This article contains spoilers for The Legend of Vox Machina Season 3.
In Dungeons & Dragons, death is a frequent event — especially on long-running campaigns. The same is true for Critical Role’s original Vox Machina story, which features every single one of the adventurers dying multiple times. Death and resurrection is simply a fact of the game, built into the very mechanics of the gameplay (because dice are fickle jerks). But when it came to adapting the story for television, some fundamental changes to the mechanics of death had to be made, and who died and when became all the more important.
Fans were in for a real blow when Percy died earlier in Season 3, but the biggest shock was when he didn’t get back up. Knowing how often everyone’s died sends viewers in with some armor, and the expectation that when they go down, they’ll probably get back up again. It’s for that reason that Percy had to stay in the ground for a few episodes.
I sat down with some of the Critical Role team — Marisha Ray, Travis Willingham and Liam O’Brien — at this year’s Fantastic Fest to get the details on those changes, and what made Percy’s new arc so important.
“We deal with death at different points in the three seasons we have, and it was Percy's turn, and we thought it would be good to put him down and keep him down,” says O’Brien.
Willingham agreed, adding “I think the literal conversation was, ‘So Percy's going to die. What if he stayed dead for a while.’ And every head turned. We're like, ‘What does that mean? What does that mean? For how long?’ And so we tried to make the end of the seventh episode hit as hard as it could.”
Well it did, sir. It did.
Like most fans, I cried along with Vex (Laura Bailey) while she dealt with the loss the man she couldn’t say “I love you” back to yet. But also like most fans, there was no doubt in my mind that they’d find a way to solve the death just like they had with Vex back in Season 2. But when they put Percy’s body in the ground, the reality of that not being the case started to set in. What if they didn’t bring him back? We knew that they’d be changing the story with the animated series, but what we didn’t know was how far they’d be willing to go.
And Willingham and company were hoping for exactly that reaction when Percy wasn’t magically back up on his feet.
“Instead, it opens on a sun tree with lanterns on it and a funeral procession,” he says “And we had a few people that saw it for the first time and just literally went, ‘What?!’ So that's what we want. And we're also going to be looking for opportunities just for the people that think they know what's coming next. We want to make you guess a little. Maybe we'll deviate even further from here; we might've lost our mind.”
The cleverness in burying Percy goes a step further, too. “It was set up pretty beautifully from Season 2 when Vex dies and it's Kashaw that is the one [to resurrect her],” Ray says. “He says very plainly, ‘Resurrection rites are hard and rare and I've never done one before.’ And then the one guy that Vox Machina knows that can kind of do it gets squishied.”
Kash is lost in the battle with Thordak and his spawn. It is abrupt, devastating, and played out exactly as it was meant to. He’s the type of side character that fans know enough to love, but not think about a ton when he’s not on screen. His death ended up being exactly what was needed for the final punch of the last episodes.
“He's so charming and lovable, and we kept asking ourselves in these big conflicts, ‘Where can we find a moment where the flash of instant change can have effect?’” Willingham says. “Where you're fighting dragons, there are titanic things happening, it can happen just that quickly.”
His death comes and goes in a flash, serving as what seems in the moment to be not just the final nail in Percy’s literal coffin but also a reminder that any one of our heroes could simply get squishied at any time.
No other main party member dies in Season 3, but that doesn’t mean everyone walks out of it safely. Vax (O’Brien) makes a great sacrifice for Vex and his friends, resurrecting Percy against the Matron of Death’s wishes. He was warned that there would be a price to pay for toying with death, and it seems that price will be one of his greatest nightmares becoming a reality. Since becoming the Raven Queen’s acolyte, Vax has been plagued by visions of a zombified version of himself, and bringing Percy back to the land of the living seems to have started that rot.
O’Brien’s not worried, though. “Seems like it's going to be fine,” he says. I mean, Vax’s hand’s rotting off, but he’s got another one, right?
After all, Keyleth (Ray) did say that disease is solvable if you know what to do…
See you next season!
