Prepare to meet The Mighty Nein<\/em><\/a> \u2014 they may not be the heroes you expect to save the world, but you can be darn sure they\u2019re going to do their best.<\/p>\n On November 19, Prime Video<\/a> will debut the newest animated series in Critical Role<\/a>\u2019s<\/em> ever-expanding universe of Exandria, adapted from the mega-popular web series\u2019 second tabletop campaign of the same name that ran from 2018 to 2021. Similar to the characters in Critical Role<\/em> and Prime Video\u2019s first animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina<\/em><\/a>, each member of the adventuring party comes complete with their own messy flaws. But despite elements that remain the same \u2014 magical threats, found family, trademark humor \u2014 fans should expect to see a markedly different (and darker) story with certain changes, such as episode lengths, reflecting that.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time we run into a problem with Vox Machina<\/em>, it\u2019s something that could be solved with one or two more minutes of screen time,\u201d admits Sam Riegel<\/a>, who, in addition to serving as an executive producer on The Mighty Nein<\/a><\/em> (and The Legend of Vox Machina<\/em>), voices an alcoholic and co-dependent goblin girl named Nott The Brave. \u201cWe\u2019ve always thought, man, I wish we had just a few more minutes to tell our stories.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mighty Nein<\/em> grants that wish, expanding episodes from half an hour to one hour, which allows for those deeper looks into character development, relationships, and lore. \u201cWe were like, it\u2019s much more in-depth, the characters are more sophisticated, the backstories are much more important, the machinations of the politics and the villains are much more interlaced with the story,\u201d says Riegel about pitching the series to Prime Video. \u201cAnd we just found that it probably wouldn\u2019t work as a 22-minute show.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mighty Nein<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Traveling alongside Riegel\u2019s Nott through the world of Wildemount are a chaos crew of misfit antiheroes, each saddled with their own traumas and hangups: mischievous Jester Lavorre (Laura Bailey<\/a>), shipwrecked and orphaned half-orc warlock Fjord Stone (Travis Willingham<\/a>), unkempt haunted wizard Caleb (Liam O\u2019Brien<\/a>), Cobalt Soul monk Beauregard Lionett (Marisha Ray<\/a>),\u00a0barbarian\/mercenary Yasha Nydoorin (Ashley Johnson<\/a>) and traveling circus tarot card reader Mollymauk Tealeaf (Taliesin Jaffe<\/a>). They may not like each other (at first) but when a stolen arcane relic known as \u201cThe Beacon\u201d threatens to tear reality apart, the group (reluctantly) takes on the responsibility of saving the world together.<\/p>\n With the collision of vastly different personalities and Dungeons & Dragons classes, combined with a narrative that\u2019s deeply character-driven, showrunner and executive producer Tasha Huo (a self-proclaimed Critter whose resume includes Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft)<\/em> knew the show needed to place an emphasis on every party member\u2019s unique magical abilities.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they did a great job in the actual campaign of setting us up for this kind of success because they delved into their characters so much that it couldn\u2019t help but be character-driven,\u201d says Huo. \u201cLike Liam, he plays a wizard. If anyone plays D&D, that could go a million different ways, but fire magic became a very key part of him. The components were very integral to how he did everything, and everything was a step-by-step process, and it became a part of who he was and how he saw the world. Was it a challenge? Yes, because you\u2019ve not seen that kind of specificity in magic before in shows. We very deliberately remember in the writer\u2019s room when we were thinking about magic, we\u2019re like, we\u2019ve all seen the show where we throw out our hand and magic comes out, and we\u2019re sick of it! We want something new and fresh and fun! And it was easy to say, well, let\u2019s go back to the characters for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Caleb Widogast (Liam O’Brien) in ‘The Mighty Nein’<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Prime Video<\/p>\n When the Critical Role<\/em> cast originally went to work on The Legend of Vox Machina<\/em>, they were deep into their third tabletop campaign (\u201cBells Hells\u201d) and it had been years since they\u2019d stepped into their characters skin. Preparing to put The Mighty Nein<\/em> into the world, Riegel says, was no different. \u201cWe get to go back and revisit these characters with different perspective, and knowing where they end up certainly affects how we portray them at the beginning of their stories,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut it was just going back to try to put myself in my own skin of what it was like to play [Nott] early in the campaign, sort of like a little time travel, and to try to remember how weird and nervous and jittery and unsure and very, very reliant on Caleb she was. I don\u2019t think I changed anything. The one thing that we have stressed about a lot is just making sure that the character sounds like me, but also sounds a little bit more feminine than me. I do a little bit higher pitch when I do the voice, and then we\u2019ve also used some digital tricks to sort of make me seem just a hair more feminine in voice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>