner Tasha Huo explained how they “really try to treat the show like a live-action show” to reflect “more mature, more elevated storytelling”. It’s important not to undersell the animation, however, which remains visually interesting throughout, whether a magic teddy bear is stitching a wound or body horror transformations bring unexpected shades of grotesqueness. That’s especially important for a campaign that’s largely existed in the imagination of fans up until now.

The fights are a little less flashy and the tone is more downbeat, so your bandwidth for The Mighty Nein may very well depend on what you liked and didn’t like about Vox Machina. But that’s not to say there can’t be room in your life for both. Think of them as different flavours of the same thing. One might cater to your tastes more, but both offer up a mighty good time in their own way.

Should you watch The Mighty Nein season 1?

Adapting a 141-episode, 600-hour tabletop series is no small feat, but in doing so, Critical Role have made this show a blast for newbies and diehard fans alike. And crucially, you don’t need any prior knowledge of this world or even The Legend of Vox Machina to enjoy it.