‘The Mighty Nein’ Creators Map Out the Next Animated Exandria Campaign

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What began in 2015 as a Dungeons & Dragons game among an informal group of self-described nerdy voice actors has since grown into a multiplatform storytelling phenomenon. Streaming its weekly adventures on Twitch and YouTube, Critical Role built a devoted global following that soon expanded into comics, campaign guides and more. Its first campaign inspired the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina, which leapt from a record-smashing Kickstarter into a Prime Video hit in 2022. Building on that success, Critical Role is now launching an animated adaptation of their second campaign, The Mighty Nein.

“Whether you enjoy fantasy, whether you’ve ever played a tabletop role playing game, whether you’ve ever heard of Critical Role, I guarantee that you will identify with at least one character, their backstory, their regrets, their trauma.”

— Exec producer Sam Riegel

 

Set in Exandria, the fantasy world created by game master Matthew Mercer (Baldur’s Gate 3) in 2012, The Mighty Nein follows a group of fugitives and outcasts who must band together to stop reality itself from unraveling when a powerful arcane relic known as “The Beacon” falls into dangerous hands. Darker, more cinematic and more morally complex than its predecessor, the 2D-animated hourlong series premieres November 19 on Prime Video and was produced in partnership with Amazon MGM Studios and Titmouse.

The Mighty Nein is executive produced by Critical Role founders Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Travis Willingham (Marvel’s Avengers Assemble) alongside Mercer and their fellow founders and cast members Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II), Taliesin Jaffe (World of Warcraft), Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us), Liam O’Brien (Marvel’s Avengers Assemble) and Marisha Ray (Fallout 76). They are joined by showrunner and executive producer Tasha Huo (Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft), as well as co-executive producers Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, Antonio Canobbio and Ben Kalina of Titmouse.

Darker Territories

As a longtime Critical Role fan, Huo welcomed the challenge of adapting Campaign Two’s sprawling arcs into a coherent television narrative. Willingham is focused on the visual side, from character design and art direction to staging combat sequences, while Riegel deals with sound and performance, overseeing casting, guest stars, ADR and music. As Riegel puts it, the collaboration is “like a three-headed Hydra” — each creative voice distinct but working in concert to bring The Mighty Nein to life.

Stepping into the franchise for the first time, Huo says she was drawn to its richly crafted character backstories, noting, “It’s crazy how relatable this story is given it is in a high-fantasy world.” That relatability, she explains, is rooted in the personal struggles that shape the characters. “Something we talked about a lot in the writers’ room was how every character comes from a place of trauma,” she recalls. “We all experience trauma in our own ways. The question was how to bring that into the storytelling, because it’s so relevant and immediate.”

It’s a perspective Riegel shares: “Whether you enjoy fantasy, whether you’ve ever played a tabletop role-playing game, whether you’ve ever heard of Critical Role, I guarantee that you will identify with at least one character, their backstory, their regrets, their trauma,” he says.

Willingham stresses that the Critical Role team “was extremely lucky in finding Tasha, because it’s not every day that such a talented writer and showrunner is also familiar with your IP and has her own perspective on the characters’ voices, her favorite moments. That perspective has been beyond invaluable to us. It’s also an additional resource that we can lean on in every facet of production.”

Production partner Titmouse pushed the boundaries of what was possible for The Mighty Nein to help achieve a cinematic, live-action look, says Huo. She recalls sending over scripts with action set pieces that felt impossible to realize, only for the studio to respond, “No, let’s go for it. Let’s try it. Let’s see. Let’s push those limits.” The results, she adds, are clear on screen.

To simulate realistic lens blur, atmosphere and lighting effects, Titmouse employed VFX tools like Blace Plugins’ Depth Scanner to generate depth maps from 2D drawings. “We embrace an ethos of grounded cinematography and strive to make every shot feel as though it’s captured through a physical camera,” says prop and FX design supervisor Dennis Fries. “Keep an eye out for pentagonal bokeh — our apertures echo the five-sided faces of the Luxon Beacon.”

“It’s crazy how relatable this story is given it is in a high-fantasy world … Something we talked about a lot in the writers’ room was how every character comes from a place of trauma. We all experience trauma in our own ways. The question was how to bring that into the storytelling, because it’s so relevant and immediate.”

— Showrunner Tasha Huo

Riegel points to the studio’s attention to detail, noting how subtle adjustments to lip shapes, eyebrow poses and eye movements can make or break a scene. “There are a lot of moments in this show where if we don’t have the expression perfect, the moment just doesn’t work,” he says, calling it “an ambitious swing to aim for a live-action feel, but one that paid off.”

The production also leaned on a global team of artists and studios to bring The Mighty Nein to life. Overseas partners in Seoul — Production Reve, DR Movie and Edge Animation — provided animation services, while art director Joseph Martinez (Niko and the Sword of Light), who was a background designer on The Legend of Vox Machina, and character designer and layout supervisor Jess Lackey (Valorant) helped define the show’s look. Willingham credits supervising director Juno Lee (The LEGO Ninjago Movie) with “literally holding our hand through every single phase of this show,” while Riegel notes that Lee’s lensing and storyboarding choices gave the series a more cinematic feel.

Heroic Rogues Gallery

Reprising their roles from the original actual play campaign, Riegel voices Nott the Brave, a foulmouthed goblin rogue hiding deep pain, while Willingham returns as Fjord Stone, a half-orc warlock still testing the limits of his mysterious powers. The lineup also includes O’Brien’s Caleb Widogast, a human wizard marked by a traumatic past; Ray’s Beauregard Lionett, a fierce human monk with a strong sense of justice; Bailey’s Jester Lavorre, a mischievous half-demon prankster devoted to her enigmatic patron known as the Traveler; and Jaffe’s Mollymauk Tealeaf, a flamboyant, gender-fluid blood hunter with a flair for tarot readings.

They’re joined by an A-list roster of guest stars including Mark Strong (Nine Perfect Strangers, 1917), Alan Cumming (The Traitors), Tim McGraw (The Blind Side, 1883), Anika Noni Rose (The Princess and the Frog), Ming-Na Wen (The Mandalorian), Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana), Rahul Kohli (iZombie), Robbie Daymond (Date Everything!) and Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

Riegel says one of the thrills of the adaptation has been expanding the cast beyond the tabletop group. At the table, “it’s just us playing the main characters and Matt Mercer, our incredible game master, doing the voices for every other character in the world.” For the animated series, Mercer still takes on several key roles, but, as Riegel notes, “We’ve been able to welcome incredible talented actors to make the world sound big and expansive and real.”

Critical Role’s Exandria setting is vast, with three campaigns already completed and a fourth slated for 2026 — leaving plenty of stories still to mine for future series and spinoffs. But for The Mighty Nein, Willingham says Prime Video’s two-season order gave the team “a much longer runway” to shape the story. “Instead of just making sure Season 1 had a satisfying start, middle and end, we were able to plan on a much larger scale,” he explains. With 22 extra minutes per episode and two full seasons to work with, the writers could map character arcs and reveals across a broader canvas, “which is always exciting, especially when you’re teeing up a world of this size.”

The Mighty Nein premieres November 19 on Prime Video.