This review will contain spoilers from Prime Video’s The Legend of Vox Machina season two.
If season one of The Legend of Vox Machina was about Vox Machina figuring out who they are as a group, season two was about Vox Machina figuring out who they are individually. In season one they had to learn how to work together, how to open up to each other, how to encourage each other, and to really believe that together, Vox Machina is an unstoppable force. Season two isn’t NOT about that, but they already know they’re good in a group. The problem is, they get split up. And while they’re split up, they start to doubt if they’re worth anything on their own.
But over the course of the season, they realize that the reason Vox Machina works as a group is because of the strengths of each of its members. Percy is clever, Vax is selfless, Pike is motivating, Scanlan has more heart than he lets on, Grog finds his strength from the people he loves, Vex is boldest with her friends by her side, and Keyleth is more powerful than she knows.
One final entry for the books re: my Vexleth agenda.
I’m not going to run through the last three episodes beat by beat, but I did want to highlight a few things. For example, the times we saw Lady Allura and Lady Kima.
Even when they were both just played by Matt during Campaign 1, they both have such district personalities and I love them. Tol and smol, grumpy and tuff vs calming and elegant. Perfection!
The badass wives are on Cassandra’s council, trying to find a way to stop the Chroma Conclave. Lady Allura and Gilmore work to keep Whitestone hidden while they plan, but they’re hoping Vox Machina can help speed things along. We see them again at the end, after they use teamwork to defeat Umbrasyl, when they toast to Vox Machina and promptly pass out, and Vox Machina learns that the person they thought was Keeper Yennen is actually the dragon Raishan in disguise.
What I love about Lady Allura and Lady Kima, is that they’re just wives who exist in this world because why the hell not. When Matt created them for his D&D game when Critical Role first started, he wasn’t trying to check a diversity box or anything like that. In fact, they came onto the scene back when the show was small enough that they opened fan gifts at the end of the streams and would get excited when people would order them a pizza. While there are several bisexual members of Vox Machina, and honestly everyone in the party has a touch of pansexuality about them, as this season made clear, they’re pairing off into m/f duos: Vex and Percy, Vax and Keyleth, Scanlan and Pike. So it’s nice to have a stable, steady relationship of queer women around, especially such powerful women who come in clutch at multiple points in the series.
Other arcs I enjoyed in the back half of this season were more boops to Critters like “At dawn, we plan!” and everything involving Vex and her broom. All of the scenes with Scanlan learning he’s a dad and then reckoning with it were brilliant, and I love that Scanlan’s dream-grandkids were voiced by Sam Riegel’s actual children.
A bisexual badass babe on a broom using a bow??? Sorry Miss Duff but THIS is what dreams are made of.
And while the dragon fight was epic and wonderful and stressful and did a great job of highlighting the party’s strengths and weaknesses and showed them working together, my favorite fight was the one with Grog and his uncle, specifically when it seemed like things were going poorly, but then Grog sees his friends tiptoeing across the rooftops. He shouts, “Vox Machina, fuck shit up!” and I won’t lie, I got emotional. I just love teamwork, okay?
And I think that’s why The Legend of Vox Machina, and Critical Role in general, speaks to me so deeply. Maybe it’s why D&D as a whole speaks to me! Because my favorite stories aren’t love stories in the traditional romance sense. They’re friendship stories. Sure, there can be romance arcs in my friendship stories, but I love it when the point is teamwork. When the goal is “how can we be better friends to you,” or “I need to sort this out about myself so I can be better at being on this team.” I love when a character is going through the hardest thing they’ve ever gone through, and then there’s someone there to hug them and ask them who they need to punch about it. And of course, it almost always is more than just friendship. It’s usually found family. The people who you would live and die for even though you met them when you were full grown. It’s what Vex learned this season, right? That she has been desperate for her biological father’s approval…and for what? She has her brother, sure, but she also has a new family now. And sure, there are questions only her father has answers to, she might not ever be able to cut the apron strings entirely, but she doesn’t have to forget who she is around him anymore. Not when she has her Vox Machina family around her to remind her.
The season ends with Raishan as a supposed ally and one slain dragon at their backs, they’re ready to defeat Thordak, and they have a whole season left to try. And I, for one, can’t wait. For the third season, and also the first season of the Mighty Nein series, which is going to be so gay you won’t even know what hit you. Pop pop!
You hit the nail on the head about what’s so appealing about critical role and dnd in general! Like yeah, the romances are fun and compelling in their own right, but the central love story is friendship. (I am beyond hype for animated Mighty Nein, where the queerness and the hard-won found family dynamic turn up to eleven)
‘What I love about Lady Allura and Lady Kima, is that they’re just wives who exist in this world because why the hell not. When Matt created them for his D&D game when Critical Role first started, he wasn’t trying to check a diversity box or anything like that.’
I feel the exact same, buddies. Do I want to see Kima and Allura maybe making out on the council table? Sure. But I also find that this is a rare series in which the LGBTQ+ community isn’t an afterthought, isn’t a box being checked or a single character to represent us all. It’s just what it is and it’s gloriously, unapologetically queer without making a song and dance about it. Which is a good thing, because honestly some of Scan’s tunes are dubious.