Talking Season 2 With The Cast Of Amazon’s Best Fantasy Show

The Legend Of Vox Machina returns for its second season on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, January 20th. The irreverent, often hilarious story of a band of debaucherous mercenaries with hearts of gold was one of my top TV shows of 2022, and remains my favorite Amazon Original fantasy series.

In Season 1, our merry band of adventurers—Vox Machina—fought off a dragon, a vampire lord, a powerful necromancer and a mysterious demon (among other horrors and monstrosities). It was a story of courage, revenge and redemption—with plenty of ribald humor thrown in for good measure.

The second season—of many, hopefully—will follow our heroes into even greater perils, as a quartet of diabolical dragons called the Chroma Conclave, sets the world on flame and puts the very fate of the world of Exandria into question. We ended the first season with the dragons approaching the city of Emon. Season 2 will take the group much further afield then ever before, beyond the shores of Tal’Dorei to distant kingdoms, as well as into the past to reveal more about the backstories of the members of Vox Machina.

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The Cast Of The Legend Of Vox Machina (And Critical Role)

The Legend Of Vox Machina is based on the Critical Role Dungeons & Dragons campaign DM’d by Matthew Mercer that featured the entire cast as players. Mercer, as Dungeon Master, plays various roles including some of the story’s villains including Lord Sylas Briarwood and the dragon Umbrasyl.

The rest of the main cast includes:

Ashley Johnson as halfling cleric of the goddess Everlight, Pike Trickfoot.

Laura Bailey as Vex’ahlia ‘Vex’ Vessar, a half-elven ranger and Vax’s twin.

Liam O’Brien as Vax’ildan ‘Vax’ Vessar, a half-elven rogue and Vex’s twin.

Taliesin Jaffe as Percival ‘Percy’ Fredrickstein Von Musl Klossowski de Rolo III, a human gunslinger.

Marisha Ray as Keyleth, an air Ashari and half-elven druid.

Sam Riegel as Scanlan Shorthalt, an extremely horny gnomish bard.

Travis Willingham as Grog Strongjaw, a lovable goliath barbarian who loves to rage.

“The challenge then lies in taking hundreds of hours of us improving through this story and condensing it down to the important beats during for the overall narrative and the moments that are important to us as the players,” Mercer tells me during our Season 2 discussion.

While every one of the main cast members is an executive producer on the show, Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel have spearheaded the adaptation. The amazing thing about working with writers, Willingham says, “Is that they’re coming to it with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.” This helps ensure that both old fans and newcomers find something enjoyable and new.

“It’s so rare to get to go back and retell a story,” Riegel says. “To have the opportunity to make subtle changes . . . We get to go back and make ourselves sound slightly cooler, we get to make the jokes slightly funnier, and we get to ignore the stuff where we failed miserably or made bad choices. It’s a wild experience and we all get to do it together as friends.”

I spoke with all these incredibly talented actors—except Laura Bailey who was out sick, unfortunately—and you can watch the full conversation in the two videos below. We chat about the joys and challenges of adapting the Critical Role campaign, the struggle of recording during COVID, the many ways Season 2 expands on the story established in the first season, and much more including working with the animation studio Titmouse and the team’s goals for many more seasons to come. The cast also discusses the many guest stars, including Henry Winkler and Lance Reddick, who are joining the show in Season 2. Enjoy!

Part 1: Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Travis Willingham, & Taliesin Jaffe

Part 2: Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray & Sam Riegel

The Legend Of Vox Machina returns to Amazon Prime Video with the first three episodes of Season 2 on January 20th, with three episodes released each week after for the following three weeks. I’ll be reviewing the show as it airs here on this blog and my YouTube channel and I’d love it if you subscribed.

Let me know what you think of The Legend Of Vox Machina and Critical Role on Twitter or Facebook.