Last weekend, I sat down to watch Critical Role Episode #115 “The Chapter Closes” This was the final episode in Critical Role’s first campaign, Vox Machina. According to a Reddit thread, the full campaign of Vox Machina is about 447 hours which includes all their episodes. To say that I have watched all 447 hours is incredible. I started Critical Role toward the beginning of 2021 without knowing what I was diving into. I can’t believe I have gotten to this point! I wanted to talk a little about Vox Machina and some observations I had. There will be slight spoilers of the campaign down below.

My first thought after finishing Vox Machina was how much the characters grew over 115 episodes. All the characters had some sort of character growth as they matured and learned from the adventures. The first character that I thought of was Scanlan. Scanlan (played by Sam Riegel) was a flirtatious, wise-cracking character who always seemed to break the tension. He would make sexist and somewhat indecent jokes throughout the episodes. Once Scanlan discovered he had a daughter, he became a bit more humbled. Once Scanlan died and was brought back, he separated from Vox Machina and went on his own. I loved this arc! I think Scanlan was taken for granted by Vox Machina and I’m glad that Scanlan called Vox Machina out on that. Towards the end of the campaign, Scanlan admits his love for Pike (played by Ashley Johnson) and it’s hinted that Scanlan and Pike marry. Scanlan towards the beginning of the campaign wasn’t on my radar, but now he has quickly become one of the most interesting characters.

Besides Scanlan, Percy (played by Taliesin Jaffe) was another standout character. Percy was angry and bent on revenge for the death of his family. He made a lot of terrible decisions in order to get revenge. Halfway through the campaign, Percy and Vex (played by Laura Bailey) admit their feelings for each other. Vex softens Percy and helps Percy to move through his grief. Percy originally was the first character in Vox Machina that I paid the most attention to.

As I watched the last episode, I absolutely was crying throughout the first half of the episode. The emotion on everyone’s faces made it that much more believable. It’s clear that the cast of Critical Role became their characters and had that strong attachment to playing them each week.

Now that I finished watching Vox Machina, what’s next? There are three one-shots that feature Vox Machina that I am planning to watch sometime this week (The Search for Grog, The Search for Bob, and Dalen’s Closet). The Amazon Prime series, The Legends of Vox Machina has season #2 coming out on January 20th which I intend to watch. Once all of that is completed, I will officially start watching campaign #2, Mighty Nein. If I had to predict, I probably won’t start until February since I still have a lot of content left even if it’s not the main campaign.

I’m so happy that I started watching Critical Role. It’s been fun to experience the full universe that Matt Mercer has built.